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Wharton Leader
Joseph Segel, W'51
The 'King of the Startups' redefined consumer direct marketing
with the Franklin Mint and QVC.
By Marina Krakovsky
If you want a home run, you have to keep going up
to bat. That's one of many lessons from the remarkable career
of Joseph M. Segel, the unstoppable entrepreneur who hit
two homers more than 20 years apart.
When Segel retired in 1993, he was inducted into the Direct
Marketing Hall of Fame; later that year, a Forbes magazine
profile dubbed him "King of the Startups."
That's because in a career spanning over five decades,
Segel founded 22 different companies in fields as diverse as
publishing, minting, photography, aviation, software, hospitality,
television broadcasting, and behavioral modification.
The Franklin Mint was his first big hit. Founded in 1964
to make sterling-silver commemorative medals, the company
eventually branched out into other high-quality collectibles,
including the award-winning "100 Greatest Books of
All Time" series. With Segel at the helm, it also became the
only private mint entrusted to produce the official currency
for several nations, including the Philippines.
It wasn't until 1986 that Segel launched his greatest
commercial success: QVC (Quality Value Convenience)
Network, now a home-shopping behemoth worth about $20
billion. Having trounced more than 20 other televised shopping
networks over the years, QVC has three times the annual
sales of its predecessor and nearest rival, HSN (Home
Shopping Network). Traditional ad-driven networks took serious
notice: media mogul and Fox Broadcasting Company
founder Barry Diller succeeded Segel as head of QVC, buying
most of Segel's shares in the company.
Segel clearly prefers starting businesses to running them.
But thanks to a habit of cultivating his successor shortly after
starting a new business, many of his ventures continued
to thrive long after he moved on to his next idea. The
Philadelphia-based Advertising Specialty Institute, which
he started as a Wharton undergrad, has been in business 50
years and is still going strong.
Not all his businesses turned a profit. Some ideas were
ahead of their time (in-home smoke detectors), never found
their intended market (fade-resistant photo frames), or were
simply too costly to operate (read on).
Now retired for good, Segel spoke by phone with
Wharton Alumni Magazine about some of his ideas—and
what he's learned from putting them into practice.
What's kept you motivated to keep starting
new businesses when you could have retired
long ago?
Almost every time I retired, I said, "This is going to be the
last time," but then after a little while I got the itch again to
start a new business. However, now at the ripe old age of 75,
I don't get that itch anymore.
What was nagging at you?
Frankly, each time it was based upon the thought that I
could make money doing something specific better than others
were doing it. If I had $100 million in the bank, I might
have stopped earlier. I was well off after Franklin Mint, but I
subsequently lost about half my net worth in the Switzerland
venture, and that stimulated me to start QVC.
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