Joseph Segel was only 13 years old when he founded his first business – a small printing venture in his native Philadelphia.

The initiative set the entrepreneurial precedent that would power the rest of Segel’s highly productive life. He would go on to found more than 20 companies, the first of true size and significance being the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) – established in 1950 while he was still a student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Later, in 1986, he would create the enterprise with which he is perhaps most synonymous: QVC, the free-to-air television network and flagship shopping channel that specializes in televised home shopping.

Joseph Segel, ASI’s Founder

It’s this legacy of entrepreneurial success that Segel leaves behind. He died Saturday, Dec. 21, at age 88, of natural causes.

“I was privileged to know Joe and his family for more than 60 years,” said Norman Cohn, chairman of ASI. “We were associated in business for a few years and he had a great sense of humanity and justice in everything he did. He was humble, he cared about his family, had many ideas, and a great sense of vision. He will be a legendary beacon for others to follow and certainly has made an extraordinary contribution to our industry and many others.”

Other business leaders who knew Segel similarly sang his praises.

“Joe Segel was a remarkable leader, entrepreneur, marketer, teacher and friend,” Mike George, president and CEO of Qurate Retail Inc., which owns QVC and seven other retail brands, said in a statement. “I’ve had the privilege to know and learn from Joe during my 14 years with QVC and Qurate Retail. He was a visionary whose ideas changed the way the world shops. He instilled the importance of customer focus and putting the customer first in everything we do. These founding values and Joe’s trailblazing spirit are still very much a part of who we are today. Joe will be incredibly missed by our company and the broader Philadelphia business community.”

Born in Philadelphia in 1931, Segel graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He would go on to teach marketing at the Wharton School at age 20. According to a biography, he became Wharton’s youngest ever faculty member, teaching marketing classes while he was starting and running the company that would grow into ASI, which the Cohn family has grown into the $24.7 billion promotional product industry’s largest membership organization, offering media, technology, marketing and education to help cultivate success and community.

Segel sold the Advertising Specialty Institute to the Cohn family, which remains ASI’s owners, in 1962. Following the sale, he was an ASI executive for several years, but then moved on. Still, while at the helm of ASI in the 1950s, Segel scored some industry “firsts,” such as publishing the Advertising Specialty Register, a directory for the promo business. In 1954, he debuted The Counselor (now simply Counselor), the promo industry’s first trade magazine. In addition to other products and services, Segel introduced ad specialty purveyors in 1956 to the then revolutionary concept of the consolidated catalog, which featured a wide range of products in full color with information about each. It was a huge boon for sales pros.

Ultimately, Segel would establish businesses in a diverse range of fields, including publishing, minting, photography, aviation, software, hospitality and television broadcasting. For his extensive successful efforts, Segel earned the honor of being one of only 10 people named to both the Harvard Business School’s “Great Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century” (published 2005) and the Wharton School’s “The Most Influential Wharton Alumni and Faculty in the Wharton School’s 125-year History” (published 2007), according to a biography.

Over his hard-working lifetime, Segel earned several prestigious awards and accolades, including an induction to the Direct Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame and the Specialty Advertising Hall of Fame. He also garnered a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Electronic Retailing Association and held an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Drexel University.

Segel retired as chairman of QVC in 1993 but remained an adviser until 2013. Notably, QVC’s first broadcast took place on November 24, 1986 and was carried by 58 cable systems in 20 states, a company history details. Today, QVC reaches 380 million homes worldwide through 15 television networks, 11 websites with more than 2.5 billion digital sessions, and interactions with close to 10 million Facebook fans.

“Mr. Segel believed in excellence and giving customers more than they expect,” Ginger March, director of Creative Design at QVC and an employee since the company was founded, said in a statement. “I am fortunate to have been one of his many students and close friends. He was loved and admired and will truly be missed by all who knew him.”

Segel was married to his wife, Doris, for 54 years until her passing in May 2018. He is survived by three adult children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.