My phone screen showed an incoming call from Roots Canada’s CEO — my boss, mentor, and friend! I excitedly answered the phone only to hear a croak at the other end of the line. “Richie, I’m sick as a dog. You gotta do me a favour: fly out to Phillie tomorrow morning first thing and appear on QVC for me.”
“Kew, vee, what?” I answered. Marshall went on to explain that he — we — were committed to an on air appearance on North America’s largest TV Shopping network QVC. He had a terrible flu so asked me to go. Of course, I leapt at the opportunity.
QVC Campus
The next day I flew from Vancouver to Philadelphia arriving at about 1am in the morning. I was picked up by a town car for the one hour drive out into the countryside of WestChester, PA, the home of QVC for over 30 years. After a quick sleep I headed over to QVC campus at 9am and my enrolment in QVC-U — QVC University!
As a rookie guest they require you to attend an all-day course where you learn the Do’s and Don’ts of successful television retailing. Thirty years of metrics on sales, host actions, guest activity, call volume, sales volume and more are studied at QVC. These metrics form the backbone of the daylong course where you are told exactly what to do, how to do it, what to say and most definitely what NOT to say.
You learn the basics: QVC stands for Quality, Value and Convenience and more in-depth such as the fandom that QVC Hosts like David Venable enjoy. If the host says the sky is Green, you have to just agree and roll with it. I was there to sell Roots’ USA Olympic collection. And the following day I would have three morning slots to sell my wares in. So, right after founder of Celebriducks sold 10,000 units of rubber duckies in 20 minutes I was on.
My three 20-minute sessions that morning flew by in a flash. We sold lots of Roots merch, I didn’t make any on-air gaffes and it was fun to interact with the callers — mostly little old ladies. We got lots of laughs as I taught callers how to say “toque” (pronounce toock — its a winter knit ski cap for our American friends) and what a toboggan was. Out of camera sight, there are large flat screen monitors that showed us presenters all sorts of stats — call volume, sales volume, incoming calls, calls in queue etc. It was nerve-wracking but exciting too.
If you ever get the chance to develop your own QVC product, present on the network, or even tour the facility, I highly recommend it. Then, we can be QVC-U alumnus together! Go, Running Retailers! – Rich Patterson