Fashion 87 : TV’s Apparel Pitch Turns On the At-Home Shopper

Carmela Richards is the kind of woman who would sell you the mink coat off her back. In fact, five nights a week there is a good chance she will sell you the mink coat off her back, along with the gold chains around her neck and the computer on her desk.

Richards, once a department store fashion coordinator, makes her living these days in the burgeoning, frenzied world of televised home shopping. Mondays through Fridays she can be seen nationwide on Minneapolis-based CVN (Cable Value Network), during what she proudly hails as “prime-time,” extolling the virtues of anything from furs to home furnishings.

Like other televised home-shopping services, CVN offers its merchandise at discounted prices. One night, a full-length fox fur (modeled, cuddled and praised by Richards) carried a suggested retail price of $3,999. CVN’s price was $1,295, and it dropped even lower, to $1,195, if viewers called while the honey-haired hostess was still on the air.

So far, compared with the glut of porcelain dolls, cubic-zirconia pendants, heater/fan combinations, televisions and tool kits, often offered 24 hours a day, there isn’t a whole lot of apparel beamed at viewers from the nation’s many home-shopping shows. “Our best estimates indicate it’s 10% to 15% of all items sold,” says Larry Gerbrandt, senior analyst with Paul Kagan Associates.

But in an industry that has surprised everyone with its overnight success, and now is frantically looking for the next great gimmick, apparel is considered a major contender.

Ellis Simon, editor of Cable Marketing, a New York-based trade publication, says he doesn’t know of anything in televison that “has hit as hard and fast as home shopping. In a couple of years, I think this thing is going to be bigger than HBO.”

Clothing, according to Simon, “has as good a shot as anything. I think the potential is very exciting, if it’s done right. Look at the success of catalogues like Banana Republic, Land’s End and Spiegel, they’re all doing a booming business. If you can sell something just by having people look at a picture of it, imagine what you can do with 30 seconds of someone modeling it.”

Already something called the Fashion Channel, which will emanate from Los Angeles, is scheduled for a summer launch against a background of cloak-and-dagger secrecy.

Highly protective of their concept, the producers will only comment that the two- to four-hour program “will be like taking a Nordstrom and putting it on the air. There will be moderate to upper-moderate priced fashions for the whole family.”

Lorimar-Telepictures, Fox Television Stations and Horn & Hardart (who publish Hanover House catalogues) all jumped on the bandwagon on Monday with their joint venture, “ValueTelevision” (VTV). Shown six times a week on KTTV, the syndicated “VTV” operates with a polished, soft-sell, talk-show format led by hosts Alex Trebek and Meredith MacRae.

The show’s executive producer, Susan Winston, one-time CBS News executive and former executive producer of “Good Morning America,” says fashion will be seen on an almost daily basis.

“It’s one of the exciting things--to help our audience develop a wardrobe. We have an entire group of designers and consultants working for us in New York. We’re taking what we know will be hot-selling items and putting them out under our own Video Collection label,” Winston says.

Convinced that TV shopping needs to be turned into a “dignified experience--you’re never going to hear us say: ‘There are only 10 left’ “--Winston plans to have the private-label clothing and accessories modeled by celebrities such as Charlene Tilton and Jane Seymour.

“I’m in business to have a good show and get good ratings,” Winston says. “Selling the product is secondary. But if someone is going to buy, it might as well be on my program.”

The talk-show format had a brief, successful workout late last year when STN (Shop Television Network), currently a cable operation, was tested around the country.

On a CBS “Morning News” segment that compared HSN (Home Shopping Network), pioneer of the phenomenon, with Shop Television Network, the latter fared better. Economic correspondent Robert Krulwich, who wasn’t swayed by Bargain Bob and HSN’s buy-it-or-lose-it attitude, found that, by contrast, STN had “kind of a Bloomingdale’s feeling.” The format and host Pat Boone were so convincing that Krulwich was tempted to buy a 48-piece set of flatware.

STN President Michael Rosen says the program will be back in Los Angeles “before the end of April” and will have more items like the fur jacket and the jewelry modeled by a celebrity expert who obviously knows about such things: Beverly Sassoon.

Ninety percent of the show’s merchandise, which so far has ranged from goose-down comforters to educational toys and fitness equipment, “is not close-out merchandise,” Rosen claims. “But we had Calvin Klein underwear for women, and that was a close-out.”

The underwear was displayed in an open drawer with a pretty model standing nearby. She didn’t wear the briefs, because, as Rosen explains: “We want to stay away from that kind of advertising.”

Instead, he and Executive Producer Gary Smith, winner of 20 Emmy awards, visualize “a high-quality show. We plan to produce segments for leading brand-name fashion manufacturers to demonstrate and sell their lines directly.”

“So many items are left on the shelf because they’re not demonstrated correctly in the stores,” Rosen says. “Take the basics, like underwear and socks. We can explain the cotton count, the thickness and why they are a value. With a bathrobe, for example, I don’t believe the consumer would want to buy one for $9.95, if we can offer a better one that will hold up in the washer.”

STN’s Rosen may talk about socks, but they’re not the thing over at Home Shopping Network. “Too low-price of a retail item,” Barry Horowitz, director of merchandising, explains. HSN concentrates on higher-profit garments--shirts and sweaters for men, knitwear, blouses, furs and lingerie for women--all of which are loose fitting, to cut down on the rate of wrong-size returns.

Lingerie accounts for nearly 15% of the show’s apparel, according to Horowitz, who explains just why items ranging from flannel nightshirts to “tasteful” robe-and-gown sets appeal to certain segments of the audience.

“The fuller-figured woman has a reluctance to go into lingerie store or a department store. She feels intimidated. We offer anonymity. By calling our 800 number, she has the kind of freedom she never had.” He add that many men who are ordering gifts for their girlfriends or wives would never go into a store specializing in lingerie, but they will order by phone.

Bargains and a no-hassle return policy bring in what Horowitz says is nearly a six-figure weekly business. Clothing, introduced nine months ago, is expected to account for 10% of the total corporate sales figure of $1 billion projected for 1987-88.

HSN, located in Clearwater, Fla., is the media miracle spawned by Roy Speer, a former criminal lawyer, and a partner, Lowell Paxson. “America’s original, live, discount, shop-at-home TV service” got its start on radio, when Paxson and Speer were stuck with an advertiser’s electric can openers. They sold them on the air with surprising success, then hawked other products the same way. They moved to to a Tampa Bay cable operation in 1982 and went national in 1985.

Paxson and Speer, once alone in the field, now share it with two top contenders: CVN (Cable Value Network), which inherited star-status Carmela Richards from HSN last year, and QVC Network, which recently signed Sears to an exclusive deal. In addition, there are an estimated 27 lesser-known shopping services available via cable and satellite.

Nick Jaksich, CVN’s senior vice president in charge of operations, sees home shopping as “a natural evolution brought about by changing life styles. With so many women working (statistics indicate 65%-80% of all TV shopping viewers are women), they have much less casual time. So it lets them do several things at once: Relax and watch an entertaining format and buy something they would probably buy somewhere else, but they’re saving time and saving money.”

Still testing the apparel waters, CVN has successfully sold brand-name sweaters and blouses to women, as well as sweat suits and fur bomber jackets to men. But a group of men’s long fur coats, according to Jaksich, didn’t move well at all.

Sears, which has opted to participate in televised home shopping early in the game, “was vitally interested in the area of electronic merchandising for some time,” James Podany, director of marketing communications for the retail chain, explains. Many of the Sears products that appear on QVC Network are so new, he says: “They haven’t appeared in the stores or the catalogues.”

The network’s format is life-style segments under categories, such as “What’s New to Help You Look Your Best.” In the “relatively near future,” when Sears adds apparel for men, women and children to its TV lineup, that is obviously where it will go, Podany says.

Joseph Segel, chairman of QVC, based in West Chester, Pa., is the founder and former chairman of Franklin Mint, a mail-order company that specializes in commemorative coins. He looks at his newest venture as “a game show, talk show and a shopping show all wrapped in one.”

He doesn’t view the scene, crowded as it is, as competitive. “Not really,” Segel says, “because many cable systems carry only one program while others carry two or more. But each has a different personality, and it’s like a large mall with several department stores. Some customers are more loyal, some flip from one to the other.”

But that’s where the comparisons end, Segel insists. Shopping on his network “is not like a catalogue, because you don’t thumb through, and it’s not like a mall, because you don’t walk through,” he says. It’s just a convenient way to see interesting people present interesting products without pressure.”

Some people don’t seem to mind the pressure on other shows. Kathy Franczak, a 28-year-old sales manager for a Los Angeles firm, has been watching the Home Shopping Club an hour or two a day since March. So far, she has purchased gold, diamond and sapphire jewelry, a tool set, travel bags, stuffed animals and two blouses, which she says she carefully selected. “I didn’t want to buy just anything. One is a Lady Manhattan and the other is an Oscar de la Renta.”

Both times, she saw the blouses when she was getting ready for work, and because “it only takes a few minutes,” she ordered them.

“I’m buying more than I normally would,” Franczak says, “because they’re often showing me a lot of things I wouldn’t look at. If I were in a big store, I wouldn’t go to the jewelry department to browse. It’s the same type of feeling you get when you go through a catalogue and see something you like or if you see a sale in the newspaper.”

Added to that is the pleasure of it all. “It’s fun to go home and have something waiting for you,” Fran czak adds, “especially if you forgot you ordered it.”

Assigned to check out some aspects of home shopping, Peggy Ziegler, senior editor of Multi-Channel News, a television trade publication, went on a limited buying spree last fall. She was restricted to $20 per purchase, which ruled out many apparel items.

But she did buy imitation pearls for $9.99. “I ordered a choker and a bracelet, but the way they do these things, they threw in eight more pieces,” says Ziegler, who has never worn the fakes.

“I laughed when the women on the air said you can’t buy pearl jewelry for this price, and when I saw the order I said: ‘You’re so right.’ ”

While she doesn’t think she missed any bargains on clothing, she says she still thinks about a Wang word processor that “sounded like a great deal at $1,535. It’s interesting. When you watch the shows, everything starts to look good, especially on CVN.”

Few people consider the shopping networks a threat to catalogues or department stores, although CVN’s Richards is fond of saying, “We are the department store you love coming home to.”

And analyst Gerbrandt, bullish about the industry, notes: “I think they are offering a service. If I were a retailer, I probably wouldn’t be real thrilled. I think they take away from both direct mail and retail.”

Whatever their reasons, executives of several major department stores say they are watching the trend.

“We’re interested in it,” says Jack McCarley, vice president of public affairs for Bullock’s and Bullocks Wilshire, “from the standpoint that we’ve looked at some of the research on it and had a presentation from AMC (Associated Merchandising Corp.) on how it’s accomplished. It was done to familiarize our staffs with the subject and to keep them abreast of a development among our customers.

“I think it’s going to continue in popularity,” McCarley adds, “particularly when you have large population centers with two wage earners in the family.”

Steven Regur, vice president of management information systems and marketing for JW Robinson’s, says televised shopping “extends the possibilities for customers to buy your merchandise.”

He thinks the ideal system would be based on convenient access, via laser disc or video, to a “menu” of goods advertised by a company or a store. “The menu would allow you to select categories like dresses or shoes,” Regur says, adding that televised home shopping “could be a good medium for fashion. The impact of direct mail is very strong, and I don’t see why this can’t be equally strong because it has the possibility of sound and motion.”

At the moment, however, Regur says catalogues have the advantage: “They can be seen totally at the discretion of the customer. You can open one any time of the day or night, instead of waiting from 7 to 9, for example, and never knowing for sure what you’ll see.”

Margaret Durborow, vice president of marketing and programming for United Cable Television of Los Angeles says television shopping shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone (“Alvin Toffler predicted it in his book, ‘The Third Wave’ ”), but certain items will never make it as small-screen purchases. “Men’s suits,” Durborow explains, “because of the tailoring. And while you’ll certainly see cocktail dresses, I don’t think you’ll see bridal gowns. It comes back to the entertainment and experiential values of shopping in person.”