I don't know why, out of all the outrageous things in the LuLaRich series, the most annoying thing to me is that Deanne acts like she came up with the idea of MLM all by herself.
The whole story in episode one or two (can't remember which) about her suddenly having the idea to let the first buyer sell clothes at a markup, and then her wide-eyed explanation of how it just tumbled and tumbled into more people doing it under her? BullSHIT, Deanne. You can't take credit for inventing a trashy business model that existed for decades before you came on the scene.
She also kind of acts like her initial idea of selling that man's dresses from the flea market (at a big markup) was some new idea she had. Girl! Come on.
I just watched the documentary Lularich and believe Meri must have a very high ranking within that company and is probably raking in the bucks. Good for her! She works hard and she is a go getter. Also whatever you think of this controversial business, the socializing and camaraderie is probably just what she has needed these past few years. PLUS she is doing really well with the Bed and Breakfast. No wonder she is renting the beautiful huge house in Flagstaff. I wonder what Kody and the other wives think of Meri's financial success??? I think she is truly set for life with all of her business income.
Fuuuuccckk….
DeAnne reminds me of my aunt. Mark reminds me of my old bishop. Their tactics for gaslighting and shaming were taken straight from the church handbook. The shameless nepotism. The holding-back-tears-because-I’m-so-grateful when talking about opportunities the company has given them. Silencing anyone who spoke up. The fucking sexism. The perpetuation of the perfect woman/body shaming culture.
It was like watching my childhood in an episode of the twilight zone. While super interesting it stirred up old traumas.
Anyone else?
For me, I would say Monet - not only is there such a huge history regarding lawsuits , but those in Monet seem to be the scariest Huns to me. They are always trying to turn you regardless of the facts you give. I think it would be interesting to see a doc on them because they are still thriving among all their drama and legal woes.
Has anyone watched the documentary Lularich on Amazon Prime? If so, what are your thoughts?
Just had to share the good news. My mother is a very smart, logical woman with a coveted college degree, but she has a big heart. She stops traffic to help birds across the street. But for the past couple of years, she’s been purchasing R+F products from a friend of hers because she said she wanted to “support her business”. I tried to explain to her that she wasn’t exactly helping her friend, and that the whole company was built on a predatory pyramid scheme, but she said she felt bad and wanted to give her the business anyway.
Well, apparently she watched LuLaRich, and it completely turned her mind around. She feels bad that her friend fell prey to the scheme, but she’s vowed to never buy from them again.
Can’t wait to take her to Sephora/Target and buy her a new skincare regime! Also thank you guys for reminding me daily how predatory and awful these “businesses” are. Never change!
Title says it all! Is there anything similar out there?
Anyone want to discuss? Also, that lady, DeAnne, has crazy eyes in every single shot of her 😳
It seems like they, especially Meri, are top earners which means they probably have significant downlines...it's super exploitative and they're just using their fame to sucker people into keeping them rich. They could have definitely funneled all of their fame into figuring out some sort of legitimate business instead.
I was never a huge Meri fan to begin with, but watching that doc has really soured me on Christine. I know Janelle is involved with MLMs too, but she seems to be less successful at it, so I don't hold it against her as much lol. Anyone else feel similarly?
…that I haven’t been able to stop raving about it to all my friends. I wholeheartedly recommend that all of them watch it, as it’s only 4 hours of their time and provides a lifetime of entertainment and knowledge.
I’ve even found myself wanting to reach out on Facebook to people I haven’t spoken to in years to recommend it and…
…oh my god.
“It all just looked like artistic vaginas” - Episode 3
Who’s watching??🍿
Hearing all these women cry about how they have $20,000 worth of unsold merchandise that they can’t return, I just don’t care.
Why in gods name would they keep ordering this garbage merchandise when they couldn’t sell their previous stock? It’s insane!
They spend the first half of the docuseries bragging about making $40,000 in a single month, then cry that they can’t return shit??
They are absolutely delusional and I don’t have any sympathy for these women that were preying on other women.
Sorry I just had to get that off my chest.
She is in my sorority. The story about her not being able to buy a box of cereal is a blatant lie because at the time she ran a whole instagram account called @vegantimes that showed her eating mass quantities of fruits, veggies, and vegan food. She would eat whole watermelon in one sitting. After college she became a teacher and her (now ex) husband always had a steady job in IT. She was also spotted by many girls in our sorority eating meat at parties and saying “its a cheat day” but then go on her insta lecturing about the meat industry.
That Amazon Prime LuLaRoe takedown doc 'LuLaRich' really opened my eyes to how life-ruining MLM businesses are for people at the bottom. It brought me back to Kandi discussing Bedroom Kandi on RHOA....I looked into it and it's literally an MLM y'all. Even recruiting people to "join' as soon as 2 days ago to have parties to sell sex toys that you have to buy yourself first.
It's all outlined here on her site...this really makes me side-eye her and look at her in a new light. What do y'all think?
I always thought of all the housewives - Kandi was the most sound and above the line with her businesses. But this is definitely fishy. MLM's are often compared to pyramid schemes where 99% of participants report a loss, and only the top 1% of participants make profit.
Looks like Phaedra's "selling pipe dreams to little girls" read she gave Cynthia at the S7 reunion applied to another woman on the couch
and I can’t believe I ever entertained dating a guy that was involved in Amway. Dodged a fuckin bullet lmao.
If you saw my post a few months ago you’ll remember I was very worried about confronting him about it. Thank god it naturally fizzled out and I never had to have that conversation!
What the f**k?!? They say they’re not blood related and never lived in the house together. But wtf?!?!
Anyone else watching??
Edit: researched the answer. Her (and her ex’s) adopted son married their (together) adopted daughter. Both adopted, but legally “half siblings”.
Hope this is ok as a stand-alone, it seemed like a ripe topic of discussion for the crew here and I just binged it and am OBSESSED.
So many potential highlights! The switching between the founders’ interviews as quirky wee family focused people who just found their way into big business by the blessing of God and their own bootstraps-pulling, golly gee, and their if-looks-could-kill deposition footage where they flat out deny everything was incredible. Other personal favourites:
- “We got Mario Lopez, he was WAY under budget.”
- “I’m sorry, a boat with a bunch of white people…not for me.”
- “Which is sad, because I loved Kelly Clarkson as a singer.”
Aside from the comedic and jaw dropping aspects it’s obviously devastating how many families were straight up ruined by this. Jill Filipovic, who’s interviewed in the doc, has a good article about the specific nature of this kind of preying on mostly white, Christian, conservative women: https://t.co/CF0Uz5Yfzq
Edit: further reading/listening/watching as suggested by people in this thread!
Podcasts:
"Sounds like MLM but OK" interviewed Courtney Harwood (@jaded_adhesiveness82)
"Life After MLM" by Roberta (@northernmess)
Tiktok
RobertaLikeWhoa/bertalikewho2.0 - Roberta from the doc (@northernmess)
In the Lularich documentary DeAnne mentioned that LuLaRoe used Excel and Google Docs to keep track of inventory and so on because "they tried fancy software but it was obselete as soon as they set it up."
My father is a software engineer and he works on configuration management and databases and he works for a company that creates software products to support infrastructure.
They will do everything for you top to bottom, if you want. They will consult with you on which program to use, customize it for you, set it up in a timely manner, and train your employees to use it. Nobody wants to be stuck with obselete software and companies are well aware of this problem.
So this line struck me as particularly odd. Does anyone know what happened here? Did the scammers get scammed? Did they try to cut corners by buying a package product without the extra consultation and help and end up throwing money away when they couldn't figure out how to use it? Is there some kind of malicious grift going on here? Is it pure incompetence?
- all the top earners were given ample time to paint themselves as victims, when really they were the predators, making their downlines lose millions they didn't have
- the Stidhams got tons of screen time to spout all their bullshit
- people who lost tens of thousands, lost houses, got divorced over the MLM weren't well representend. No ex-husband interviews whatsoever.
What the actual f*%@?!
That’s it. It’s just insane.
My husband gave me the greenlight to sell LuLaRoe in November of 2016. I signed up while watching President Trump win (should have been an omen). On my dad's birthday like 6 weeks later, I got the call between the sour cream and the yogurt at the grocery store. My husband opened a 15k card for my "business." He's a winner - I promise.
Because of the holidays, it took 2 weeks for my inventory to get in. I worked my ass off during that time and grew my group to over 1500 excited women. My launch weekend I sold 40% of my inventory and made something like 3k in sales. All of it went back into LLR for valentine's day and building my brand "deep."
Back then, every payment was made to your bank account - direct deposit.
Honestly, I enjoyed the work, the photography, the social media work.... Two years later I started a comms masters because I enjoyed the work. I didn't focus on recruitment because I didn't think I needed to. It was never about getting other people to join the opportunity, it was about enjoying the work.
In early March, so I have done this for about ten weeks and have sold nearly 30k in product and bought nearly 60k (retail value) in stuff. My son's poor bedroom was the LLR storage room. Our nights were taking photos and shipping and our days were balancing my fist master's and social media work. I couldn't move a product for my life... They just didn't sell in our area (most women had this issue in our local group) and so I said... I'm going to return this. When I signed up, I read the contract, you could return any product that wasn't selling after 60 days for a restock fee... Fine. I just want these 20 pieces gone.
When I emailed my upline for help, I was told 'oh, December 10th that changed. No refunds unless you send EVERYTHING back." Wait... What? That was 11 days before I onboarded. Okay... "so... What?" "Just give them away to grow your group." Because if we tried to sell at a discount.... Ya know, you got the warning.
A couple days later, the announcement came out that everyone was getting a card for their payments for their invoices and no longer getting direct deposits. For a fee, the card balance could be transferred to your dd. So I could no longer use the card to pay for anything unless it accepted Mastercard (of all things). There goes mortgage and, interestingly, paying off my husband's cars that was almost maxed out. Oh, and if you didn't use THAT card for ordering, you had to pay shipping and there was a discount that
... keep reading on reddit ➡
These clothes are hideous. What am I missing? This looks like it’s right out of a Karen’s wardrobe.
Wow. I’m late the game, but damn dude. What absolute pice of shit human beings Deanna and her husband. Like really?! I am absolutely floored.
My BFF was one of the first LLR consultants. She joined in 2014 I believe, back when the maxi skirts were all they sold. She was the typical SAHM that hadn’t really worked and was looking for something to do. I bought a couple skirts from her and thought they were super comfy for work. Then came the leggings. At first it was some cute patterns and solid black. They were soft and thick and only $20 at the time.
Pretty soon, I was living overseas and bored to death. I was stuck at home (no kids) while my husband worked 80 hour weeks and we shared a car. There was a LLR consultant there so I hosted a party to meet other spouses. Pretty soon, it blew up on Facebook and I was probably in 20 different groups. I bought a ton of leggings and dresses and a few tops. Some of the earlier patterns were actually cute and I liked the fitted dresses. I mostly wore the leggings around the house bc it was very cold there.
After a few years, the quality went downhill. I found a few of my “unicorn” prints and within the first wear they had ripped. I enjoyed supporting my friend and buying her stuff if it was cute or she was having a sale. But I soon realized it was a fleeting trend. A lot of the tops were SO oversized I’d go down 2 sizes and they were still huge. Most of the styles just weren’t flattering.
I had enough of LLR but wanted to support my friend. Since she was one of the first consultants (not sure of exact number but under 500), I knew she was doing really well. She never flaunted her money or bought anything super pricey. She wasn’t into expensive designer handbags or clothes, I assume she saved a lot of what she made. But I knew her success was coming from her bonus checks, from the women under her. Then she got breast cancer. She ended up going out of business at the end of 2018. She was going through her treatment and didn’t have the time or energy anymore. So she sold her remaining pieces. We never really talked about the lawsuits or anything else that was going on with LLR, our convos focused on her getting better.
At the end of 2018, I returned back to the US, and in early 2019, my friend was cancer free. We celebrated with a girls weekend and all I ever said was I bet she was glad she got out when she did.
So this week, I messaged to ask if she had watched the documentary and she said yes so I asked what she thought. She said it was very triggering and brought up a lot of bad memories she hadn’t shared. She also said it was very accurate.
Ho
... keep reading on reddit ➡While I loved LuLaRich, I wanted them to go into detail about the sales tax issues and focus more on the people who lost money. I felt like they spent a lot of time on the people who got in early and made a lot of money instead of the majority of people who lost money. Also, while they spent a little time on the manipulative nature of getting people to sign up by putting the money on different credit cards, selling breast milk, etc., I really wanted to hear more about the emotional manipulation that we know is used in these MLMs by uplines.
