MASTERING THE ART OF THE PIVOT

David Rawlinson is seen as a CEO who can pull off a corporate transition. Now he's planning a true transformationturning the home shopping TV company Qurate Retail into a streaming video powerhouse

- Paolo Confino

DAVID RAWLINSON walks onto a well-lit QVC home shopping set adorned with pink and white prop flowers and modeled to look like a suburban Southern sunroom. Fake French doors open up onto a screenprinted image of a brick mansion and hedgerows. He's camera-ready for a photo shoot in a navy suit sans tie or buttondown, a matching sweater, and laceless leather Axel Arigato sneakers, and he flashes the unwavering smile of a TV host. But he's not one of the famed shopping channel's on-air personalities. He's the CEO of its struggling parent company, Qurate Retail, Inc.

Rawlinson's sunny disposition comes with a steely resolve. He was brought in to turn around the purveyor of infomercials that were once a staple of cable TV-no easy feat in the age of streamers and social video. I ask him, what does it take to execute a corporate rescue mission of this scale?

"Optimism," Rawlinson tells me. "Even in the dark days you have to be able to see through to the promise on the other side." 

Optimism might seem a little incongruous for someone whose company just posted a 47% quarterly decline in operating income in its latest earnings release. In May, Qurate, which also owns HSN, was officially notified by the Nasdaq that its stock risked being delisted for having traded below $1 for more than 30 consecutive business days.

But Rawlinson, 47, has known since he was a cadet at the storied military college the Citadel how much he can achieve if he leads with the right attitude. In 1996, when he was a cadet first sergeant in his junior year, Rawlinson's company was one of the first to integrate women, and as an officer, he was tasked with spearheading the unpopular but necessary process. The Citadel had lost a federal court case that forced it to allow female students to enroll, and the uproar was tremendous.