OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY

In just 13 minutes, Juliette Fassett sold $500,000 worth of product on QVC. Months later, a late-night infomercial turned her world upside down.

- By Sam Blum | Photography by Holly Andres

Juliette Fassett was nursing a hangover as she walked into the lobby at QVC Studio Park on November 3, 2018. It was a career milestone to enter the sprawling campus with over 58,000 square feet of studio space in West Chester, Pennsylvania, where the network that pioneered TV shopping tapes its segments in front of live audiences. Fassett’s invention, Flippy—a plush, multiangle stand for an iPad or other digital tablet—was making its prime-time debut.

It had taken Fassett years of tinkering with product design to bring Flippy to market and to earn a utility patent—an expensive process that gave her legal footing to protect the product from copycats. Triangular and pillowlike, Flippy is configured to flip and hold a device in three different positions. It’s soft, it’s friendly, and it balances on your lap, cradling an iPad like a baby.

For an inventor like Fassett, a successful QVC appearance can be an entryway to the promised land. It can open lanes that were previously closed off and imbue a small player with the credibility of a household name. Fassett was already treating the occasion like a party. “I had been out the night before with friends from high school I hadn’t seen in a million years,” she said. As the segment began, Fassett and a friend watched a live feed from the green room.

“This is a cushiony, comfortable pillow that has three different angles on it to hold your smart device,” said QVC host David Venable, sitting in a living room set festooned with Christmas decor. As soon as Venable held up Flippy—yours for just $30—the phones lit up and orders began to pour in. Three thousand sold in just four minutes.

The green room was full of vendors waiting their turn at QVC glory. Everybody in the room stopped talking and started paying attention to the broadcast, remembers Fassett. Another three minutes ticked down. Six thousand sold. Fassett watched in disbelief.