David Rawlinson walks onto a well-lit QVC home shopping set adorned with pink and white prop flowers and modeled to look like a suburban Southern sunroom. Fake French doors open up onto a screen-printed image of a brick mansion and hedgerows. He’s camera-ready for a photo shoot in a navy suit sans tie or button-down, a matching sweater, and laceless leather Axel Arigato sneakers, and he flashes the unwavering smile of a TV host. But he’s not one of the famed shopping channel’s on-air personalities. He’s the CEO of its struggling parent company, Qurate Retail, Inc.
Rawlinson’s sunny disposition comes with a steely resolve. He was brought in to turn around the purveyor of infomercials that were once a staple of cable TV—no easy feat in the age of streamers and social video. I ask him, what does it take to execute a corporate rescue mission of this scale?
