Q Talk

[Caffeina]

According to a conference call transcript on The Motley Fool site, the reason for the crossovers is to help them be more competitive with other retailers.

This is from one of Mike George's comments:

"I would say that as we're thinking about the cross-brand strategy, we're trying to be very thoughtful about exactly that question and still preserve exclusivity within QVC and within HSN. So when we look at the crossover brands we're sharing, and a number of the examples I used, like Keurig, we're really looking at sharing major national brands where customers do expect to find those brands in a number of retailers. So historically we might have had let's say an exclusive agreement at QVC where that brand could not be available at HSN. Now we can open that up and make these brands available at both QVC and HSN. HSN has similar agreements with their brands that we can now open up as well.

That relates to national brands. We would still then try, even within those national brands, to have an offer at QVC at a certain point in time that is a unique offer that only QVC has, and a different kind of offer or configuration at HSN that is unique to HSN. Then on the proprietary brand side, where we have full exclusivity and you don't find those brands at other retailers, in general we're actually still trying to keep those constrained to either QVC or HSN. So, for example, thinking about very successful proprietary brands at Q like Isaac Mizrahi. At this point, our plan would not be to have that brand available at HSN.

"On the flip side, we're using the same team that helps create our proprietary brands and source those brands to source new proprietary brands for HSN that again can be exclusive to H. So long way of saying we think exclusivity matters. We still think exclusivity within Q and H matters so that we're giving customers more choice. Then where we'll get the crossover benefit are these really meganational brands where we're more competing against a number of other retailers, and we can consolidate and extend our share capture."

[Daysdee]

I don't like the crossover of products, vendors/hosts, etc.  My opinion won't make a difference, but it has made a big difference on how much I watch both channels (a lot less) and how much I buy from both channels (a lot less).