Eden Prairie cable shopping retailer Evine Live Inc. on Wednesday will begin doing business under the new corporate banner of iMedia Brands Inc., and its shares will be traded under a new ticker of IMBI on a lower-tier marketplace composed of smaller public companies.
It's official: ShopHQ is in, Evine is out as retailer rebrands again
The Eden Prairie TV shopping network will resurrect its former name.
July 17, 2019 at 12:15AM
Television viewers will see the most obvious change, with the return of the name ShopHQ, which the company used between 2013 and 2015. Before that it was known as ShopNBC and ValueVision.
The rebranding coincides with the arrival of new Chief Executive Tim Peterman and a fresh infusion of $6 million in cash from the company's largest vendor, the Invicta Watch Group.
As part of the effort, hallways and meeting spaces at corporate headquarters are getting a fresh coat of paint.
But the company remains in the grip of a difficult turnaround, as Peterman and Invicta's Eyal Lalo try to return it to profitability. The retailer is in third place behind QVC and HSN in the home shopping market, and reported a worse-than-expected loss of $21 million, or 31 cents a share, in the first quarter.
Peterman, the company's former chief financial officer who was less than a month into the top job, responded by laying off 20% of Evine's workforce, including 11 C-suite executives.
The company's stock has been trading below $1 for so long that it was set to be delisted from Nasdaq's Global Market on Monday.
The name change and relisting buys the retailer another 180-day grace period from the Nasdaq, but it must hit the $1 required minimum for at least 10 consecutive business days during the next six months or face another delisting.
Shares closed at 43 cents on Tuesday, essentially flat.
The company will transfer shares and relist on the Capital Market exchange, a Nasdaq marketplace of small-caps with less-stringent listing requirements than the current mid-cap Global Market.
The new name of iMedia Brands Inc. aims to better reflect the company's strategy to expand into additional niche television markets and business-to-business services, Peterman said.
In addition to ShopHQ — which sells beauty products, jewelry, apparel, electronics and other home and lifestyle products — iMedia plans to launch a Spanish-speaking shopping channel called LaVenta Shopping Network and the Bulldog Shopping Network focused on merchandise for men.
Peterman said the decision to revert to the ShopHQ name was based on feedback from customers, who found the Evine name confusing.
"ShopHQ is a far more intuitive name," he told the Star Tribune. "It also allows us to market to it. When we were marketing to Evine, whether on a billboard or on TV, people wouldn't know if Evine was an entertainment network or a shopping network. With ShopHQ, you instantly know what it is."
Jackie Crosby • 612-673-7335 Twitter: @JackieCrosby
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