Strong sales of beauty products helped Evine Live Inc. deliver better-than-expected results during the summer months, the home shopping company said Tuesday.

The popularity of fashion and beauty products on Evine's cable channel and website reflected a payoff in a sales diversification effort that was hurt earlier this year when the company scaled back too far on watches, one of its most popular product categories.

"Over the quarter, we executed a more balanced approach to our airtime mix," chief executive Mark Bozek said in a statement.

The company, based in Eden Prairie, reported a narrower loss of $3 million for the three months ended Aug. 1, its second fiscal quarter. A year ago, its net loss was $4.3 million in the same period. Revenue climbed 3 percent to $161.1 million.

Investors sent the company's shares up 14 percent on the news to $2.23 a share, though they are still trading at roughly half the value they were four months ago.

Evine Live has been trying to rely less heavily on watches and jewelry, which account for about 40 percent of its sales. As it devoted less airtime to those products, however, it saw revenue fall more than expected in the first fiscal quarter.

Bozek said the company tackled many of the problems it faced earlier in the year and said it is "seeing momentum" as new brands build sales.

Mark Argento, an analyst for Lake Street Capital Markets of Minneapolis, said the company's latest results showed its new strategy is "starting to bear fruit."

"We were pleased to see the rebound in revenue growth driven primarily from beauty and fashion and not its legacy jewelry/watches business, which hurt them in Q1," Argento wrote in a research note.

Bozek has now led the company for a year after being brought in by activist investors who won a proxy fight against previous management. He changed the name of the company from ValueVision Media to Evine Live and rebranded and relaunched its home shopping channel.

Evan Ramstad • 612-673-4241