Joy, opening Christmas Day, brings early QVC days back to life

Tom Paine

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Update 12/29: Dear Bradley Cooper, this is how you pronounce 'Lancaster' (PennLive)



Joy is a film about a real-life woman of that name, Joy Mangano, who became a best selling inventor, designer snd marketer of products, first on QVC snd later on HSN. Directed by David O. Russell and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper, it opens on Christmas Day from 20th Century Fox.





Mangano, a Long Island native, became a merchandising superstar on QVC, first with the 'Miracle Mop' and then with a succession of other products. She sold her company to QVC rival HSN (originally Home Shopping Network) in 1999. The film portrays the long period of struggle in both her personal life and in achieving her career ambitions.

O.Russell apparently strayed from the straight biopic format, fictionalizing or in some cases slightly altering details of her life. He also created an amalgam of a character in the QVC executive played by Cooper, in part intended to portray founder Joseph Segal. The late Joan Rivers is played by her daughter Melissa.

There won't be a premiere in West Chester (it was held in New York). There doesn't seem to be a great deal of local buzz. Joy is going up against a film named Star Wars. And it was filmed in Boston, so don't expect any local scenery. Still, Joy has generated considerable attention.

Another aspect of the film's production was the emphasis placed on recreating the QVC studio environment of the time. "It was a huge push to get that done on camera. It was like The Wizard of Oz, going from black and white to color and also the feeling of going to the Emerald City,” explained Joy production designer Judy Becker to The Hollywood Reporter.

Some have made an issue of Comcast's role in the film. Since I have not seen it, I can't say to what extent Comcast factors into it, but its reign as majority owner lasted from 1995 to 2003 when it sold its stake to John Malone's Liberty Media, and my understanding is that the film covers mostly an earlier period. So it will probably not end with a dramatic showdown between Joy and Brian Roberts before her deciding to sell out to HSN.

I asked QVC for comment on Joy snd got no response, but of course QVC's involvement with her ended a long time ago. Joy Mangano is still a big star at HSN, however. The shopping network recently celebrated her 15th anniversary there, and a new line of her products is scheduled for a January 9th launch in selected stores, a first for her company.

I've written before about how the home shopping network business is like an insular, somewhat dysfunctional family, though Amazon may pose a distant external threat to break up the party.

But Mangano's career path might come full circle. QVCA, the tracking stock created by Liberty Media to hold QVC and related assets, owns 38% of HSN. And Liberty Media management has made it clear that if the price and tax impact are right, and the stars are properly aligned in the universe, they would like to buy the rest of HSN and combine it with QVC.

Hoopla Software raises $8 million led by Trinity Ventures; moving to larger Malvern-area offices

Tom Paine

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Hoopla Software, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley but has an R&D office in West Chester, announced last week it had raised an $8 million Series B round led by Trinity Ventures. The round also included participation from previous investors Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE: SFE), Illuminate Ventures and additional private investors.

Hoopla, founded in 2010 by veteran Philadelphia-area entrepreneur Michael Smalls, provides cloud-based software that uses gamification techniques and insights gained
from data analysis to boost performance for groups such as sales and customer
service teams. The company said it grew over 250 percent in 2013, adding over 150 new customers.

Hoopla's LinkedIn page shows 26 employees, 9 of whom are based in the Philadelphia area. Hoopla hopes to double that headcount by the end of the year, and also plans to release
a mobile version in the Spring.

Salesforce participated in Hoopla's Series A, and Hoopla's website still emphasizes its
product's close integration with Salesforce's CRM platform. California-based Trinity Ventures also invested $6.25 million in Philadelphia-based RJMetrics last year.

Hoopla raised $2.8 million in its Series A round in 2012, led by Safeguard Scientifics.

Prior to founding Hoopla, Small's Philadelphia area experience included executive roles at Destiny Websolutions, TurnTide and ClickEquations.

Update 2/16: Responding to my email inquiry, CEO Michael Smalls tells me that Hoopla
is moving from West Chester to the Malvern area "with expanded space to enable us to continue to add to the engineering team there and add sales resources to give us better east coast coverage. John Galvin, our CTO (and colleague from Destiny and ClickEquations) runs the Philly area office." Smalls says he is now living in San Jose but makes frequent trips back to the area.

Hoopla was also named a finalist for the PACT Enterprise Awards ( to be presented on May 8) in the category of "Technology Startup Company."

Today in Philly Tech History 4/29/1994: Commodore International declares bankruptcy

Tom Paine

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West Chester might have become the capital of the PC industry. But it didn't.

On April 29,1994, West Chester-based Commodore International, which helped pioneer the development of the PC industry, declared bankruptcy and was subsequently liquidated. Commodore's former headquarters site in West Chester now houses QVC's corporate headquarters.

Founded as Commodore Business Machines in Toronto by Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel in 1954, the company started off first making typewriters, then adding machines, and then electronic calculators, but ran into competitive pressures with each product line. In 1976, after TI's entry into the electronic calculator market (using its own chips) threatened Commodore's survival, it responded by acquiring Norristown-based MOS Technology, which revolutionized the microchip industry in the mid-1970's with its 6502 microprocessor. In the late 1970's, Commodore moved to West Chester from California, in part to be closer to its new acquisition and key supplier.



The talent acquired through the MOS Technology acquisition, in particular engineer Chuck Peddle, convinced Tramiel that home computers were the future. Commodore's history as a computer manufacturer began in 1977 with the introduction of the Commodore PET, followed by the VIC-20, for which William Shatner did early ads.

In 1982, Commodore introduced the phenomonally successful Commodore 64, although the vicious cycle of price cutting it led damaged its own future as well as others. Tramiel resigned after a company power struggle in 1984 and founded his own company, buying the consumer side of Atari Inc. from Warner Communications. Meanwhile, Commodore bought a startup named Amiga Corporation and launched a new model bearing the Amiga name, which was considered by many to be the first multimedia computer. A long, bitter competitive and legal war (over IP issues) ensued between Commodore and Atari, although ultimately neither would survive. As Apple and IBM increasingly dominated the home computing market, Commodore languished, although some of its later ideas were ahead of their time (and the market).

At one point, Commodore had 1,000 employees in West Chester.

The Amiga and Commodore 64 have reappeared periodically in various incarnations.




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Bradford Media Group is doing interesting things in West ChesterTightly integrating video and social media marketing

Tom Paine

Brad Heureux and Matt McGlynn in BMG's studio
(Source: BMG)  

Bradford Media Group, located in the middle of West Chester near the corner of Market and High Streets, has a model that's different from many social media agencies. The innovative agency has a passion for integrating social media with video production to meet its client's needs, and is trying out new formats that marry the combination.

It is perhaps not surprising that BMG's founder & CEO, Brad Heureux, has a multimedia emphasis in his background, having had considerable experience with Comcast, where among other things he help build what ultimately became known as Comcast Spotlight (its cable advertising sales unit) into an industry juggernaut. He also founded and ultimately sold Off The Wall Productions, a pioneering multi-platform marketing company, and helped launch PAXTV, a TV Network later acquired by NBC. He started up BMG in 2009.

BMG defines itself as having three primary components: Studio BMG, which creates original media production including branded entertainment series, product videos, and episodic programming for multiple platforms including social media and television; BMG Social, the agency’s social media platform management arm utilizing social strategy and custom application development; and BMG Reach, which specializes in creating individualized and targeted online advertising campaigns designed to drive specific audiences to the customized video and social content. In other words, the three parts are all intended to function in a tightly integrated manner together in support of meeting customers' objectives. BMG also has its own inhouse production studio.




BMG is big on using Facebook, although they employ other social media platforms as well; Pinterest is becoming very important for them, they tell me. It manages Facebook Fan Pages for about 80 clients, Heureux told me in a phone interview, and each one includes a Studio BMG-produced video element. BMG doesn't target a specific vertical niche, and works with both consumer-facing and business to business brands. Heureux says there are probably some 12 million companies (in the US), who need to have brand pages with a professional image on Facebook, and BMG is out to help many of those who don't have the inhouse resources to maintain that kind of presence by themselves.

BMG's senior staff, in addition to Heureux, includes Matthew McGlynn, Director of Operations and a Temple (Tyler School of Art) grad, who might be described as the chief digital person; Rachel Burke, another Temple graduate who was just promoted to Director of Social Media; and Leslie Nichols, a Conestoga High grad with some Hollywood TV producing credits who returned home and, after working for WPVI and running her own company, joined Bradford as executive video producer for Studio BMG (see recent MainLine Times profile). Lara (Toscani) Weems, another Conestoga alum who had previously worked for Comcast Spectacor and has also handled some assignments for the Harlem Globetrotters, serves as Marketing Manager. BMG currently has 16 employees, and also has a New York outpost.

Julie Roehm

Julie Roehm, who became Senior Vice President - Marketing for SAP early this year, is a Partner at BMG (and an investor) and serves as a strategic advisor (Correction: BMG tells me that while Roehm does have some equity in the firm, she has not made a financial investment in it). Roehm, who has a reputation for being a marketing whiz, had her short tenure running marketing communications for Wal-Mart end in considerable controversy in 2006. In a recommendation she made on LinkedIn last year, Roehm wrote: "Having advised BMG Media, I can say that this group is performing some of the most interesting and credible work in the field of e-commerce for social media. They are really starting to crack the code on the idea of QVC for social media".

Two projects are good examples of where BMG may be heading. One is the Studio BMG-produced social media-driven TV show, "Life Around Home", which launched in April on the digital channel NBC Philadelphia Nonstop. The lifestyle show, which covers subject such as organic living, do-it-yourself projects, home organization, fitness, style and fashion, and parenting, chooses its content based on posts to its Facebook page and other social network presences, and also responds to other posts. BMG hopes to roll the concept out to other markets. CEO Heureux calls it "a completely new model of show production".

Another example is the hyper-local approach BMG is taking in developing a Facebook Fan Page for its home town of West Chester. Studio BMG will use original video production to tell the stories of public and advertiser events, all housed in custom applications within the community created by the company’s social media arm, BMG Social. BMG Reach, the marketing arm, will place online adverting and promotional campaigns to drive traffic to these West Chester stories. The page will also include a (free) directory of businesses, restaurants, and events located in the West Chester area, to be launch within a few weeks. It sounds almost as if BMG wants to reinvent the Yellow Pages on Facebook, something Yellow Page publishers have never been very successful in doing .




Heureux is watching the M&A activity involving many of the big players in the social media business with interest. For example, one company he works with is Vitrue, which Oracle recently announced it would acquire. But BMG is not heavily dependent on any one social media marketing platform. In terms of its own strategy, while BMG may develop some proprietary technology, my sense is they are much more focused on creating proprietary content vehicles, through which customer content can be packaged and distributed.



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