Out of interest, why did IW start losing all their brands? Was it IW's decision to move downmarket and focus solely on price and change their inventory accordingly, or was it suppliers who increasingly didn't want to use the channel? For instance, both Elizabeth Grant and M Asam were IW originally but both migrated to QVC (M Asam left considerably before EG) and IW was left with nothing. I imagine in these cases it was the brand's decision to leave, rather than IW delisting them, but I'm interested in the general approach of IW2, where they were restricted to an increasingly narrow range of familiar brands - essentially Tower - and more and more Chinese tat started appearing.
Ironically, L(A)B beauty, who actually were delisted by QVC because of poor reviews and shoddy quality, and who have been hawking their bits of plastic around looking for a home, have appeared on IW...
With M.Asam I'd have to say I don't really know, it wasn't in the death throes of Ideal World, I think it was just more of a 'grass is greener' thing.
But consider these points: The company had just been the result of a cash grab from its owners where we were left with almost sweet FA. Thirty channels further down the EPG than we were accustomed to (and confusingly two channel changes in as many weeks) left us with confused, worrisome customers. We all knew sales were not what we were used to receiving and our sister company almost drove us to the wall and was likewise sold, it has since gone to the wall in equally spectacular fashion thanks to some VC bozo.
One brand you don't mention here is Dormeo, they declined to return after IW was taken over by Hamish, their exact reasoning is not known to me but if you consider that it was one of our biggest cash cows, and we owed them £2million+, you can understand why they turned away and it then left a subsequent gap in our own schedule and finances. Would things have been different had they stayed on, we'll never know. Elizabeth Grant, I think a similar idea: You don't turn over small amounts being on as much as they were. And you worked for your own money on that show, as well.
I think with a lot of brands at that time it was just a case of 'we're not getting stung twice', combined with Hamish's fetishes for pleasing his Sports Direct shareholders. Who, to my knowledge, are still having to rent the empty building because nobody has moved in yet.
LAB, I couldn't tell you who thought that would be a good idea... They never visited us in the studios to my recollection and the production team didn't really like or trust them, they were insistent on their show formats over zoom/teams calls, constantly called for Before/After live shots they hadn't seen (and therefore they didn't know they were c--p, but I imagine would have denied it) and constantly appeared to be battling to talk over each other. To me at least it all felt very forced and non-genuine. I can solve the countdown numbers game in 30 seconds but it doesn't make me an Oxford Mathematician.
If you see them again pay attention to their demeanour, you'll see what I mean.