A cadeia de relojoaria e joalharia BlueBird reabriu a sua loja no Centro Comercial AlgarveShopping, na Guia.
O conteúdo Loja icónica volta a ter portas abertas em grande centro comercial do Algarve aparece primeiro em Algarve Marafado.
Courtesy of Talon Krebs
Talon Krebs works full time as a TikTok Shop affiliate, promoting products on the app and earning a commission when shoppers buy through his links.
The gig earned the 23-year-old six figures last year, according to a 1099 form reviewed by Business Insider.
"As far as startup cost, TikTok Shop has to be one of the most profitable business models I've ever seen," he told BI.
Krebs said beginners can get started with a phone, a few products, and an understanding of what makes people stop scrolling. He shares three steps to turn TikTok videos into a source of income.
Anyone can open a TikTok account, but affiliates need an established following to join TikTok Shop.
TikTok offers multiple routes into its affiliate program, Krebs explained. Its pilot program requires 1,000 followers but limits participants to a handful of posts a week, while the main program, which gives affiliates more flexibility, requires at least 5,000 followers.
Krebs already had about 24,000 followers on a personal account when he got started. He said he built the audience by posting about sports, current events, and other subjects he liked: "I was just posting stuff I was interested in."
Krebs said he spent $100 to $200 on a handful of products when he first started. He chose items he needed anyway, like hoodies.
Affiliates can search TikTok's product marketplace for brands and products to promote. Krebs said they don't need a direct relationship with a brand to start making videos, though successful affiliates may eventually negotiate higher commissions or paid content deals.
Talon Krebs
For someone trying to keep costs close to zero, Krebs recommends looking around the house first. If an item you already own is listed on TikTok Shop, you can create a video about it rather than buying something new specifically to promote.
He also joined Media Labs, a community for affiliates that offered video feedback and weekly calls. He paid the $1,500 fee in six $250 monthly installments, putting his initial outlay — including products and his first community payment — at about $450.
Skip the community, use products you already own, and film with a phone and free editing tools, and Krebs said you could get started for essentially nothing.
A TikTok Shop video still has to work as a TikTok video. Krebs said the opening seconds matter most: The hook should get a viewer's attention, identify a pain point, or create enough curiosity to keep them watching.
In one of his most successful videos about a digital business card, he opens with: "Paper business cards are officially a thing of the past." The statement created some controversy, he said, but it got viewers' attention before he explained the product and how he used it as an entrepreneur.
Krebs tries to keep most videos between 30 and 50 seconds, though he said the right length depends on the product. Some products need more explanation, while others can be shown in a 10-second video.
He thinks of each video as a loop: The hook opens it, the middle explains or demonstrates the product, and the call to action closes it. Affiliates can tag a product directly in the video, allowing viewers to tap the orange shopping-cart icon, view the listing, and ultimately make a purchase.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Instacart is carting away a technology it once said would play a key role in shopping.
The grocery delivery company will wind down the team that develops its Caper smart shopping carts, it said on Monday. The move, approved by Instacart's board of directors, will be completed by the second quarter of 2027.
A wind-down will cost the company between $55 million and $80 million, including the costs of terminating some employees and contracts, it said in a filing with the SEC. Instacart will reinvest savings from the decision into "strategic growth initiatives."
Caper carts were one of the most visible of Instacart's retail technology efforts. The company began as a delivery-focused startup in 2012, but diversified into selling technology to retailers over the last several years.
Equipped with cameras and sensors, Caper carts could weigh fruit, track what customers placed inside or removed from them, apply coupons, and accept payments when customers were done shopping. Instacart also saw an opportunity to serve users tailored ads on the carts' screens.
In early 2024, Instacart said it planned to roll out "thousands" of the Caper carts to stores. Then-CEO Fidji Simo said: "We really believe that it's going to be the future of grocery shopping."
Amazon, which makes a similar smart shopping cart, said at the start of 2026 that it planned to start using a new version at Whole Foods Market stores.
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No dia 31 de outubro, o Quinta Shopping convida famílias e visitantes a celebrar o Halloween com uma programação temática que decorrerá entre as 11h00 e as 13h00 e entre as 14h00 e as 19h00. Ao longo do dia, o Centro Comercial, na Quinta do Lago, transforma-se num ponto de encontro para momentos de criatividade, […]
Sylvia Edwards
Toy prices are rising fast across the country— and local toy stores are struggling to play along.
At Clever Monsters, a toy store in NYC, co-owner Daniel Orlov said he has to recalculate prices order by order, at times cutting into his own profits to keep them at a reasonable level for his customers. Sometimes, he knows before putting some toys on the shelves that he won't make anything off them.
The struggle results from higher shipping fees, tariffs, and customs charges and reflects a broader inflationary moment in the economy.
Toys have historically gotten less expensive over time, but have seen a spike in prices this year, rising 8.3% in the US between February and September. Year-over-year, toy prices were up 6.6% in September, the highest annualized growth rate since 1988.
Orlov said smaller toy stores like his could be particularly affected by these sharp price spikes. "It especially hurts for small businesses like us because we don't really have a pocket; we had to open up credit lines and take loans — bigger companies have a little pocket of collateral that they can use for a bit."
Big geopolitical swings are one factor putting pressure on toy sellers. President Donald Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs have added extra costs, and smaller retailers don't have the financial flexibility to wait for refunds like those from the Supreme Court's invalidation of the "Liberation Day" levies. Meanwhile, the ongoing war in Iran has driven up fuel prices and shipping costs for all manner of goods.
Small toy stores, confronting those problems, are facing smaller profit margins.
Helen Dean, owner and operator of Toy Safari in California for 34 years, said her usual 7 to 8% profit margin has fallen to around 5% in the past year. She cut into her own salary and skipped on hiring the two or three college students she brings on during vacation season to cut costs.
"It was summer by the time I started to see that I was going to have to pay more for the items, and that it was going to come out of my bottom line," Dean said. "For a long time, mass market has gotten favorable pricing from major toy companies, and this problem has only been exacerbated by the tariffs and fuel prices and supply chain issues; everywhere we lose."
It's not just specialty mom-and-pop stores; toymaking giants are also dealing with the tariff back-and-forth and broader inflationary issues. An AlphaSense analysis of company filings and earnings transcripts over the last six months found that legacy toymakers such as Hasbro and Mattel have alluded to cost inflation caused by "tariffs, oil-linked resin and freight, packaging, labor," while also discussing the impact of tariff refunds. However, those large toymakers haven't disclosed any major increases in toy prices over that period.
Hasbro's Q2 earnings report highlighted an $8 million adjusted operating loss in consumer products — its physical toy sector — due to "incremental tariff expense, entertainment-related mix shifts, and normal seasonality." Yet its Q3 earnings report highlighted $55 million in relief from tariff refunds; $48 million of this was attributed to the core toy sector.
The Q3 report also noted that tariffs could "increase our product costs and other costs of doing business, result in higher prices of our products, impact consumer spending," and hurt business revenue.
Mattel's gross margin is still under pressure due to tariffs and inflation. The toy company has also received about $90 million in tariff refunds, said Paul Ruh, Mattel's former chief financial officer, at a conference in September.
High operating costs are not the only thing changing the toy market. First, more adults are participating in "Kidulting," said Jay Berino, store manager at the Lowry Town Center Timbuk Toys in Denver, meaning toys are being bought by older demographics who buy into nostalgia.
"As much as we're a toy store and people hear toy store and think of kids, we sell to a lot to full-blown adults, and that drives a huge chunk of our business," he said. At the same time, viral toys such as NeeDohs, which are sensory fidget and stress-relief toys, have helped bring more people into stores.
Sylvia Edwards, co-owner and CEO of Terra Toys in Austin, said that scalpers try to buy up stock from toy shops to resell it at higher prices — fueling the perception of product scarcity and price gouging.
"We're in a crisis where there's way more demand than there is product available, and so when that happens, people will naturally get greedy and increase the price," Edwards said. To manage the issue, stores like Terra Toys limit bulk purchases.
Daniel Orlov
Orlov from Clever Monsters in NYC said they have also placed a limit on scalpers. "I'm only limiting it because this is the kids' store, and the kids are really excited to get that stuff," he said.
The virality of products such as NeeDohs on TikTok and other platforms helps these stores boost demand at a time when the high cost of living means buyers are not looking to spend much on other classic toys. Parents and kids are willing to spend on hyped products — but for much else, they keep their wallets shut.
"Honestly, the trends have been really saving us in that it drives not just sales, but just foot traffic through the store," Orlov said. "The only thing we can do is just stay on the trends, on what people want, make sure customers are happy, build up relationships with our customers, and sort of have a little monopoly on our area on parents who think toys — 'Oh, we gotta come to Clever Monsters. That's just where you go.'"
Dominick Reuter/Business Insider
The holiday shopping season keeps creeping earlier on the calendar, and that head start can come at the expense of the final stretch.
After weeks of crowds, big-box stores in the week before Christmas can be left with picked-over shelves. This year, as part of CEO Michael Fiddelke's turnaround effort, Target is shifting from a marathon mentality to a series of sprints intended to help the retailer finish strong.
Target's US stores will kick off the holiday season with a major reset in the first week of November, followed by another overhaul in the first week of December after Black Friday.
But the team isn't stopping there.
For the home stretch, Target is picking up the pace with a new micro-season intended to carry the energy through the final 10 days before Christmas.
Dominick Reuter/Business Insider
"Decorating your home is done, then you start going to gift-giving," Target's chief merchandising officer Cara Sylvester told reporters at a preview event in New York last week. "The entire back of the store will be transformed into what we're calling Christmas Morning Magic."
That means this year, instead of seeing leftover string lights and stockings in the seasonal section, Sylvester said the zone will be flooded with fresh stocking stuffers priced from $3 to $20.
Target is, of course, not the only retailer to struggle with late-season momentum that can leave last-minute shoppers in the lurch, but Fiddelke has focused on faster cadence to win back shoppers.
Dominick Reuter/Business Insider
"The holiday season is such a culmination of what the team has been hard at work on all year," he said at the briefing. "It's a hectic time of year."
Target's chief brand officer Michelle Mesenburg told Business Insider that the company is taking a lot of cues from its recently revamped concept store in New York's SoHo shopping district.
Starting early and turning items over more quickly has been a successful strategy at the SoHo store, she said, as well as a flexible approach to fixtures that keep the store looking fresh through several episodes of a longer season. Now the company is looking to put that philosophy into practice nationwide this holiday.
No dia 10 de outubro, a exposição fotográfica “Olhão antes e depois” iniciou o seu percurso por quatro espaços do concelho, convidando a comunidade a descobrir as transformações da cidade através da fotografia.
A mostra coloca lado a lado imagens históricas de Olhão e recriações fotográficas realizadas por jovens olhanenses, num diálogo entre gerações que revela o que mudou e o que permanece na identidade da cidade.
Com curadoria de Luís Torres e integrada nas comemorações do Bicentenário da Câmara Municipal de Olhão, esta iniciativa valoriza o património, a memória coletiva e a criatividade dos jovens do concelho.
A exposição está patente até 13 de novembro, nos Mercados Municipais de Olhão, no Ria Shopping, na Escola Secundária Dr. Francisco Fernandes Lopes e na Casa Municipal da Juventude Hugo Charrão, de acordo com os respetivos horários de funcionamento.
Uma oportunidade para revisitar o passado, olhar o presente e descobrir a história de Olhão através de diferentes gerações.
O conteúdo “Olhão antes e depois”: uma viagem pela memória da cidade aparece primeiro em Sempre à Mão.
Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and MEP Dirk Gotink (EPP, Netherlands) Photographer: Mathieu Cugnot © European Union
The European Parliament has approved a major overhaul of the EU’s customs system, tightening requirements on e-commerce platforms, introducing a new handling fee for goods ordered from outside the bloc and creating a central EU customs authority.
“This is the biggest reform of European customs since 1968, supporting trade and the enforcement of EU rules,” said MEP Dirk Gotink, (EPP, Netherlands) who steered the legislation through Parliament. Gotink said European customs authorities had been overwhelmed by a “tsunami of Chinese parcels” and that the reform would give customs officers stronger tools to enforce EU standards.
Under the new rules, e-commerce platforms and sellers shipping goods directly from non-EU countries to European consumers will be treated as importers. That will make them responsible for providing customs data, handling applicable charges and ensuring products comply with EU law.
The reform also introduces an EU-wide handling fee on goods ordered directly from non-EU countries, with member states required to begin collecting it no later than 1 November, 2026. The European Commission will determine the amount and review it every two years.
Companies that repeatedly breach EU customs rules could face fines ranging from at least 1% to as much as 6% of the value of goods they imported into the EU during the previous 12 months.
The overhaul will also establish an EU Customs Data Hub, designed to replace at least 111 existing customs IT systems. A new EU Customs Authority, based in Lille, France, will manage the hub and coordinate customs cooperation and risk management across the EU.
The Council has already given the reform its final formal approval, making Parliament’s vote the final step in the legislative procedure.
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Hannah Engler Harvey | Longreads | July 30, 2026 | 3,927 words (14 minutes)
In the long, slow days of August, Christmas comes. The halls are decked with vintage glass holiday towns in two colorways, Pastel and Traditional. They are lit by a wall of electric candles whose realistic dancing flames were designed by Disney Imagineers. (Inventory is getting low in Beige, but consider the White as an alternative; Plum could pull double duty for Halloween.) Smiling people wear sweaters embellished with stars and snowflakes. They moan with pleasure as they sample handmade caramel marshmallows and defrosted barbecue ribs and special-edition three-and-a-half pound cheesecakes, on sale for $56.00 or three easy payments of $18.67. (But move fast: There are fewer than 750 left in Strawberry.)
It’s nice here, safe as a daydream. In the pretend kitchen, with the make-believe food and the fireless flames, there is something for everyone.
The first thing to know about QVC, the most important thing, is that it is always on.
My best friend Lizzie and I are couch potatoes, dedicated ones; our friendship set, like a custard, in front of the television. At first it was The Real Housewives and 30 Rock, then Difficult People and Dancing with the Stars. When we first moved in together, when we were both 24, we resolved, initially, to shake ourselves out of this instinct. I had just gone through my first adult breakup. She had finally had enough of her roommates and of Brooklyn. It was early 2020, the year of broken leases.
Hannah Engler Harvey’s first Longreads story, “Beloved Bother,” won the 2026 ASJA Writing Award in the First-Person Essays category.
We found a place in a neighborhood we both loved, and ignored the fact that the door of the bathroom could not open past the toilet, and that Lizzie had to climb over her bed to get to her closet. It didn’t matter that it was small, we reasoned. We would never be there.
Two weeks after we moved in, the city shut down, and we started paying for cable.
What it boiled down to was this: If you watch enough television, you eventually get sick of deciding what to watch. The beauty of TV, for the true couch potato, is when it comes and finds you: the sick-day marathons of Intervention, the late-night reruns of Frasier and The Nanny, the reliable Sunday-afternoon showing of the movie Backdraft. This is what Lizzie and I had loved about television growing up, and this is what the prestige-TV era had taken from us. We were sick of ordering à la carte. We wanted a buffet.
So, there on our pink Drew-Barrymore-for-Walmart sectional, balancing takeout containers on our laps, we watched.
We watched old episodes of Match Game and Three’s Company; we watched Live with Kelly and Ryan and the movie channels and sports, if we were desperate.
But there were times—the true couch potato always finds times—when the only thing to watch was QVC.
QVC (which stands for Quality, Value, Convenience) was founded in 1986 by the businessman Joseph Segel and still airs 24 hours of programming a day, approximately 20 hours of which are live broadcasts. The broadcasts are simple in structure. A host demonstrates products in an unscripted, conversational way, speaking directly to the audience from a set that looks like a living room. Sometimes, the host banters with a cohost. Along the way, they are joined by a rotating cast of brand representatives who are there to assist in selling their wares.
And this tactic has worked, at least on some tranche of the population. For the 40 years it has been around, QVC’s core demographic—women over 50—has held steady, and the channel has a remarkable ability to inspire loyalty. According to a 2021 article in Main Line Today, the newspaper local to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where QVC is headquartered, “Ninety percent of QVC customers are of the repeat variety.”
The personalities are the point. In a 2006 article in Studies in Popular Culture, Jennifer Courtney and Gabriel Wettach wrote that QVC’s innovation, as well as its biggest challenge, was to make its advertisements seem less like corporate directives and more like recommendations from friends or peers. “To create and maintain credibility with the audience,” they write, “QVC hosts must emphasize roles that convey authenticity, such as mother, beauty expert, or bargain hunter. . . . viewers must be able to trust or ‘relate to’ the host; invoking trusted personas creates a welcoming and reassuring environment.”
We are all living inside the world that QVC made, the commingling of identity and acquisition.
Twenty years later, this insight about the power of QVC hosts could be applied to far greater swaths of the consumer economy. Today’s Instagram influencers talk about how and when they use certain products in the same relatable way the hosts on QVC do. Shopping is integrated into most online and IRL experiences. We are asked to place things in context, imagine the lives we would have and the people we would be if we could only own the right items.
When I talk about QVC, people are baffled by my interest in it. To them, it seems like a relic, something whose relevance is shriveling up. On the contrary: We are all living inside the world that QVC made, the commingling of identity and acquisition. We occupy our homes like amnesiacs, trying to figure out who we are by looking around at what we own.
For me, QVC applies an unexpected salve to the wound it caused. I am too young for bladder-leak underwear or anti-crepe elbow cream; I have no lawn for ornaments or freezer space for a four-pound bag of pot stickers. Like most people my age, conditioned to view themselves from a distance, I have spent a lot of time curating my life: my physical space, my wardrobe, my media diet. All my algorithms are tuned to perfection. In other words, I spend so much time within a prison of my own preferences that it has become a relief to be offered things I would never want.
To talk about what QVC is does very little to illustrate the experience of watching QVC, which is altogether more difficult to pin down. The sets are vividly lit, the people arranged like pints of ice cream in an illuminated freezer. For as long as I’ve been watching, the main set has been dressed with a bright yellow couch, glossy gray-brown laminate floors, and faux windows that look out onto a digital lawn. The artifice of the environment is in charming tension with flickers of helpless realism: a rep from Roberta’s Unique Gardens who struggles to lift a planter full of SunPatiens; a host whose Barefoot Dreams cardigan keeps rubbing against her mic. There is a hallucinatory quality to it: The brightness is the same at 8 in the morning and 11 at night. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to when they present certain products, whether they’re selling perennial plants or seasonal decorations or Beekman 1802’s goat milk skin care. (The reps from Beekman often bring a flock of real baby goats with them.) But there is also a groundedness, a kind of ruthless maternal practicality: Faroe Islands salmon is full of Omega-3s, which reduce triglycerides, crucial as we approach middle age. Elastic-waist pants are a godsend if you fluctuate sizes.
The presentations follow predictable, elliptical patterns; they are designed to be half-watched, for viewers who are flipping channels, or maybe falling asleep. The hosts repeat themselves—they must—revisiting colors, sizes, quantities, and prices every couple of minutes, the repetition contained within the steady stream of good-natured patter. The consistency of this patter is remarkable; to be able to just keep talking, no matter how boring the topic or useless the product, can be downright impressive to watch. A host might say all of these things and more during the course of an hour-long presentation on espadrille sandals: The weather is getting warmer, those outdoor barbecues are around the corner, days are getting longer, patio dining is here, summer is showing its face, it’s iced coffee season, it’s frozen margarita season, it’s baseball season, the weather is warming up. Sometimes it devolves into silliness. “Belts are really trending right now,” said designer Susan Graver on QVC3 the other morning. “Oh, I love to put one on.”
At first, we entered this world like anthropologists, observing the bizarre habits of the native species. But we soon became attached to its familiar rhythms. Lizzie developed a habit of turning it on in the morning and keeping it on in the background through a day of working from home or cleaning the house, and this routine lingered long after the acute phase of the pandemic began to wane. Certain things about our lives had changed for good. Never again would we go into the office five days a week, and never again would a day pass without the ambient, almost meditative thrum of QVC—not exactly white noise, but maybe ecru, or eggshell.
In other homes, in other cities, we learned, other women were doing the same thing. Longtime QVC customer Arlyn David—a 62-year-old resident of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania—told Main Line Today in 2021: “If I’m home, I have it on.”
All my algorithms are tuned to perfection. In other words, I spend so much time within a prison of my own preferences that it has become a relief to be offered things I would never want.
QVC pioneered a new type of television programming, shopping and entertainment churned together in one comfortable swirl. But the entertainment is of a specific type: It provides something that Lizzie and I sometimes call “The Voices.” The Voices could come from a podcast, or from scrolling on TikTok; the point is that they give a restless mind something to do between bouts of more concentrated thought, like psychological chewing gum.
I have spent the last few years learning about how my generation’s attention spans have been torched by social media and smartphones and how our minds now require constant stimulation in order to function. But Arlyn David and her ilk are proof that the desire for The Voices predates millennial dopamine addiction by decades at least. What does the everpresence of QVC do for them?
Whenever I ponder this, I think of the house I grew up in, set back into trees at the end of a cul-de-sac, in an American suburb that thundered with silence. Perhaps The Voices answer a deeper, more basic human desire: the urge to fill a quiet house with conversation, no matter how inane.
Like friendship, QVC has its own vernacular, formed over years and opaque to outsiders. For example: Weighty, substantial fabrics are sometimes referred to by hosts as “beefy.” Host Leah Williams was, by her own account, the first person to use this term. Then QVC stalwart Isaac Mizrahi borrowed it, and then his reps started using it when they went on for their presentations, spreading it back to the hosts. So everyone calls things “beefy” now, usually crepe pants or wool-acrylic blend sweaters. Another one: Cotton has “a dry hand.” This means that when you run your hand over the fabric, it feels dry to the touch, not slick and smooth like a synthetic blend. Fabrics that have a dry hand are cooler and less clingy on the body.
The colors on QVC have beautiful and evocative names, like Butter Rum, Flame, Celebration Pink, Nantucket Blue. Sometimes, when color names are too highfalutin, conflict occurs. The brand rep from the QVC brand Denim & Co. is always going at it with host Amy Stran over this. “This one is called Heather,” he’ll say, and Amy will rush in to offer an alternative: “But it’s really not gray at all, more like a beautiful smoky purple, a lavender.” Then, next time they go through colors, she’ll say, “This one is called Heather, but remember, think lavender.” Amy is very serious about colors. It really pisses her off when brands call black “onyx” or gray “silver.” She probably assumes it will confuse the customers. She is probably right. Whenever these tiffs would happen, Lizzie and I would lean forward over our knees, eager to see the two of them go at it.
If you watch enough, you start to notice these tensions; you become a scholar of them. Lizzie and I are fandom members of the country’s longest-running reality show. The faces of the hosts unfurl themselves under our unrelenting gaze, revealing an ill-advised spray tan, an early pregnancy, plastic surgery, dead teeth. QVC has deepened the language we share with each other, created a shared set of references, in the same way that going to college together did, or the time when we were both AMC A-Listers. It has become more than brainless viewing. It is a hobby.
We have the festering snobbishness of transplants. New York City is our home, but our impossible aspiration is to have never lived anywhere else.
There is even a subreddit dedicated to making fun of QVC personalities and their quirks: r/QVC_Snark. It is a community of insiders. The Redditors attack with the vicious specificity that only intimacy can produce. “Why is her head a literal box?” asks a recent poster, sharing a photo they took of host Courtney Khondabi on their TV screen. Or, of host Rick Domeier: “Rick has been wearing the same jeans for weeks now!” They make fun of the prices, usually during the food presentations ($100 hot dogs, $11 per 6 oz. piece of salmon) and the clothing segments (LOGO by Lori Goldstein is a popular punching bag: “All this needs is some lace and a ‘wide load’ banner across the ass”).
During the three years we lived together, Lizzie and I spent countless evenings performing QVC-themed comedy routines for an audience of one, doing spittakes with our wine, high on the feeling of being clever and understood. But we only discovered r/QVC_Snark later, after we were living on opposite sides of Manhattan. All this time, here were our people! One night I sent her a series of posts I collected during a lurking session, wishing I could see her reaction. After a few seconds, she responded: “Nothing but you has made me laugh this hard since I was a kid.”
Redditors will be Redditors, but look, we are all supposed to be in this together. The hosts and reps are wives and mothers too (or the gay best friends of wives and mothers, or at least the closeted neighbor of wives and mothers). They are wearing the sweaters, using the hand cream, planting the perennials, or at least, they say they are. Part of QVC’s structure—a crucial part, in some readings—is the connection between hosts and viewers, not theoretical, but literal. Almost every live broadcast has a call-in element that allows viewers to speak on-air to their favorite hosts, to ask questions about the product, or, more frequently, praise it and announce their intention to buy more.
“Speaking with a host is, for many callers, a meaningful, seemingly priceless exchange,” write Courtney and Wettach. “Callers frequently divulge personal information, telling the host about illnesses, financial status, and family matters.”
It’s true; I have seen it. A recent caller told QVC personality Kim Gravel, in a voice thick with tears, that she had gotten used to “not feeling part of the world,” due to her weight, but that Kim’s clothing line had given her the confidence to participate in life. “That is your ministry,” said the caller.
I looked up. Ministry! It was such an extreme word, and even odder applied to Kim Gravel. (Boisterous! Brassy! The onetime host of a Lifetime reality show called Kim of Queens where she ruthlessly prepared young girls for beauty pageants!) The longer I thought about it, the more I found myself relenting. Anyone who denies the therapeutic value of clothes that fit has never had the experience of not being able to find them.
This is, perhaps, at the heart of my ambivalence toward QVC, or more accurately, my inability to see my engagement with it as pure ridicule or even a hate-watch. Every so often, I am startled with a reminder of who else is out there watching. Skechers presents a pair of sandals with hands-free slip-on technology, so that you don’t have to bend over to put them on. On the Over 50 & Fabulous program, the women from Breezies sell underwear designed to withstand hot flashes and bladder leaks. Where else can these items be reliably purchased, or so frankly and cheerfully discussed?
Onscreen, listening to the caller’s praise, Kim was nodding. She was clearly touched, or at least, she looked like it.
I sometimes imagine the person I would be if I took them all up on it. If, one day, a tower of packages arrived on my doorstep, containing Women With Control stretch denim, IHKWIP quilted tote bags, Clarks Cloudsteppers shoes, and silicon Cool Grippers pot-holder tongs. How would my life be arranged around these items? I imagine I would measure out the years in landscaping projects. My afternoons would be taken up by long car journeys, ferrying children to softball tournaments or play rehearsals, going to the grocery store and the nail salon.
I know women like this; I grew up with them. So did Lizzie. We have the festering snobbishness of transplants. New York City is our home, but our impossible aspiration is to have never lived anywhere else. We turn up our noses at the strip malls of our youth, and share our faltering moments only with each other: the secret joy of a Target where deodorant isn’t locked behind plexiglass, the frustrated desire to place groceries in the trunk of a car, the fizzy hedonism of a 44-ounce Diet Coke from a fountain. This, too, unites us: our aborted suburban futures, the secret panic that they may have only been deferred. Do we watch QVC to indulge these sublimated cravings for peace and comfort, taking furtive bites of soccer-momdom to keep us going when the subway is delayed and the rent is due? Or do we watch it to set ourselves apart, to reassure ourselves that we will never give in?
What happened within me when I cringed at the caller on the Kim Gravel broadcast? Why was my initial instinct an abstracted pity? Do I think I will never get there—never find a source of unexpected divinity, never be moved to tears by something ridiculous, that the material conditions of my life will never become more complex or more banal? Do I think I will never grow old?
It’s not true that QVC has nothing to offer me. I order my mascara from there, almost exclusively, three tubes for $40 when a single tube of the same mascara at Sephora is $28. Lizzie and I went halfsies on a MacKenzie-Childs teakettle (in the limited-edition Tattoo design) that we gave to a friend for her birthday. They have great prices on Dyson products. And some of the purses are cute.
We do not call in, of course. We order online, like we do everything else.
In April 2026, the QVC Group (which operates the three QVC channels as well as HSN, the Home Shopping Network) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, announcing that the company would be significantly restructured in an effort to reduce its debt (a process which included increasing CEO David Rawlinson II’s total compensation by 70% as they braced for impact). The shopping channels, they insist, will proceed as usual. Despite layoffs of over 900 employees in March 2025, the company says there are no plans for further cuts, and there will be no disruption to the flow of content upon which my fellow QVC-nuts and I have come to rely.
Still, there is danger on the horizon. Change is coming, and has been for a while. The 2000s have not been kind to the networks. There have been lawsuits: In 2000, the Federal Trade Commission barred QVC from making unverified claims about weight-loss products, such as the claim that Lite Bites items like granola bars and shakes enable customers to lose up to 125 pounds, and that Lipofactor Cellulite Target Lotion “causes measurable inch loss from users’ arms, thighs, and abdomens, without the need for a restricted calorie diet or increased exercise.” QVC violated the order, and the government sued in 2004. In 2024, QVC recalled 1.1 million pairs of Temp-tations oven gloves after customers reported burns caused by insufficient heat protection. The 2025 layoffs were preceded by staff reductions in 2023, and in 2020 during the pandemic, when the network also eliminated live programming on QVC2. Something has got to give.
Wouldn’t it be better for QVC to die with dignity, rather than contort itself to chase audiences it will surely never get?
The rumor on Reddit, at least, is that QVC will continue to invest in its social media platforms, working with fresh-faced TikTok creators while their seasoned hosts languish on cable, tailoring their product pitches to a richer, more sophisticated audience. The transformation has already begun. You can see it in the jewelry presentations (5-stone diamond eternity bands for $8,500), the beauty products (10-pouch boxes of ELEMIS Cellutox Herbal Bath Synergy bath salts for $262), and even the food (lobster tails, filet mignon tips, or 3 lb. of shrimp cocktail for $133). Hosts now talk about the lack of “chemicals” in their bagels, or the importance of building “hair health” with Dyson blow dryers.
Will this work? It seems unlikely. Lizzie and I are the only people we know who watch QVC, let alone shop there. When I brought up the topic to a group of women my age, half of them had never even heard of it. Wouldn’t it be better for QVC to die with dignity, rather than contort itself to chase audiences it will surely never get?
It turns out I am tender. I do not want QVC to change. There has been too much change already. A couple of years ago, I moved out of the apartment with the pink couch and into a place 13 blocks uptown, with a man who became my husband. Lizzie found a rent-stabilized one-bedroom on the other side of the park. I went back to school and made new friends; Lizzie started spending more time in London with her sister. For the first few months in my new home, I tried to watch QVC, but it made me sad: The Voices were still there, but the only voice I wanted to hear was a 30-minute subway ride away.
We reached that inflection point, that warped and curved surface upon which women friendships sometimes teeter. We are at the age where everything gets ruined. Still, we talk all day long, an unending commentary on whatever is in front of us. Our enduring closeness is an anachronism, but a beautiful one. We should not still be here, the way we are, but we are.
I suppose it’s a lesson: Whatever will come will come. For now, it’s August, and Christmas, and there is still so much to do. The flameless candles have sold out in Beige. The man from Bethlehem Lights is here to present his pre-lit trees, stately faux spruces twinkling with proprietary Color Prism illumination technology, 81 color and light combinations, the best time to purchase is now. Why limit this glittering joy to the festive season? Many customers keep their Bethlehem Lights boughs decked all year long: red or orange lights for Harvest Time; red, white, and blue for the Fourth of July.
But you have to act soon. At the end of the broadcast, the eight-and-a-half-foot tree (“their most popular height,” according to the rep) will double in price. Under the bright overhead lights, in their living-room diorama, the people onscreen peer out at me, concern on their made-up faces.
They are worried, but they can’t seem too worried; they want me to pick up the phone, but not panic. This is the beauty of it—of all of it, in fact; this not-urgent urgency, this solvable problem. This is why we watch. The deals are going away, but there is no such thing as an ending. Tomorrow it will be Christmas again.
Hannah Engler Harvey holds an MA in journalism from New York University. Her work has appeared in Longreads, Evergreen Review, Talk Vomit, among other places. She lives in Manhattan.
Editor and fact-checker: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Copyeditor: Krista Stevens
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