LuLaRoe may ring a bell in your mind from their boom of recognition in 2013 of bright-colored, buttery-soft and uniquely patterned leggings. They are the patterns that subconsciously come to mind when thinking back to 2013 back-to-school videos on YouTube.
If the name doesn’t bring any memories to mind, the ideal sales representative of LuLaRoe surely will. The terms “#GirlBoss” and “#BossBabe” usually filled their Instagram captions as they showed their followers just how to style their go-to items.
Amazon Prime Video’s September 2021 docu-series “LuLaRich” explores the depths of the company that is said to be started in good faith, but to date is said to be one of the largest pyramid schemes within the U.S. The series offers stories from owners DeAnne and Mark Stidham, plus stories from multiple women who climbed the pyramid to reach pristine LuLaRoe status and those at the bottom who put all they had on the line to be a part of something that promoted itself as a guaranteed methodology wealth.
LuLaRoe to this day defines itself as an MLM, a multi-level marketing company. The grey area between an MLM and a pyramid scheme is that MLMs are legal business models, but have state and federal regulations enforced upon them. A pyramid scheme is essentially a “business model “where the main source of profit is going to the top 1%. This profit is gained by recruiting people below you to “invest” into the business. Both have initiation buy in’s, so, you cannot make money unless you have put money into the business. LulaRoe’s initial buy in stood between 5K-10K.
What started merely as a skirt selling party out of DeAnne’s house, morphed into a a multi-billion dollar company that sold not solely clothing, but a hope and opportunity for stay-at-home mom’s to create a six figure income from home. LuLaRoe sold an idea of life that allowed moms to contribute to their household financially while maintaining their time spent home with their children. The docu-series surfaces the private virtual conference calls, the extravagant leadership and training events, company cruises, and designer purchases made by the employees, all #ThanksToLuLaRoe.
LuLaRoe grew its customer community and retailer community at an extremely rapid rate and the people at the top knew nothing of organizing and successfully running a company of that magnitude. We hear from ex-employees, family members of the owners, independent researchers, and even current employees of LuLaRoe to this day.
They sold the opportunity of you having your own business; you make your own hours, you are in charge of what you get done today everything is under your control and is in your hands.
LuLaRich, offers the sides of the story that the booming facebook groups did not offer. Viewers get the inside scoop on numbers, facts, virtual meetings and most fascinatingly, the lack of responsibility the Stidham’s feel to grant any reparations to their ex-employees. To this day, LuLaRoe’s owners DeAnne and Mark maintain their denial of the claim that their company was a pyramid scheme.
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