Giving the Internet a piece of the primetime TV spotlight instead of competing with it has helped take West Chester’s QVC from the brink of becoming obsolete to home shopping stardom.

In the years since 2006 that CEO Mike George has directed the cable network’s course, QVC has grown to $8.8 billion, soon-to-be seven countries and nearly 200 million products shipped in a year. Key to that dramatic growth is its embrace of e-commerce and now mobile commerce. Online orders will soon eclipse half of its business, and last year 41 percent of online orders came from mobile devices, according to an interview in Philadelphia Magazine.

“Back then, we had a separate team purely focused on QVC.com. Now it’s just fundamentally integrated into everything we do. We’re trying to take great content and manifest it on an iPhone, on live TV, on our second channel, and on social,” George said in the article. “Social has been huge as far as the level of engagement. It’s really transformed from this lineal, lean back, passive experience to a very active experience across platforms.”

And it’s not just shoppers who are avid QVC fans. The company attracts “the entrepreneur and the person at home in the kitchen with the crazy idea that they think could make a difference.”

There again, embracing online technology has been key to fostering such a following — and fueling even more growth for the TV side of the business.

“We put the products online and let customers decide which ones they love,” George said. “We’ll have them build a business on .com first — that’s a lower hurdle. The ones that are best on .com earn the right to then be on TV.”

The pioneering success of QVC has spawned many imitators — and George said he appreciates the flattery — but the unique formula that has shaped it into today’s market leader is harder than you’d think to replicate.

“It’s such a unique model and unique culture,” he said, referring specifically to recruiting new QVC talent. “You have to be willing to be a student and re-learn everything. I tell them, you have six months where I want you to accomplish absolutely nothing. Just learn. Write down observations and be a student. Everybody says ‘OK,’ but nobody can do it. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. You have to love to learn, be jazzed by our culture and embrace it.”

Read much more of QVC’s story of embracing technology and rising to the top in Philadelphia Magazine here.