Peddle Power : Sales: Budding entrepreneurs display wares for QVC officials in Downey, hoping to generate big bucks if chosen for spots on the home shopping channel.
Nothing brings out the American entrepreneurial spirit like a chance to sell chicken feather purses on television.
Or chili pepper print skirts. Or 3-D stationery. Or dirt. Or any of 800 quirky, novel and otherwise off-the-wall items on display at a pitch-fest Thursday in Downey, where Southern California manufacturers are taking their shot at the big time: QVC, the home shopping channel and media monolith. On a 50-week, 50-state tour, the network is scouring the nation for 1,000 new products to offer on live television, and area vendors are more than happy to oblige.
Buyers for the channel wandered among row after row of on-air hopefuls, who set up shop at a three-day trade show in the Energy Resource Center, a clearinghouse for environmental information. Offering a dizzying array of gadgets and oddities, merchants breathlessly peddled their goods, grinning like Hollywood starlets at their first screen test.
For many of the region’s mom-and-pop businesses, QVC’s California stopover is an opportunity, perhaps the only opportunity, to hawk their wares to a national audience and break into electronic capitalism. For the 20 California vendors selected to advertise their products in a three-hour broadcast in late November, the trade show could be the door to the small business equivalent of winning the lottery: millions within minutes.
Merchants picked to take their pitch to the airwaves will have six to nine minutes of time on the channel, which is broadcast to 52 million cable subscribers. QVC has aired 30 of the 50 planned broadcasts from its nationwide tour, with total sales of home-grown merchandise from other states reaching $11.1 million.
To hear Charles Penman and Halyana Pruc tell it, the key to big, big money is real estate. Sort of.
Operating on the theory that everyone wants a piece of Hollywood, the Burbank residents are offering small bottles of dirt collected from the Hollywood Hills, “designed for your inspiration.” Pruc said she recommends that QVC sell two 100% recycled glass containers of authentic soil for $15.
“Not that I buy anything from them,” she added.
A few tables away sat twin sisters Diane and Allison Dickson, originally of Corpus Christi, Tex.
“The same place as Todd Oldham,” said Diane, referring to the trendy fashion designer, as she fingered a neon green marabou feather handbag. “But we’re not quite Todd Oldham. Yet.”
The sisters, 30, developed the idea of using loose chicken feathers to make their line of purses and backpacks after visiting France, where they saw women use old-fashioned marabou powder puffs. The Manhattan Beach residents now sell their wares, priced from $22 to $36, at a Downtown Los Angeles showroom.
Across the trade show floor, Shelley Hellman was offering samples of her 95-year-old grandmother’s spicy mustard. Hellman said the recipe has been a family secret for 200 years, but when she heard about the QVC tryout, she packed “Oma’s Old-Fashioned Gourmet Mustard” in jars and tagged each bottle with a picture of her grandmother, who has refused to reveal the ingredients to a number of food companies.
“I’m pretty much a struggling actress, so she figured this would be a way to help me,” said Hellman, a QVC devotee who will offer sets of two jars for $9 on the channel if she is picked.
Of course, entrepreneurs such as Marlene Wyatt of Arkansas used to struggle too. That was before they were discovered on QVC’s “Quest for America’s Best” tour. Wyatt, who constructed a one-inch disk with a non-stick surface for rolling dough, has grossed $1.1 million since her product went on the air in January, channel spokeswoman Winnie Atterbury said. Another small-business owner, Don Hodgskin, hit it big last month when QVC sales of his RIDDEX device, which uses electricity to fend off vermin, topped $1.3 million.
It is impossible to guess which products will sell, buyers say, but there are a few factors that improve an item’s odds of being selected for on-air retailing.
First, it has to be camera-ready.
“It’s got to be visual,” said QVC new merchandise director Bill Lane. “The benefit has to be easily perceived.”
Second, quality counts.
“If it’s shoddily made, we won’t go near it,” said Renee Ward, a buyer who has worked for QVC since before it went on the air.
It also helps if the item has a compelling story, and a convincing entrepreneur, standing behind it.
“Something else we’re looking for is a great guest,” said buyer Suji Meswani. “If you have a great guest, you can increase sales by as much as 50%.”
QVC will announce its California picks in two weeks. The channel’s buyers said a few cookbooks, high-tech gadgets and other objects at the Downey trade show already had caught their collective eye. About 35% of the goods picked from the states QVC has visited (Hawaii is the next and final stop) are food-related, and 33% are home decor items ranging from handmade furniture to cleaning products, Meswani said.
In California, buyers said, competition for the 20 on-air slots and five alternate spots is fierce. QVC officials perused 200 items at a trade show in San Jose this week, and will view 600 in Downey.
Once selected, each vendor must ship a minimum number of units, usually several hundred, to the channel’s warehouse. For small entrepreneurs, many of whom were hawking handmade inventions and craft items, churning out that many units could require around-the-clock production.
“It’s the best way of advertising,” said Deborah Alvarez, whose jaw dropped when a QVC buyer explained that the network will need 1,800 sets of the Hawthorne resident’s handmade stationery if the item is chosen for broadcast. “It’s better than craft shows.”
