Bob Circosta is one of the first true "stars" of the Home Shopping Network. He's sold more than 75,000 different products on air, netting more than 20,000 hours of live TV time and grossing sales of more than $1 billion. They call him the "billion dollar man." And it all started on radio.
He was a talk-show host on WWQT AM 1470 back in 1977. Circosta admits the Tampa, Fla., station, "didn't have
a lot of listeners." It also had fewer
advertisers.
One day, the station's owner visited a hardware store to collect on an advertising bill. The hardware store mmanager refused to pay. No one was listening to the ad, he protested. After some give and take, the station owner accepted the only form of payment the hardware manager was willing to fork over - extra boxes of avocado-colored electric can openers.
Circosta bristled when the station owner told him to sell the can openers on the air.
"I said, 'I'm a newsman! I have morals and ethics and you want me to sell things!" But the station owner "explained the relationship between me selling the can openers and me getting my check," Circosta says.
With that, he opened up the phone lines, inviting listeners to buy the can openers for $9.95 a pop.
"All of the sudden, the lights started flashing" on the control panel, he says. "I didn't know what they were. We never got calls before, and we were a talk show."
He sold all 112 openers that hour. And with that, he says, the homeshopping industry was born. Circosta continued to sell gadgets and gizmos on air. It was just a short leap to take the concept to television.
In the early 1980s, with the advent of cable-access television, the radio station owner launched a local TV home-shopping show. It was so successful, the company went national with the Home Shopping Network.
Since then, Circosta has worked with other television home-shopping shows, under the auspices of Bob Circosta Communications, a consulting firm specializing in home-shopping, product development and image refinement. About three years ago, the company launched TV Shopping University, a for-profit business that teaches innovators and entrepreneurs how to sell products on television.
"Embracing the free market and fearlessly pursuing rugged entrepreneurialism is what makes our country so special," says Circosta, sounding much more like a salesman these days than a newsman.
"And no industry is more entrepreneurial-driven than the television home-shopping industry. Inventors, small businessmen and startup companies now have an amazing opportunity to immediately launch their products nationwide, but only if they understand the entire process."
His "university" teaches clients how to "prosper in this industry," he says. Costs range from $495 to $2,995, depending on one's level of onair experience. The class includes instruction over the Internet.
Once a quarter, student-customers can attend weekend, face-to-face instruction at the company's Tampa offices. Enrollees produce their own DVD, to which they own the rights.
The idea is to use the DVD as a sales tool and entrée to getting on a homeshopping channel.
If your product gets on air, it becomes "instantly branded as seen on TV," says Circosta. And that, he notes, "is very powerful in the world of retail."
