Is QVC long for this world? Alongside HSN, the network popularized home shopping at the end of the 20th century. But QVC Group, which owns both QVC and HSN, declared bankruptcy this April, and even though QVC Group exited Chapter 11 reorganization in August, doubts about the company’s long-term viability remain.
“They’re still not in a position that they can easily pivot or grow, and that’s why very rarely do you see a company that has declared some form of bankruptcy once come back and rise like a phoenix out of the ashes,” Sucharita Kodali, principal analyst at market research company Forrester, told the Philadelphia Business Journal this month. “They’re alive, but they will often declare bankruptcy again or just die a slow death.”
Bankruptcy has just been one challenge for QVC in its four-decade history. Detailed below are what we consider the home shopping channel’s biggest controversies to date, ones that make a certain NSFW flub look like small potatoes.
In 1998, former QVC hosts Victor Velez and Gwen Owens sued QVC in federal court in New York, seeking $100 million in damages, per the Tampa Bay Times. Velez and Owens alleged QVC discriminated against hosts of color by paying them less and relegating them to overnight shifts, the newspaper reported. A QVC spokesperson denied the allegation of overnight-shift banishing.
A 2006 judgment favored QVC in the claims regarding hostile work environment, work...
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