Marketplace - QVC wants to be the next TikTok Shop

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

QVC, which pioneered live TV shopping shows, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. Leadership made the next step clear: a pivot away from television and toward something akin to social commerce, like livestreamed sales on TikTok Shop. But can the legacy brand compete with new, social media-driven shopping platforms? And after that, we wrap up Kai and Nela’s trip to Vietnam with visits to an AI startup and a neighborhood of expats.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Okay, everything is good now, economy-wise, right? From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle, Rizdahl. It is Friday. Today, this one is the 17th of April. It is always to have you along, everybody. Okay, so look, everything is clearly not fine economy-wise. One might even say it's going to be a while before we get back up to fine economy-wise.

we're going to spend the next seven and a half minutes on this program testing that premise. Kate Davidson's at Bloomberg. Anna Swanson is at the New York Times. Hey, you two. Hey, Kate. Kate, you get to go first. There is a truce in various stages of being denied or reinforced by either one of the parties. And we obviously hope it holds.

We are, though, a long way from normal. And I would like you to just expound on that for a little bit. Sure. So obviously the news from today on the Strait of Hormuz reopening and the potential for a peace deal is undoubtedly really good news. I mean, we're seeing markets just surge on this news. Of course, there's not a lot of nuance sometimes in the way that investors react. They're reacting. It's a big sigh of relief, right? But ultimately, as you said, it's just going to take time for things to normalize. We heard from a lot of different finance ministers who were in Washington. this week for meetings of the IMF and World Bank, talking about how even if the war were to cease immediately and everybody shakes hands, and it will take weeks, if not months, before normal operations resume.

You know, you need to get tankers back to the straight. And it looks like from reports that we're seeing that people are already scrambling on this news, but it just takes time logistically to get things back to where they were. So we saw this big impact on prices. that's easing somewhat. But it's going to take weeks and maybe months for all the kinks to work out. Anna Swanson, if you are running a shipping company and you're worried about, first of all, the

physical threat, but also insurance and logistics, what is your risk tolerance at this point? You've been cooped up in the Gulf for 45 days, whatever it is, you know, what are you thinking about? Yeah, I think it depends on the situation. So there are ships that have been stuck in the sense. and I think those could probably move through quickly if conditions start to open up. But, you know, for other ships, there's still a lot of uncertainty about this truth and it was formed quickly. You know, it seems like it could quickly crumble. There are some inconsistencies. The president had said, for example, that the U.S. blockade will remain in place until negotiations are complete.

Iran has said that it opposed the blockade, may take countermeasures against it. also I understand the route that's open runs close to the Iranian coastline, whereas most of it, you know, the main lanes that were used before still have mines in them and Iran is not necessarily able to locate all of those mines. So, you know, really still significant problems for the shipping industry. Things can get better, but as Kate said, most likely it'll take, you know, a matter of weeks, not days. And it will probably still be more expensive to ensure those ships. There will be less traffic, less supply, which, still means somewhat higher prices at least. Right. And things will be just congested kind of globally. Kate, the Federal Reserve meets in about 10 days. They have said the governors who have been speaking and the regional Fed presidents that they're going to try to look through this energy shock. My question is, how are they going to do that with any sense of what's on the other side?

Because as you pointed out a couple of minutes ago, we're weeks, if not months from normal. Right. Well, I think it's interesting that in the past few days, I mean, you have heard more sort of cautionary, more of a cautionary tone from some of them. New York Fed President John Williams yesterday said that it makes sense that the Fed isn't giving a lot of guidance on where rates are headed. You know, the Fed always responds slowly to these kinds of things. If markets are immediately doing a U-turn today, the Fed is like the opposite. They want to wait. They want to really see if this is going to last. They want to see how it all. all shakes out. But they're really worried what we heard from Fed Governor Chris Waller. They seem to be much more concerned about the possibility that the higher prices,

higher energy prices could feed through to other areas. And we even maybe have seen a little bit of that. And the worry is that that leads to something more persistent. And then it starts to affect and shape the way people perceive inflation, the way that they, you know, the direction that they think it's headed.

And that's what they pay really close attention to because that could that could fuel more, you know, increasing price pressure. So I think that they're not going to make any, they're not going to make any sudden moves. And they may look through the shock if things start to improve quickly. But I think it will be a while before they'll feel comfortable cutting rates again, unless something, you know, weakens materially, say, with the labor market that they feel like they have to respond on to sooner. Anna Swanson, I want to get you to trade your sort of stock and trade, if you will, at the New York Times.

recently. Refunds for tariffs may be coming next week. And I guess my question really is how, I'm assuming it's going to be messy. My question to you, the expert, is how messy is it going to be? Yeah, I agree. It's going to be pretty messy. So the government portal opens Monday. So we'll actually see the first refunds kind of start to move through the system soon. But everybody I talk to is expecting it to be a long process. You know, there's over $100 billion at stake here to be returned. There's a lot of complexity to the different entries. I was talking with some companies over the last couple of days about their expectations,

their difficulties. A lot of them are looking forward to getting that money back, but they've just found the system really won'ty so far. There are a variety of fees they've paid that, you know, won't be refunded. And they're saying it's really just hard for businesses to, plan, not knowing when they could get this money back. You know, paying it was a surprise. Getting it returned is also a surprise. And then, of course, there are more tariffs on the way that the president is using to replace these levies, you know, coming this summer. So, yeah, I don't expect

this story to be over anytime soon, unfortunately, for the businesses. Honor, really quickly, just on that last word, businesses, these are refunds that would be going to businesses, not you, me, and, you know, your neighbor down the street. That's true, except in some cases you may have gotten a bill for a tariff if you were importing something directly. I've gotten a lot of emails about that, like my sweater. But yeah, no, typically it's businesses. There is a lot of uncertainty about how this kind of shakes out through the supply chain. So if somebody imported a product and then they paid the tariff and they passed that tariff on to a customer,

you know, whether that's another business or a person, you know, are you going to get, are they going to get any of that tariff back? And I do think we could see kind of a proliferation of contract disputes between different companies as they try to vie for some of that money. Right. Kate Davidson, real quick, if we've still gone down the line, I know your sound has been a little splotchy. 45 seconds on this next answer, if you are still there. The United States has mostly, except for some high, energy prices, been okay through this war economically. Europe and Asia, not so. Talk to me about that breakdown and what you think it bodes for the global economy. Sure. Well, talking again about just this gathering of finance ministers this week, I think there

was a definite sense of frustration among the ministers there that the U.S. is not really engaging all that much, is not playing the leadership role that it typically would have and some comments to the effect of, you know, the president of, Donald Trump is not really taking the rest of the world, the impact on the rest of the world into account. So I do think there's some frustration there. I think that we saw Secretary Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary kind of attending these one-on-one meetings,

but not really leading these, looking to form some kind of consensus or understanding about where this is all headed. So I'm not sure that that's a huge change. It's a change, perhaps, at the IMF and World Bank forums, but kind of fits with what we've been seeing, you know, with just phrase, freight relations with allies and other countries around the world.

We would all like some clarity on where this is ongoing. Kate Davidson and Bloomberg, Anna Swanson at the New York Times, on a Friday afternoon. Thanks, you too. Thanks so much. Have a nice weekend. On Wall Street today, we talked about it just a little bit. Kate did.

There was some exuberance in the capital and commodities markets today. I will let you decide whether it was irrational or not. Yes, that was an Ellen Greenspan joke. Details numbers when we get there. Here is a story about old media, social media, and the shopping habits of the mighty American consumer. After 40-some-odd years of broadcasting retail commerce straight into people's living rooms, QVC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The owner of HSN, once upon a time, called the Home Shopping Network,

says it is going to keep operating while it's in bankruptcy court and that it hopes to get out of bankruptcy protection soon. The plan seems to be to use the time to go all in on live social shopping. dropping near real-time retail on social media and streaming and e-commerce sites. Marketplaces Kristen Schwab has more. QVC is sort of the original player in real-time retail, and it's still selling. Here's one segment from its broadcast today. Oh, we have another brand new today. Oh, Crystal.

Oh, my gosh. Don't you love this? Crystal is posing in a staged living room wearing a bright yellow track suit, and the content isn't so different from what you might find on TikTok, the leading social shopping destination by sales. Kim Kardashian was on the platform selling her skims brand back in December. At its peak, 30,000 people tuned in. Do you guys notice my outfit change?

Yes, it's wild. Look at the back. Oh, my gosh. On the TikTok shop. Live social shopping is kind of like QVC on steroids. Sky Canavis, a retail and e-commerce analyst at e-marketer, says sales flash on the screen, brands drop limited edition merchandise, It tends to be very interactive because the audience can ask questions, make requests, and there

tend to be elements of FOMO to it. It's a bit more in the moment, and there's less friction to buy. Shoppers can click on links in TikTok and check out directly on the platform, and people are engaged. Canavis expects TikTok shop sales to hit $23 billion in 2026. This year, TikTok shop will actually generate more online sales than Target. A pretty impressive stat, considering the shopping feature, was only introduced on TikTok a couple years ago. Katie Hansen, a retail and e-commerce analyst at Mintel, says the products that sell best on social tend to be more affordable goods. What I would call low-risk products, so, you know, maybe a piece of clothing or maybe even like food and drink, something that you're kind of doing one-off. and it doesn't require as much investment.

But in general, Hansen doesn't expect social shopping to dominate retail the way it does in Asia. Social commerce in the U.S. is more about discovering new products than brands. It's part of the overall strategy. So it's all working together is this, you know, seamless, omni-channel way that consumers are shopping. On social media, online through a website, and in person. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Coming up. This is a very hip area.

That's the word I was saying. Yeah, you can kind of tell. Very hip. Hip and high tech in Hocci Minh City. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's up 868. Today, 1.8.10%, 49,000, 447. The Aztec gained 365 points, 1.5%.

24,468. The S&P 500 rose 84 points. 1.2% 71 and 26. For the five days gone by, the Dowell, up 3.2%. The NASDAQ bounded up 6.8%. S&P 500 added about 4.5%. With ceasefires and truces and whatnot appearing to hold, for now is the important qualifier. The price of Brent crude down 9% to a $90 a barrel. That is still 20 more than before the war. WTI, West Texas Intermediate, closed at $82 for one barrel.

How many gallons in a barrel, by the way? 42 in case you were curious. bond prices rose yield on the 10-year T-note fell 4.24% you're listening to Marketplace. If you're a business leader, Intuit QuickBooks Payroll is an essential tool that completely integrates payroll, time tracking, HR, and your financials in a powerful all-in-one command center. No more juggling platforms or switching between vendors. All your data synced into one platform offering clarity and confidence to make smarter decisions and focus on what matters. This summer, QuickBooks Payroll evolves to support the entire team life cycle, HR, time, benefits, and payroll all working together in one connected system that fully integrates with your books. You'll be able to onboard employees in one seamless flow that feeds directly into payroll, configure automated HR workflows for things like promotions or offboarding, and track performance, time off, and benefits alongside payroll. Upgrade your workflow with QuickBooks Payroll today, and get ready for.

for the brand new tools coming soon. More at quickbooks.com slash workforce. That's quickbooks.com slash workforce. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. Neela Richardson and I are wrapping up our reporting today from Vietnam. It's for our series, The Age of Work.

By way of quick reminder, Vietnam's got about two working-aged adults for every person there who's under 15 or older than 65. A demographic sweet spot, Nila calls it, a young, increasingly tech-savvy labor force that can pay huge economic dividends for Vietnam and for companies doing business there, which is, in a roundabout kind of way, how we wound up talking to this guy. So I'm a country director for Tiny Fish. Huyvo works for a company called Tiny Fish AI. I talked to the CEO of Tiny Fish in their offices in Silicon Valley a couple of months ago.

It's one of thousands of AI startups that are competing for highly skilled software engineers right now. At last year, they opened an office here. This is our core office space. Co-working space. We're like reworkish. All right. Okay. We was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, but spent 24 years living in the United States. He got a PhD in computing and worked as a professor in New York City. And then I always wanted to come back home, but I was also skeptical about the opportunity here in the city. And then I spent one years of subparacal here, and that really changed my mind. What did you see here three years ago

that made you up for your whole life and come back here? Of course, my parents are still here. Yes, of course. So there's that, right? But the thing is that I see now more, we're not just adopting technologies, but we also try to build it as well. So a lot of companies come to Vietnam, not to outsource the labor,

but actually to try to develop the core infrastructure and core technology in AI. We was the first hire that Tiny Fish made in Vietnam, and now he's building a team here. When I look around your office here, it looks like any startup office in the Bay Area. We stepped into a breakout room, 10 or so engineers working on computers. Hello, guys. Hi, how are you?

Hi, everybody. Sorry to bother you. Can we take two minutes and just ask a couple of questions? They somewhat reluctantly tore their eyes from their screens. For how many of you, is this your first job? Raise your hand. A couple of hands went up. When you guys think about technology and Vietnam, what do you think of? Drew, you're going to boom her.

She's going to answer this question. Yeah, I think we're good because we have some big technology community here. We apply AI in many fields. And currently, I'm working in the AI too. Tell me what you're working on today. What are you doing? I think it's secret. Believe me when I tell you, I won't understand what I'm looking.

looking at. I did not. Can you walk into any tech company and name your price, or is it very competitive to get a job in the city in tech? I think it depends on its individual, but I think everyone's sit here is very competitive in the city. So it depends on your skill set. Yes, and my set as well. How many people are from Vietnam? Raise your hands. You're the outlier. Where are you from? Don't look like one, right? No, you don't. You sound, I don't know where you're from. I came here from UK.

Originally, I'm Russian, but I live in London. Ah, so you're visiting for a while. Yeah, yeah, this is my visiting trip. Okay. Roll with me on this one. You're a guy originally from Russia, living in the UK, sitting in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, talking to an American radio team about sort of the global economy.

Does that ever, I mean, do you think about that at all? This is my life. This is tech, right? Yeah, this is what we're doing here. As we talked about yesterday, the Vietnamese government wants companies like tiny fish here. The Ministry of Planning and Investment has set a goal of making Vietnam a leader in AI research. Invidia has an agreement with the government to build an R&D facility here. There are tax incentives for high-tech enterprises, there are investments in infrastructure,

and training programs to nurture young talent like the people who he is trying to hire. So we have a relationship with a university here. So hopefully the next few years, I hope to see the source from the local talents. This is so interesting because we were talking to a guy running a printing company earlier. And he said in essence the same thing about his workforce that you are saying about your workforce, that what you want to do is you want to establish a pipeline so that your workers can grow and so that they can go on and have, fundamentally, this was unsaid, but better lives. Yeah, I think I have this similar stack as him too.

So the things that, now, to have the raw talent, something organic growth from the cities, is something that we want to be in the long term, because that will ensure both the quality as well as that we contribute back to the country and the city. We started this series with the idea that having a large population of working age, people can make your country richer. That's what happened in the United States and Europe in the last century. And now it's happening in Vietnam. Nila and I made one more stop in Hocci, Min City. The only question is which bus am I going to step in front of this one? That's the bus I'm going to step in front of.

A bus is safer than a motorbike. Yep, bigger but moves slower. Exactly. Crossing the street is a whole thing here. You kind of have to just go. How about we walk on the sidewalk? Well, now that there is a sidewalk. The Tau-Dien neighborhood is right on the city's brand-new metro line. It opened in 2024, part of the government's infrastructure strategy that I was talking about. This is a very hip area. That's the word I was doing for.

Yeah, you can kind of tell. Very hip. Good amount of trees and shops with a decidedly international flair. There's Copenhagen Delights, oil bespoke. You know, children's clothes. Luxury Children's Club. As the Vietnamese economy has grown and become more global, like we saw happening at tiny fish, this area has become a destination for expats. You can get a churros, Argentinian steakhouse, El Gaucho.

New York bagel! And you can tell that the businesses here cater to a more affluent clientele. Ciao, chow. Gelado. Good gelato day, except it would melt too fast. Have I mentioned that it was hot? Neil and I stopped to talk in the shape. Neil Richardson, here we are. Hot, sweaty, five words or less.

What do you think of Hoechie Men City so far? It is eager, vibrant, lively, and dealing with the ticking demographic time clock. All right. We'll get to the ticking time clock in a minute. In the last couple of days, we've talked to a handfulish of people a little bit more. What has struck you? I think I'm going to start with the word I didn't use, urgency. Oh, yeah, I buy them.

You walk blocks and blocks, and all you see is vendors and commerce and merchants over and over and over again. And yet it is a city that knows it has to transition quickly from where its past was in labor-intensive industries to where the global economy is going. You mentioned past, present, and future. So the thing that has struck me this whole week, I was living and working in China 30 years. ago. And the parallels between Shanghai and Beijing of 30 years ago and Ho Chi Minh City of today are stunning. Both the physicality, right, of the slowly growing city center with modern glass buildings to you don't have to get too far out of town in Ho Chi Minh City. And it's very gritty, let's say, right? That's an exact parallel. In 30 years, we're going to come back

here and it's going to look like Shanghai and Beijing. Is it? Is it really? Because I see something a little bit different. All right. We started this conversation about a workforce that is at its peak in terms of the prime age worker. And every boss that we talked to. They're all about their talent. They're all about their people. That's great.

But then here's where the time clock gets in. Because people are so much a part of this value-ad, service-oriented, eager workforce. But they are also rapidly going to an aging economy. in Vietnam. So there is a window of time where they can tap into this workforce. Right now, that's why everybody's focused on this moment to maximize that future. And in fact, at least one or two of the people we talked to who said that, right? We have the moment now. Do you think they can do it? Do you think they're going to do it? Well, that's the thing. If it was only their own talent and their own value ad, then absolutely. But their market is not

Vietnam. Their market is the U.S., Europe, Japan and their supplier, by and large, is China. So their future depends on the global economy as much as it depends on the local workforce. Right. There's another thing that has to be said, and I don't know if this is going to hold in the month that's going to take this to get on the air, but they all also mentioned policy instability and geopolitical instability. So that's not nothing. It's not nothing, but it's not nothing we haven't heard before when we talk to U.S. business.

uncertainty has been the challenge. Right. Well, there's Hoccian City in a whirlwind. It has to be said. We're going someplace else eventually, but we get on a plane tomorrow. We'll see you back. I'm ready for a cold drink.

Our drink of choice, Vietnamese coffee. You should try it if you get a chance. This final note on the way out today. I missed this yesterday and all the news about Europe only having six weeks or so of jet fuel left. That's what the head of the International Energy Agency he said? Well, it turns out, and this is very relevant to our mutual economic interests, he also said today that it's going to take two, count them two years, to recover the energy

output from the Persian Gulf that has been lost over the past six weeks. Our theme music was composed by B.J. Learman. Our stories from Vietnam were produced by Maria Hollenhorst and Sean McHenry, Drew Jostad, and Charlton Thorpe did all of the engineering. Marketplace's executive producer in the brains behind our series, Age of Work is Nancy Fargolly. Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer. Neil Scarbrose, the vice president and general manager. And I'm Kyle, I'm Kyle.

Rizdahl. Have yourselves a great weekend. Everybody, we will see you back here on Monday, all right? This is APM. Headlines shift overnight, and then again in the afternoon and again in the evening. You see where I'm going with this. Hello, I'm David Brancaccio, a special correspondent for Marketplace, where we deliver economic news designed to keep you both sane and informed.

One of my favorite ways to make sense of it all is, with the Marketplace newsletter. Every weekday, our team curates must read stories from the week and delivers explainers right to your inbox. So if you want the latest for me and our team of award-winning journalists, head over to marketplace.org slash newsletters and sign up today.