Liberty Interactive Is Now Qurate Retail Group

Liberty Interactive Corp. today announced that it will rename itself Qurate Retail Group. Liberty Interactive will begin using this new name once the company completes the split-off of GCI Liberty following the previously announced acquisition of GCI Liberty Inc. (formerly General Communication).

The company also announced that Mike George, currently CEO of QVC Inc., will become president-CEO of Qurate Retail Group. Greg Maffei, who currently holds that position, will become chairman.

Qurate Retail Group will comprise eight retail brands — QVC, HSN, Zulily, Ballard Designs, Frontgate, Garnet Hill, Grandin Road and Improvements — all dedicated to providing a “third way to shop”’ beyond transactional ecommerce or traditional brick-and-mortar stores.

The company says that globally, Qurate Retail Group “will be No. 1 in video commerce, reaching approximately 370 million homes worldwide via 16 television networks and multiple ecommerce sites, social pages, mobile apps, print catalogs, and in-store destinations, and will be No. 3 in ecommerce in North America and No. 3 in mobile commerce in the US.”

“Qurate Retail Group will be a new venture in more ways than just a change of name,” said Maffei. “We will be a select group of like-minded businesses that provide customers with curated collections of unique products, made personal and relevant by the power of storytelling, combining the best of retail, media and social.” 

The rebrand will be the culmination of a multi-year evolution for QVC Group. Each of the eight businesses of Qurate Retail Group will maintain its distinct consumer brand, logo and shopping experience in the new organization. HSN was the original TV shopping channel, followed by QVC. The two brands defined live video commerce, while each leveraged its video expertise to expand into ecommerce, mobile commerce and social commerce.

Meanwhile, Zulily launched and grew its unique, highly personalized ecommerce platform, and the Cornerstone Brands introduced and expanded its interactive lifestyle brands.

In October 2015, Liberty Interactive acquired Zulily, and in December 2017, Liberty Interactive acquired full ownership of HSN Inc., which included the Cornerstone Brands.

As Qurate Retail Group, the combined organization will serve 23 million customers worldwide and will have 27,000 team members in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Poland and China. In 2017, Qurate Retail Group generated pro-forma revenue of $14 billion. 

To accelerate innovation, Qurate Retail Group includes a New Ventures team, focused on developing inventive retail concepts and looking beyond the organization’s current business for additional growth opportunities. This team is led by Darrell Cavens, the co-founder of Zulily.

Qurate Retail Group will trade under new tickers (NASDAQ: QRTEA, QRTEB) and will include the businesses and assets currently attributed to QVC Group tracking stock (NASDAQ: QVCA, QVCB), including QVC, Inc., HSN, Inc. (which includes Cornerstone Brands), and zulily, LLC, which are currently wholly owned subsidiaries of Liberty Interactive, and several smaller investments.