CLEARWATER, Fla., Aug. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- As Seen On TV,
Inc. (OTCQB: ASTV), a leading multi-platform product marketing
company and online shopping destination, today released the
following letter to its shareholders:
Dear Shareholder,
A few months ago I joined As Seen on TV as your CEO, and now I
want to give you an update on our significant progress across a
number of fronts and our vision for the future of the business.
Leading this company and developing its unique assets is a rare
opportunity. The management team and I are more excited than ever
about what lies ahead. As we continue to build upon our access to
creative inventors, celebrities, product partners, and our own
multi-channel distribution platforms, we're uniquely positioned to
become the leading product partner and distributor in the As Seen
on TV category – bar none.
First, what have we been doing? Since joining, we've evaluated
all aspects of our operations in order to improve customer
satisfaction, reduce costs, and focus on the right opportunities to
leverage our core assets. This has allowed us to realign our
organization and conserve its precious resources. For example, we
rapidly integrated eDiets into the As Seen on TV business and
significantly cut our overhead cost to just one-third of what it
was a few months ago. We've saved approximately $2.7M annually through vendor pruning, lease
renegotiations, an office closure, and systems and IT integrations.
Further, our current staff levels are just 11 full time employees
versus 77 in May. We made difficult decisions that reflect our
approach of methodically partnering with outsourced specialists in
order to scale our businesses while emphasizing variable,
controllable costs over fixed costs. While reducing revenues in the
short-term, we believe the results down the road will demonstrate
how we've shifted our resources to the most promising opportunities
while making our business more efficient and effective.
Second, where are we going? While improving our
efficiency, we've also been focused on our effectiveness and
growth. We've invigorated our management team with a few key,
critical additions. We've rejuvenated our brands and even the
familiar logos of As Seen on TV and eDiets. We've built a
cloud-based digital and mobile foundation that will scale as our
brands and anticipated sales expand. And we expect to maximize our
core assets including the high consumer awareness of our brand,
traffic to our market-leading As Seen on TV website, the thousands
of inventor ideas we receive each year, and the universe of
celebrities and brands who approach us regularly looking for live
shopping and product partners to expand their reach and audiences.
Each of these independently represents great opportunity.
Let me outline a few more specific examples of our efforts in
three essential areas.
Our digital platform and brand awareness. We're blessed
to have a number of well-known brands such as As Seen on TV and
eDiets. We are moving our distinct brands to cloud-based IT and
social platforms to reduce costs while improving our reach and
visibility especially when consumers are increasingly purchasing
via mobile devices. In fact, over 50% of our eDiets visitors now
use mobile devices to reach us. We believe there's a stronger
future for eDiets as a primarily digital business, and we are
repositioning our offering closer to its original goal of
supporting busy, active folks looking for personalized diet plans.
We expect to launch a new, significantly different eDiets over the
next few weeks. Further, our As Seen on TV website is by far the
leading destination for As Seen on TV shoppers. Google
reports over 800,000 As Seen on TV related term searches each
month! We can capture a much greater portion of that growing
consumer interest and demand. Behemoth retailers such as Walmart,
CVS, Walgreens and Target are all expanding their retail presences
in the As Seen on TV category, but our site still remains the
leading online destination. Our challenge now is to supply the
organic demand and improve the monetization of this valuable asset,
and we expect to do so.
Inventors and crowdfunding. We literally receive
thousands of new product ideas each year from determined inventors.
This fact will enable us to develop a large roster of licensed
products that we will build with our partners into a portfolio of
products in a number of categories. And, as you may have seen in
leading publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington
Post, Entrepreneur, and TheStreet.com, we're soon to launch our own
crowdfunding platform specifically tailored to the As Seen on TV
marketplace. Our platform will allow consumers to
pre-purchase selected products they love and want to have. This
should expand our already strong brand position in the entrepreneur
and inventor worlds, shorten product-testing periods, and reduce
the capital required to develop new products. It's a privilege to
work alongside these amazing inventors. Our new crowdfunding
platform, expected to launch this fall, should help us extend our
visibility and lead in this sector.
TV Goods and live shopping. We've continued to build upon
our superior relationships with live shopping organizations such as
QVC, HSN, and ShopNBC, both in the US and abroad. Live shopping
attracts consumers as well as product owners and celebrities eager
to join in on the selling fun. Recently, our product line TRUHair
was a featured sellout on QVC Italy. Live shopping is truly
changing the way consumers seek and buy products worldwide. In
essence, it has become entertainment commerce. Our past success and
our experienced team provide an increasing number of opportunities
in this channel. There is a natural flow of partners seeking to
work with TV Goods, our live shopping division, and this has become
more pronounced as Reality TV has spawned a vast number of
celebrities and their agents from that genre looking to monetize
their fame. TV Goods has a track record of success here and we will
build on it.
I've outlined where As Seen on TV was and where it is now headed
as a company. The past few months have posed some challenges that
have largely been overcome. With our corporate repositioning mostly
behind us, an experienced management team in place, and huge
opportunities on the horizon for our business, we're more than
eager to roll out and execute our plans over the next few
months.
Please stay tuned for future announcements from As Seen on
TV. In the meantime, thank you for your ongoing support and
for helping us put smiles on the faces of the consumers we
serve.
Sincerely,
Ronald C. Pruett, Jr.
Chief Executive Officer
About As Seen On TV, Inc.
As Seen On TV, Inc. (ASTV)
is the leading multichannel distributor of As Seen On TV products
and serves up fun for engaged consumers worldwide. Customers can
find 1,500 products from As Seen on TV in the areas of Household,
Kitchen, Outdoor, Health & Beauty, Fitness, Clothing,
Electronics, Toys, Novelty, Pets, DVDs, and Food. Celebrities and
industry experts often endorse As Seen On TV products for their
inventive nature and utility. For more information, please visit
www.AsSeenOnTV.com or follow ASTV online at
Facebook.com/OfficialAsSeenOnTV, @AsSeenOnTV on Twitter and
Pinterest.com/AsSeenOnTVHQ.
Cautionary Note and Statement for the Purposes of the Safe
Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
of 1995
The letter to shareholders contains
forward-looking statements with respect to (i) our access to
creative inventors, celebrities and product partners, and the
functionality of our multi-channel distribution platform, (ii) our
ability to scale our businesses by shifting our resources to other
opportunities, (iii) the impact on our business of cost-cutting,
personnel and resource allocation decisions, (iv) our ability to
take advantage of opportunities, including our cloud-based digital
and mobile foundation, consumer awareness of our brand, traffic to
our websites, inventor ideas we receive and potential partners
interested in working with us, (v) the impact of our planned
crowd-funding platform, and (vi) our ability to successfully
develop market and sell products through direct response, live
shopping and over the internet.Some factors which could
possibly affect these forward-looking statements include (1) our
ability to raise additional capital; (2) our ability to maintain
compliance with applicable regulatory requirements; (3) our ability
to attract and retain customers in a profitable manner; (4) our
ability to accurately assess market demand for our products; (5)
our ability to sufficiently increase our revenues and maintain
expenses and cash capital expenditures at appropriate levels; and
(6) the state of the credit markets and capital markets, including
the level of volatility, illiquidity and interest rates. Actual
results may differ materially from these expectations, estimates
and projections and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and
other factors, some of which are beyond our control and difficult
to predict. The foregoing factors (among others) could cause actual
results to differ materially from those set forth in the
forward-looking statements. In accordance with the "safe harbor"
provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995,
As Seen On TV, Inc. has included in attached Form 10-K for the
fiscal year ended March 31, 2013,
cautionary language identifying other important factors, though not
necessarily all such factors, that could cause future outcomes to
differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking
statements.
SOURCE As Seen On TV, Inc.