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Prime-time exposure

QVC appearance can give a small business like Colorado Springs' Finger Gloves its big break

Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 4, 2006 at midnight

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What does a shot at airtime on QVC mean for a budding entrepreneur?

For Colorado Springs-based Finger Gloves, an eight-minute appearance translated into the equivalent of three months' sales.

"My mouth just dropped when the host told me we'd sold our entire order," said Carmel Stover, recalling her first QVC appearance in August 2005 to promote Finger Gloves. The rubber sheaths protect fingers from hot glue guns, paper cuts and other traumas.

QVC each year conducts several nationwide searches to find innovations to add to its lineup of more than 58,000 products. Among its successes are Junior's Cheesecakes, Old Virginia Candle Co. and Chesapeake Bay Crab Cakes & More, whose sales quadrupled after its first appearance on QVC in 1995.

"It really has changed our lives," said Ron Kauffman, who runs the Baltimore-based company with his wife, Margie. "Someone like us could've never afforded to buy that kind of exposure."

The couple has appeared on QVC hundreds of times since their first studio appearance, and nearly 75 percent of the company's sales are through the network.

Stover came up with the idea of Finger Gloves about five years ago after repeatedly burning herself with a hot glue gun while reupholstering furniture. She and her husband, Andrew, run the business out of their home, selling packages of 12 gloves for $5.99 primarily through craft stores, trade shows and a Web site.

The longtime QVC fan first tried to make it onto the network in 2004 at a product search in Las Vegas. But on her second try, QVC selected Finger Gloves as one of 100 products to showcase during its "Decade of Discoveries" road show.

The network asked Stover back again in May, when she sold out her 2,400 order during her show and saw her Web site orders spike afterward. The particularly good thing about the exposure on QVC, Stover said, was it helped her break out beyond her usual arts and crafts channels to sell her product to "plumbers, bowlers . . . anyone who might need finger protection."

QVC's product mix is equally divided among the network's own private label brands, national merchants and products from small businesses such as Finger Gloves. QVC said it has no plans to pare its product searches as it adds more upscale national brands such as designer Dana Buchman and Dooney & Bourke handbags.

"The QVC door remains wide open to small business," said Bob Ayd, QVC's chief merchandising officer.

Want to be on QVC?

• Companies interested in getting their product on QVC should visit . Keep in mind that QVC looks for products that shine on TV, solve a problem or make life easier, and cost more than $15.

The product must be professionally packaged, and retailers must deliver at least $20,000 worth of their product to QVC before the first segment.