Evine Live shares soared more than 40% in early trading Tuesday after technology website TechCrunch said the home shopping pioneer has been in early talks with Amazon.

Evine shares were trading as high as $1.17 each on Tuesday – up 36 cents each or 44% -- after the TechCrunch report, which said Amazon is interested in TV home shopping and has held early talks with Evine. The article, citing sources familiar with the company, added that other unnamed companies also have expressed interest in Evine. Around midday, the stock had fallen back a bit, priced at $1.9 each, up 28 cents or 35%.

Evine is the third largest home shopping channel, behind leaders QVC and HSN, Inc., which are now part of Qurate Retail Group. While Evine is a distant third – fourth quarter revenue was $193 million, compared to $2.8 billion for QVC and $771 million for HSN – the company is profitable (it posted Q4 net income of $6.4 million, its first profit since 2007) and is available in about 87 million homes.

Evine and Amazon officials both declined to comment on speculation.

According to TechCrunch, Amazon has been interested in the TV retail space for a while, but just for what purpose is unclear. The online retailer has made purchases in unusual areas before – it bought high-end grocery chain Whole Foods in June 2017 for $14 billion  – so an Evine purchase isn’t totally out of character.

Amazon had been said to be on the hunt for smaller cable channels last year, but so far no deal has come to light.

Evine had been a takeover target before. In November, Segel Vision, owner of shopping app Starshop, offered to buy the company in a deal that would have valued it at $175 million, a 105% premium, but pulled that offer a month later after being rebuffed by Evine’s board. 

Evine weathered a proxy battle in 2014 that resulted in new management and a new board of directors. The company, formerly known as ValueVision, changed its name to Evine Live in November of that year  and has undergone several management changes since.

Over the past few years, digital technology has profoundly changed the home-shopping business, which not only appears to be surviving but, in many ways, is thriving despite radical changes in consumer-buying habits.

QVC, HSN and Evine Live have embraced e-commerce, with sales from digital platforms soaring to roughly half of their revenue. In fact, QVC and HSN ranked Nos. 8 and 19, respectively, this year in a list of the Top 25 e-commerce retailers compiled by eMarketer. And now, the products borne from the digital revolution — consumer electronics ranging from laptops to Fitbits — have supplanted jewelry as a key home-shopping product category.

As it turned out, the Internet didn’t kill home shopping. Instead, the major home-shopping channels stepped up to the plate with their websites and mobile apps; adjusted their mixes of merchandise to reflect the times; repurposed their TV content and created original programming for their digital platforms; and made aggressive, innovative forays into social media.

For the remainder of the year and going forward, executives at QVC, HSN and Evine said they will continue to make changes and find new ways to make buying on digital platforms more enticing and easy.

HSN, for example, will once again live-stream a fashion show featuring apparel from its celebrity vendor Serena Williams, with that event to take place later this month.

“Everything in the fashion show will be shoppable in the moment,” HSN president Bill Brand said.

QVC’s efforts have included launching an all-digital network — Beauty IQ, available on QVC.com — and experimenting with Facebook Live. And Evine is focusing on making its online checkout process as consumer-friendly as possible, as well as following the example of its two larger competitors by finding success with celebrity vendors, including Southern chef Paula Deen and actress-singer Vanessa Williams.

QVC, HSN and Evine say that these kinds of initiatives, as well as their ability to be nimble to adjust to consumer trends, have given them an advantage in a brutal retail environment. It’s a landscape in which brick-and-mortar companies are announcing store closings or filing for Chapter 11 protection, and one where Amazon.com appears to have changed shopping habits forever. QVC, HSN and Evine Live maintain the relationships they’ve forged with their longtime customers — who unabashedly enjoy shopping — through the networks’ vendors and hosts will also help them weather the storm.

“We were always part of a shopping experience that was best had outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar environment,” Doug Rose, QVC senior vice president of brand and communications, said.

And now those “super-engaged consumers” can shop online — on a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone — for any product 24/7, according to Brand.

That is not to say that home-shopping networks haven’t been buffeted by the changing retail climate. In the second quarter, QVC’s domestic network saw revenue increase 2% to $1.4 billion, but CEO Mike George warned that sales had tailed off the end of the quarter. HSN’s net sales slipped 3% from the prior year to $557.2 million, and Evine Live saw a similar dip, down 2% to $157 million.

But home-shopping network officials said their companies are better equipped to buck the negative trends in part by swiftly adjusting their on-air and digital offerings in a way that, in their view, traditional retailers cannot.

“We are so flexible we can go where the customers are taking us,” Rose said. “You’ll see us shifting airtime and resources and digital space to categories that are really responding and we’ll shift them away from ones that are not doing as well.”

DIGITAL REVOLUTION

In the second quarter, QVC’s digital sales increased to 51% of revenue, to $727 million, with mobile making up 57% of that, according to QVC’s parent, Liberty Interactive.

“People who like shopping for discovery like to fit it into the margins of their day, and so, when they’re grabbing a cup of coffee in line in Starbucks, they’re going to open up their app and they’re going to see what’s on QVC today,” Rose said.

Home-shopping networks were well-positioned to take advantage of the e-commerce boom. Digital made it easy for shoppers to buy merchandise from the networks’ vast inventories of product, even when it wasn’t being shown on-air. And QVC, HSN and Evine also had distribution systems in place to get goods directly to consumers.

In addition, the networks could post video from their telecasts online with products.

“Most brick-and-mortar retailers don’t have the internal structure to do all this kind of production,” Nicole Ostoya, Evine’s chief marketing officer, said. “It takes years producing 24/7. We’re making content and it’s taken all of these years to hone this skill.”

Officials at all three of the major home shopping networks say that their strategy is to tell viewers the interesting stories behind the brands and products they sell, and the people behind them, and video lets them do that online.

Today, these networks say that they are continuing to fine-tune their online experience for shoppers.

While some retailers viewed e-commerce and mobile “as something of a disruptive factor, we look at [them] as a unique opportunity,” Rose said.

Digital sales are also skyrocketing at HSN, making up 46-47% of its business, according to Brand. He said that his network’s most valuable customers shop across all of its platforms.

“I’ve had to really pivot this business to be sure that we’re building an experience that’s based in content but is seamless and frictionless across every single device,” he said. “The iPhone only came out in ’07 … and now smartphones and tablets make up 50% of all of our digital sales.”

On the mobile front, the focus at HSN is “on optimization,” making that experience as strong and consumer-friendly as possible, Brand said. And as a result of growing demand on digital, HSN has widened it online product assortment, particularly in the beauty category, according to Brand, “because our customers want great product when they want it, and that’s what digital provides.”

The third-largest home shopping network is officially named Evine Live, but on-air it has dropped the “Live” and refers to itself as just “Evine” because of its digital presence, Ostoya said.

“We think that Evine is cleaner and easier to understand,” she said. “A lot of places that people experience us — online, on our app — the content isn’t live, so it felt like [Evine Live] wasn’t exactly right.”

In the second quarter, the company reported about half of its sales are online, and 50% of those are actually done by mobile, Ostoya said.

“But a big piece of that is driven by what’s on-air,” she said. “What we’re finding is a lot of customers still see what we’re selling on the TV but instead of calling, they do the quick checkout on their second screen … So we have a really nice healthy online business, but there is that chunk that’s driven by what’s on TV.”

Like its larger competitors, Evine has been tweaking the content it offers online, and has new initiatives in the works for unique online content, according to Ostoya.

“In the old home-shopping/online world, we would just take our shows and repurpose them on the Web,” she said.

Now Evine is editing down 10-minute segments to two minutes for the Web, to make it more convenient for consumers, Ostoya said.

Evine is also working to ease the process for checking out and purchasing items online, and plans a total overhaul of its website next year under the guidance of its newly named chief digital officer, Macy’s veteran Sunil Verma, Ostoya said.

THE AMAZING GORILLA

E-commerce giant Amazon has been a disrupter, luring shoppers away from brickand- mortar retailers. This year, it also escalated efforts to sell apparel — a key category for home shopping — launching a live show called Style Code Live featuring clothes available on Amazon.

Rose and Brand said that while their home-shopping customers buy some goods on Amazon, the monster website doesn’t have the allure and attributes that attract many shoppers to HSN and QVC. Amazon’s emergence more than 20 years ago “has been wind on our back,” Rose said, “because for that entire time what it, in effect, did was help bring more and more people into the behavior of shopping remotely.”

But Amazon really just represents “a search-driven experience if you know what looking for and you are just trying to avoid running an errand,” according to Rose.

“Amazon is kind of the elephant in the room in retail right now,” HSN’s Brand said. “And they’re doing an amazing job of delivering product purely from a commodity standpoint ... Our point of differentiation comes through products you can’t find anywhere else, the content and the personalities [on the network], and the relationships.”

Some 75% of the merchandise HSN sells can’t be bought elsewhere, and popular vendors such as celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck and veteran host Colleen Lopez have loyal followings, according to Brand.

“Those relationships even in the toughest retail environment help us pull through,” he said, adding that shoppers don’t have a relationship with a search engine.

Ostoya described Amazon as “an incredible force in the marketplace” that is affecting everyone.

“Where we stand apart is Amazon is still a 2D experience: you can click on it, you can zoom in,” she said. “I know that they started Style Code, but they don’t quite understand the science that we understand about home shopping … They don’t understand that you have to get the information out clearly [about merchandise] right away ... They’re doing kind of a talk show. That’s not commerce shopping.”

SHAKING UP THE MIX

It’s an outdated notion that QVC and HSN are largely purveyors of cubic zirconia jewelry. With the explosion of consumer-electronics products, driven in good part by the Internet, QVC and HSN have diversified far beyond from jewelry sales in recent years and shifted their product mixes to include consumer electronics as common as tablets to newer wares just coming to market.

“We had great success with Amazon and its Echo device,” Rose said. “Those kinds of emerging technologies are very demonstrable and that’s kind of our sweet spot … Products that we are constantly looking for are those that have great stories to tell, and they might actually struggle a bit in the absence of telling that story.”

QVC also believes its growing international footprint gave it an advantage in the retail and home-shopping arena for consumer electronics and other categories. That reach allowed it to afford brands such as Dyson virtually global distribution through its home-shopping channels in Europe and the Far East, Rose said.

Consumer electronics “continues to be a strong pillar” of HSN’s strategy, and the network has built strong relationships with companies such as HP and Samsung, according to Brand. The network also is partnering with exercise-electronics maker Fitbit on offerings.

HSN has become such a player in the consumer-electronics arena that the industry turns to the electronic retailer for marketing advice, according to Brand.

“And the reason that the consumer-electronics business relies on us the way that they do is because of the understanding that we have of the female consumer,” he said. “It’s fascinating to go to [International] CES with our team and they rely on us to help them pick colors in laptops. Technology … is a big part of our business, but it’s also how women interact on social [media] and shop now.”

In contrast to QVC and HSN, Evine’s major product category remains jewelry and watches, Ostoya said. While the network has diversified its merchandise mix, it pulled back on the consumer-electronics segment last quarter and is retooling efforts “because we weren’t doing it well,” Ostoya said.

There’s a lot of potential in electronics because Evine hosts and expert vendors can explain all the benefits and features of a product on-air more skillfully than an untrained teen salesperson at Best Buy, she said.

Home shopping channel Evine Live said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it is back in compliance with the NASDAQ National Market System after having traded above $1 per share for 10 consecutive days.

Evine received a warning from the stock exchange on March 21 that its shares were in danger of being delisted because its stock had sunk below the $1 per share threshold for 30 consecutive trading days. Evine has undergone some management changes in the past several months, most notably the resignation of CEO Mark Bozek.

The company had 180 days from its notification to get back into compliance. Accordnig to the filing, after achieving the 10-day milestone, NASDAQ considers the matter closed. Evine shares closed at $1.23 each (up 2 cents) on April 13.

Evine Live, the former ShopHQ, said it has received notice from the NASDAQ that it has 180 days to get its stock price above $1 per share or risk being delisted from the stock exchange.

The notification is the latest in a series of setbacks for the company, which was the subject of a proxy fight in 2014 where one of its largest shareholders took control of the company and rearranged its management team.

In the past month, Evine’s CEO – former HSN executive Mark Bozek – resigned, replaced by chairman Bob Rosenblatt in the interim. EVP and chief strategy officer Russell Nuce also resigned.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Evine revealed that Bozek, who left the company effective Feb. 8, received a severance package valued at more than $1.2 million.

Evine stock, once as high as $7 per share during the proxy battle, has been trading under $1 each since Feb. 5. The stock was trading at 82 cents each (up 6 cents) in early trading Wednesday.

According to an SEC filing, Evine received notification from NASDAQ about its non-compliance on March 21. In accordance with NASDAQ rules it has 180 days, or until Sept. 19, to regain compliance, which would mean the stock has to trade above $1 per share for a minimum of 10 consecutive business days. If it does not reach that level by the Sept. 19 deadline, Evine could be eligible for an extension, but would be required to transfer from the NASDAQ Global Market exchange to the NASDAQ Capital Market exchange and meet all the necessary requirements. If it still fails to meet the Exchange’s standards, then the stock would be subject to delisting.

Evine also reported fourth quarter results, with revenue up 5% $212 million but cash flow down 29% to just $4.9 million in the period. For the full year, revenue increased 3% to $693.3 million while cash flow was down 60% to $9.2 million.

“Although the company had solid revenue growth in the fourth quarter, we are disappointed with the overall bottom line results,” Rosenblatt said in a statement. “The profit erosion that continued into our fourth quarter doesn’t reflect the merchandising balance and operational discipline necessary to deliver consistent growth in value to all stakeholders. We are in the midst of implementing plans to address these issues, but we are mindful that it will take some time to fix them in the right way. Last week we took our first steps toward addressing these issues and cut our full-year operating expense by $5 million through a reduction in corporate overhead and other operating costs.”

Rosenblatt continued, “Evine Live has a proven business model and we are strongly positioned to continue to use our expertise as a leader in the digital video commerce space.  Our historical focus on developing proprietary and exclusive brands to broaden our product offering is proving to be a good idea. However, it is only one piece of a much broader business strategy that is required to create profitable results and to build shareholder value. Our work going forward is centered on building a cohesive merchandising strategy with clear accountability. With the $17 million bank term loan from GACP Finance Co., LLC, our recently strengthened balance sheet provides the Company some additional flexibility in building long-term relationships with our vendors, as well as the ability to be more opportunistic in the broader marketplace.”

In their quest to find new products, develop more engaging content and attract new viewers, home-shopping networks have turned to a now-familiar programming genre: reality competition.

QVC, HSN and Evine Live have forged alliances with three of the stars of ABC’s primetime hit Shark Tank in order to create their own on-air competition “programs” or segments, as well as to source merchandise.

Last month, HSN unveiled its “American Dreams” initiative, which will feature Shark Tank’s Daymond John as part of a team searching for entrepreneurs with good ideas and products for the network.

Lori Greiner, a Shark Tank “shark” and veteran QVC vendor, became a financial backer for Scrub Daddy, a smiley-faced sponge that gained sales traction on the home-shopping channel. Last year, it was named Shark Tank’s most successful product.

And earlier this year, billionaire Shark Tank shark Mark Cuban hosted a series, Mark Cuban’s American Dream, on Evine Live where he showcased inventors whose companies he had invested in. The home-shopping network calls it “retail reality.”

Jewelry Television has gone all in on the trend, claiming to be the first shopping network to broadcast a full-fledged reality show, JTV Rock Star Designer. That half-hour program, chronicling the network’s national talent search for jewelry designers, airs on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. JTV is considering shopping around a second season of the show to a traditional cable network.

Home-shopping networks have good reason to piggyback on the popularity of reality-competition shows. As both the retail and television environments have grown increasingly competitive, home-shopping networks have been upgrading their programming — to make it about storytelling and entertainment — and reality competitions can add those elements.

BREAKING THROUGH

“What has appealed to us about this whole genre of reality competitions is that it’s in line with our overall brand marketing strategy, which is to look for disruptive, high-engagement opportunities to break through clutter,” Doug Rose, QVC’s senior vice president of brand and communications, said.

Home-shopping networks also want to broaden their audience, to reach those who may watch Shark Tank but never tune into “The Q.” And the home-shopping outlets are always looking for the next big product, and Shark Tank can scout for such wares.

HSN president Bill Brand emphasized the importance of expanding his network’s viewership through its “American Dreams” undertaking.

“Wherever those eyes and ears are, I want to build awareness, and ultimately it’s about acquisition,” he said. “I want to acquire new customers who never considered HSN, but now that we’re doing something like ‘American Dreams’ … maybe they’ll shop here.”

Seeing a QVC vendor such as Greiner on Shark Tank lets new audiences view the network as a TV venue with “really appealing personalities and great stories” behind its products rather than “just a parade of items,” Rose said.

HSN is in the midst of its “American Dreams” initiative, where it has enlisted five entrepreneurs, including John, the founder, president and CEO of apparel label FUBU, through Shark Tank, to search the nation using TV, radio, conferences and trade shows to discover new product ideas.

The others participating in the search are: Marc Portney, through investing in entrepreneurs on Science Channel’s series All-American Makers; Bob Circosta, through HSN’s revamped “American Dreams Ideas Portal,” convention searches and seminars; Akos Jankura, through the “My Cool Inventions” radio talent search; and Gregg Smith through Edison Nation, which operates a marketplace for independent inventors.

Once a month, HSN’s The Monday Night Show With Adam Freeman will dedicate its first hour to showcasing three or more entrepreneurs with their new products along with the entrepreneur who found them — be it John or one of the other four.

Brand maintained that reality-competition shows have actually taken a page from HSN’s playbook in terms of hunting for blockbuster products, citing inventor Joy Mangano and her Huggable Hanger line.

“It’s the idea of Joy Mangano on Long Island creating a hanger and now almost 700 million being sold: That’s competition,” Brand said. “And if you think about the number of entrepreneurs, the number of new ideas, the number of product ideas that come through the HSN pipeline at any given time, it’s competitive … Who’s going to get their shot at going into 96 million homes?”

HSN already had a relationship with John, who reached out to Brand about two years ago.

BULDING ON RELATIONSHIPS

“He was talking about being on Shark Tank and having these product ideas and he said, ‘Bill, do I have permission to talk about HSN on Shark Tank? And I said, ‘Do you have to ask me?’ ” Brand said.

John has been selling items from his own mobile-phone accessory line, Moguls Mobile, on HSN, and enjoys appearing om the home-shopping network, Brand said. In advance of “American Dreams,” John introduced three entrepreneurs and products from Shark Tank on HSN in July.

Products that John brings from Shark Tank will have added credibility because HSN viewers are engaged in pop culture and familiar with the ABC show, according to Brand.

Dominant home-shopping network QVC, owned by Liberty Interactive, has been particularly aggressive in the reality-competition space, capitalizing on the relationships some of its major vendors have had with such programming. Greiner had been inventing and selling products on QVC for years before she was chosen as part of the Shark Tank panel.

“Lori has been a breakout star for them and clearly has helped elevate awareness of QVC among that audience,” Rose said. “So we’re really grateful to be sort of riding on her coattails on that one.”

Inventor Aaron Krause had appeared on QVC early in the development of Scrub Daddy, Rose said. Greiner became an investor when Krause made his pitch on Shark Tank, and Scrub Daddy roared back to QVC with great success, jump-starting its sales push.

For two seasons, QVC collaborated with Lifetime’s Project Runway All Stars, partnering with the show where designer Isaac Mizrahi — who does collections for the home-shopping network — was a judge.

“We approached it with the expectation that there were a lot of people that watched that show and had come to really like Isaac and appreciate him and understand his esthetic, and had no idea that he had this huge business at QVC,” Rose said. “So why don’t we just remind folks engaged in that show that you can find Isaac’s complete line at QVC?”

Project Runway: All Stars incorporated fashion accessories from QVC on the show and used one of the shopping network’s then-hosts, Lisa Robertson, as a guest judge. Winners from two seasons created capsule fashion lines for QVC, with Seth Aaron Henderson’s “SA by Seth” still sold on the home-shopping network.

And once again, through an association with one of its vendors, QVC currently is participating in an initiative with Today. Jill Martin, a contributor on the NBC morning show, is also the creative director for QVC’s G.I.L.I. fashion line. The Peacock Network is staging a “Today’s Next Big Thing” competition, and recently finished accepting product submissions.

The finalists will make their pitches on Today this month, and the winner will appear with Martin on QVC.

TOO BIG FOR YOUTUBE

JTV, which sells jewelry and gemstones 24/7, turned to reality competition with its Rock Star Designer show to create more brand awareness, drive viewers to the channel and ultimately, increase sales, vice president of marketing Jill Johnson said. The program features five finalists from a competition that JTV held earlier this year, and one of the judges is Michael O’Connor, a celebrity stylist who was a fixture on QVC for many years. The program is a full-scale TV production with original sets, wardrobe and crew.

Rock Star Designer was initially planned as an offering for YouTube, where JTV is trying to beef up its presence, Tim Engle, the network’s chief strategy officer, said.

“But when we started to see the postproduction output, I felt like it was just way too good to relegate it to YouTube alone,” Engle said. “I felt our viewers would appreciate it as well.”

JTV president and CEO Tim Matthews agreed, and wanted the show to air in primetime on Friday nights, as a lead-in to one of the network’s most popular segments, “Girlfriend Friday,” Engle said. The show’s episodes are also available on YouTube and on JTV’s website.

Since the debut of Rock Star Designer, JTV’s YouTube viewership has doubled “every single week,” Engle said. And viewership on the TV show, as tracked by Rentrak, has been increasing, he said.

On a recent Friday night in August, sales on “Girlfriend Friday” appeared to get a big boost from its Rock Star Designer lead-in, Engle said.

“I would have to say was probably our largest sales for that slot in recent memory,” Engle said. “Even during the holidays I don’t remember it being that successful … We must have had really good viewership coming into that hour.”

JTV is running seven episodes of Rock Star Designer, ending Sept. 18. The winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize and get to design and sell a jewelry line on the network.

JTV has several options going forward, Engle said. It could do a second season of Rock Star Designer and only put it on YouTube. It could renew it to run on the home-shopping channel. Or it could try to take the show to a traditional cable network, perhaps a Lifetime or DIY, Engle said.

“The pitch we could make is that we would basically be co-branding or co-producing with a production company, except what we bring to the table — unlike any other reality program — is another network that’s in 85 million households,” Engle said. “So it’ll help bring viewers to a cable network and the quid pro quo obviously is there would be talk about Jewelry Television (on the show).”

JTV could possibly air a companion show, the way AMC does with Talking Dead after The Walking Dead, offering additional cross-promotion, Engle said.

Evine Live, the rebranded former ShopHQ, found success when it collaborated with Shark Tank’s Cuban. In August of last year the network premiered Mark Cuban’s American Dream, which featured nine entrepreneurs with new products that the Dallas Mavericks owner had invested in. The segment’s debut racked up the home-shopping network’s highest TV and online viewership in its history.

Last October, Evine Live brought Mark Cuban’s American Dream back for an encore, with five entrepreneurs returning with their best-selling products. One of the big hits was the Monkey Mat, a portable clean surface for babies and children that Cuban and Greiner invested in via Shark Tank.

“We’re strong believers in creating exciting and entertaining shopping experiences, and working with Mark Cuban is certainly all about that: Great ‘retail reality,’ as we would like to say,” Dawn Zaremba, Evine Live’s director of marketing, said.

It’s unclear if Cuban will be coming back to the home-shopping channel. “We are always in discussions with him and others to bring similar entertainment and exclusive products to Evine Live,” Zaremba said.

Linda Moss is a business journalist who writes frequently about home shopping television.

RELATED:Evine Unveils Shareholders Rights Plan

About a year after a proxy fight gave it new owners and a new board of directors, management and direction, Evine Live, the former ShopHQ, is finding the path to success may take a little longer than it first expected.

Expectations were high when New York-based investment adviser The Clinton Group took control of the company in what was at times a contentious proxy fight. A new board of directors — including former Fremantle Media North America CEO and reality show pioneer Thom Beers — and former HSN CEO Mark Bozek were brought in to transform the company from a hawker of watches and jewelry into a retailer with a heavy concentration on proprietary product lines.

The idea was that by intertwining aspects of reality television and TV talent shows, Evine could create a “seamless entertainment transactional experience.”

INITIAL ENTHUSIASM

Early results were good: in the fourth quarter of 2014, Evine grew revenue 4% to $201 million and adjusted EBITDA increased 44% to $7 million. Evine stumbled in Q1, though. Total revenue of $158 million in the quarter fell short of analyst estimates and was down about 1% from the prior year. Cash flow was $1.6 million in the period, down 71% from $5.5 million in the prior year. Sales in the next two quarters would be flat compared to the prior year, Evine also said, with growth not expected until the fourth quarter.

As a result, Evine’s stock has plunged by more than 50% since it reported those results in May and last week raised some eyebrows with the initiation of a shareholders’ rights plan — also known as a “poison pill” — that would make it harder for an outside party to attempt a hostile takeover of the company.

Brean Capital senior vice president and senior analyst equity research Tom Forte said he believes the poison pill is merely a measure to preserve Evine’s $486 million in net operating losses, which are used to offset future tax payments.

That said, Forte said there are two story lines to Evine — the actual company and its stock.

“From the standpoint of the company, you have a CEO, Mark Bozek, who has taken an aggressive approach to transforming the business,” Forte said. “Instead of maintaining the status quo of the business he took over, he has boldly made changes that if successful will position the company for sustained sales and profitability growth.”

Evine management was not immediately available and declined to comment for this article.

Some of those changes include the introduction of a new line of cookware and accessories by celebrity chef Todd English and a surprisingly successful line of seafood and cookware modeled after The Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel.

The other Evine, its stock, indicates that the transition from Shop HQ to Evine has been “choppy,” Forte said. That’s mainly because the transformation of the company from a watch and jewelry seller to a retailer with its own proprietary brands has taken longer than expected.

“It takes time to build new brands, even the ones I believe will be successful,” Forte said.

Forte is obviously bullish on the stock and his company, Brean Capital, makes a market in Evine securities, but he also has a point.

Even QVC and HSN, the two home-shopping leaders, didn’t make the switch to proprietary brands overnight. And Evine has had some early successes: Mark Cuban’s American Dream, a show starring the Dallas Mavericks owner, investor and Shark Tank panelist, along with a lineup of nine entrepreneurs hawking their own products and inventions, was one of its most-watched programs ever. The addition of English and the success of the Deadliest Catch line, all expected to continue their relationship with Evine, looks encouraging.

But even Forte admits that the Q1 slowdown has created some skepticism in management’s ability to do the job.

PRODUCT MIX QUESTION

While Evine management has said the rebound should begin in the fourth quarter, Forte said the bigger question is whether or not the company can transform its product mix to more than 70% proprietary offerings.

Evine has said proprietary products make up about 33.8% of sales, but Forte believe the figure is more like 20% to 25%.

“When that day comes, I suspect that they will have solid financial performance,” Forte said.

Evine Live (formerly Shop NBC) has approved a shareholders rights plan aimed at protecting the home shopping pioneer’s net operating loss carry-forwards, which are used to offset future taxes.

The moves come as Evine’s stock price nears record lows, and appears to be an attempt to prevent an outside investor from acquiring a large block of stock. Evine, which endured a proxy fight last year that resulted in a change of control, apparently doesn’t want to go through it again. The stock has fallen about 53% ($2.98 each) since May 19, from $5.63 per share to $2.65 each on July 10. The shares were up nearly 4% (10 cents) in early trading Monday to $2.75 each.

Shareholders’ rights plans, also called “poison pills” are common among public companies and are strong defenses against hostile takeover moves.

Evine has about $486 million in federal and state NOLs that are available to offset future taxable income. The NOLs expire in varying amounts each year from 2023 through 2034, the company said. NOLs are generally available for use to offset future taxable income. But if Evine were to experience and ownership change, its ability to utilize those NOLs would be “substantially limited,” the company said in a statement.

Under the plan, Evine Live has declared a dividend of one preferred share purchase right for each of its common shares outstanding, payable to shareholders of record as of the close of business on July 23. Under the terms of the plan, if any shareholder acquires 4.99% of Evine outstanding stock or if an existing 4.99% holder acquires more shares without the prior approval of the board, the rights become exercisable and entitle shareholders (other than the acquiring shareholder) to purchase stock at a substantial discount.

Davis & Gilbert LLP and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP are acting as the Company's legal counsel.

Evine Live, the shopping channel formerly known as ShopHQ, said it has named retail industry veteran Penny Burnett senior vice president and chief marketing officer.

Burnett, who has more than 20 years of merchandising and retail experience, will begin her new job on April 20. Burnett most recently served as vice president of merchandising for Global Brands Group (a member of the Fung Group) for five years where she directly managed the merchandising strategy for new acquisitions and oversaw merchandising for the Kids’ and Young Men’s businesses. Prior to that, she was the vice president of sales and merchandising for Guggenheim Partners on the Lionel brand and held key merchandising roles at both Macy’s and Target Corp. She will be relocating to Evine’s headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minn.

As part of her employment agreement, Burnett will receive an initial base salary of $345,000 annually and will receive restricted stock and options to purchase shares of Evine’s common stock under its 2011 Omnibus Incentive Plan worth about $155,250. She will also be eligible to participate in the company’s employee benefit programs offered to other senior executives. In addition, when Burnett relocates to the Eden Prairie area, she will be eligible to participate in Evine’s executive relocation program.

About five months after a proxy battle that ousted its management and revamped its board of directors, home shopping giant ValueVision Media has changed its name to Evine Live, in an effort to better reflect its transformation into a comprehensive digital commerce company.

ValueVision made the announcement in conjunction with releasing with its third quarter earnings results on Nov. 18. As part of the transition, the company changed its trading symbol on the NASDAQ Exchange from VVTV to EVLV on Nov. 20.

The company said the name change is part of the ongoing effort to transform Evine Live into a true digital commerce company.

After years of sluggish performance, ValueVision Media emerged in June from a proxy fight that saw it jettison its top management and most of its board in favor of a slate of directors with varied and vast experience in retail, television production and cable. CEO Mark Bozek, a 20-year veteran of the home-shopping wars — he started as an executive at QVC in 1994 — and a former CEO of HSN, joined a slate of high-profile directors put forth by activist investor The Clinton Group to shake up the company.  

According to a company statement, the "Es" that bookend the Evine Live brand represent the ease, exclusivity and energy of what it calls a new entertaining consumer experience. The inclusion of the word "Live" is about real-time impulses to act and interact on all digital platforms.

ValueVision acquired the Evine brand as part of a $1 million stock deal to acquire Dollars Per Minute, a Huntington, N.Y. based merchandising and entertainment company created by Bozek and Russell Nuce. Evine said it has named Nuce as its new chief strategy officer.

According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Nuce will receive annual compensation of about $375,000, a signing bonus of $75,000 and a one-time bonus of $176,000. Bozek receives total annual compensation of about $1.3 million.

As part of the Dollars Per Minute transaction, former ValueVision independent board member Thom Beers, CEO of FremantleMedia North America, received stock worth $532,867 as payment for certain convertible bridge notes he held in the company.

“As a result of the consummation of the transaction, the company’s board of directors has determined that Mr. Beers will no longer serve as an independent director,” Evine said in an SEC filing, “…and at this time, will no longer be a member of the company’s corporate governance and nominating committee.”

The rebranding is in line with what The Clinton Group had promised during their fight for control of ValueVision -- transforming what has been a distant third in the homme shopping wars (behnd QVC Group and HSN) into a modern, streamlined and nimble competitor.

"On the heels of a solid third quarter, we strongly believe definitive change and innovation are necessary to build on our recent momentum and drive the company to the next level," Bozek said in a statement. "We believe that fully embracing this new transformation will enable Evine Live to forge new paths and new relationships that allow us to be far more competitive, far more creative, and far more disruptive on all our platforms. Evine Live has the opportunity to be fearless in our strategies to transform the worlds of retail and entertainment while, at the same time, driving greater consumer engagement."

The company expects to transition from doing business as "ShopHQ" to "Evine Live" over the coming months, with the complete rebranding planned to take place first half of 2015. In the coming months, the company intends to introduce new proprietary brands from the worlds of fashion, beauty, jewelry, home and fitness.

"The new approach should enable us to build a stronger foundation for long-term growth," Bozek added in a statement.