LuLaBullies and Consultant Cannibalism
There has been a LOT of press circulating about LuLaRoe lately. A lot. Good, bad, ugly- they have been in and out of the media eye this past month a bunch. I've read several articles written by friends, strangers, journalists, etc. I've had an opinion and with a bit of reservation, I'm going to share it. I expect to be celebrated by many for telling it like it is, and shunned by more for pooping on their rainbows. Call me shitty... but you will not call me a liar. As a temporary SAHM, I wanted to jump on the legging fad. I saw friends making money and they preached this unity in the sales of bold fabric fashions. Empowerment. Sisterhood. Acceptance. Love. Sign me up, right? I love leggings. I'm wearing some right now. I can sell anything- why not leggings? Made total sense to me! (I've been in sales for a very long time. I went back to the corporate world at an executive sales position just this past month.) I was so excited. My friend who had enrolled me was like- "Wow, I'm doing really well here. This is going to be great for you." I have to admit, I waited with baited breath to get my shipment. It could not come fast enough. Before I go on, I want to make reference to an article published today on Business Insider. The author- Hayley Peterson and I have spoken prior to the article's release. I was quoted in this article very briefly about what arrived in my onboarding box. It is not secret to the LuLaMinions that newbies get a lot of duplicates in their boxes. I'm assuming I am not getting scores of hate mail yet because what I said was old news. LuLaRoe sent me 290 pieces of redundancy. I said it. I meant it. I had more Aztec, Southwest, Navajo, etc. type prints than I knew what to do with. I live just outside Chicago. I was baffled at how this pattern trend was going to "sell like hotcakes" out of my basement shop. Here's the reality: It didn't. I did, however- wholesale it off to consultants all over and I'm sure they sold it in the markets where this pattern is more popular. I should have cut my losses right there and then. But I was so sold on the whimsical patterns- the bears, the lions, the polka dots to no end- like a complete idiot, I reinvested it again. And again. Let me tell you that when I signed up, it was not a month later that I saw an email come across my computer advising all consultants to begin reporting and sending screen shots of other consultants to the compliance department. And you know what? That rubbed me the wrong way. That was the second issue that made me raise my eyebrow. Two strikes guys... you've got two strikes. What happened to minding your own business? What happened to being bigger than an issue? I was raised not to tattle. This was total crap, and I really hated the idea of having to watch my back over leggings. Regardless, I pushed on. I worked the business. (I do not say my business because LLR makes it clear in the contract that you are not actually buying into a business. There is no business. It is NOT your business. It is theirs. A hard fact a lot of consultants want to ignore.) I pushed parties on my friends, got many of them to buy from me. I saw holes, defects, all the stuff everyone else is complaining about anymore. Old news again, right? Then the direction came down the telephone chain gang of misinformation that reps were no longer allowed to be in Facebook BST pages. Screen shot after screen shot from home office emails was being shared in our super upline's team pages. One upline asked us point blank- what business we had even being in BSTs if we are not allowed to be or promote our businesses there? That made me rabid. I messaged her. "My family left communist Russia so I would have the ability to shop wherever the hell I want. I'm not a part of a Facebook group for pedofiles. I'm in garage sale sites. I'm not sure you have the authority to tell me I can't advertise myself in those groups, but I'll give you that. I know for a fact you do not have the authority over me to dictate what groups I can be in and what I buy or shop for." Her response- "You shouldn't be buying from consultants in those groups. You should shop your own boxes first." Right. My own boxes. The shipment I had just got? I lovingly dubbed the box of "Ethnic Dorito print" and "Saved by the Bell Vomit." No lie- triangle print ad nauseum with little squiggly lines reminiscent of African Tribal Mask carvings. The masks are beautiful. I own several. But the carving pattern doesn't suit Doritos, and Doritos are not suited for clothing in my humble opinion. And the Saved By the vomit... er... Bell? Think neon blue base, french fry shapes in highlighter yellow. Squiggles of bright green. Black squares... I'm sure the pattern was to be loved by someone no doubt- but I sure didn't know her. No... I'm not just shopping my own boxes, I had told her. You don't get high on your own supply, right? I saw that in a druggie movie once. No, you sell the stuff you get- and you buy the stuff you want. I was going to support my friends that had the patterns I wasn't getting in my boxes. Lions, Matryoshka Dolls, etc. I wanted those. Who are you to tell me I can't? I went down from her. I reached out to my upline's upline. (My upline was my friend, and she was relatively new and didn't know how real this whole thing was.) What I was told in not so many words was to "do what I'm told". No. Nononono. That simply won't work for me. I just wanted to understand when I gave LuLaRoe the authority to tell me what I can and can't buy. No answers, of course. My upline got three calls back to back and a stern warning that she was going to get a home office call about me. FOR WHAT? For me not being a pushover? For me telling someone with no authority to tell me where I can and can't shop to basically kiss my ass? Here- let me help you in case you're reading. You, upline- can kiss.my.ass. The panic and misinformation being spewed everywhere by consultants worried about getting in trouble for being in BST groups was alarming. I tried to be a voice of reason. "It doesn't say in the contract that we can't be." And the answer I got back was the same time and time again- "We signed a contract with a clause that says LuLaRoe has the right to change policy whenever they want." Oh really? Do you all even read this crap before you sign it...? The contract states they have the right to amend product selection and pricing at any time. They can't make a rule that is a violation of your freedom. If that were the case, as I explained to people- they could require you to chop off your left pinky to stay active. How many of you would actually do it in fear of breaching their contract? No... LuLaRoe is in breach of their own contract with us. Time and time again. Read this thing. There are terms and timelines. Our contracts are a year term with automatic renewal. They can not amend and enforce it without you agreeing to it. If they try, they are in breach. End of story. My favorite piece of advice I handed out was this: A contract is only enforceable if it's legal. If they are asking you to do things that are questionable- I dare you to challenge them. I dare you to dare them to try and enforce it. Scare tactics. And so the saga went on. I dealt with my amazing customers, and I dealt with the royal pain customers. I spent countless hours photographing, uploading, categorizing, on and on and on. And just when I started to wonder if this whole thing was maybe not for me after all- DeAnne got on a conference call and told her loyal following to feed their children cereal and spaghettios for dinner. She told us to hire housekeepers. Why? So we would have more time to be LLR minions 24/7. After all, you are responsible for your success. Why would you stop to feed your kids and spend time with your husbands? I think it's laughable that LuLaRoe blames the consultants that have quit or gone out of business for that outcome. ZERO responsibility is taken for the quality control issues. Holes. Leggings of the same size sometimes upwards of three inch disparity between the measurements... Yeah, tell me again how that's my fault? Tell me again, Mark- that I should use seam fix and learn to sew up holes and sell the damages again. Yeah, he said that. This is the moment when the LuLa Love Spell was broken for me. Don't tell me to neglect my kids. Don't tell me to lie to my customers- a lot of which are my friends. I'm not going to do that. Look, they are of the impression all the prints are glorious. They aren't. There are some really crappy prints that just suck. Everyone has them in their inventory. We lovingly call them donkeys. Donkeys and unicorns. This is our life. Let's not forget that the company had told us they buy about 10% of the prints. THE SAME DAY we got that email, I got a graphic from my upline showing that our patterns are limited and unique to us. Something is fishy in Denmark, folks. So, I decided that after what? Strike number 43, I was just done. I announced my inactivity to my customers, my friends, and anyone else who cared to know. I just couldn't participate. You can imagine my dismay when last week- after not ordering a thing from the warehouse in well over two months, I got an email from compliance with screen shots of my MommyGyver facebook page- as well as my personal facebook profile discussing an online consignment program MommyGyver had promoted one time on the page. I built and recruit for the page. I sold the rights to the page to someone else. I didn't publish that information because I don't think it's relevant. Aka: It's not your business what I did with my business. Right? This consignment page has purchased inventory from LuLaRoe reps that were going out of business. It isn't LuLaRoe exclusive by any means. It was founded after I announced my leaving LuLaRoe. It was promoted after I stopped ordering, and it will do whatever the current owner decides to do with it. Since I am not an active consultant, there isn't much compliance can say to me. But, alas, the bullying email came in and ruined my afternoon. You can guess what verbiage I used to tell the compliance department what to do and where to go.
So now, sitting in my chair of freedom from the most insanely dramatic cult I have ever heard of, I get to watch the shit show unravel before my eyes. Bad Apples consultant groups going wild- ruining consultant's reputations for not allowing them to be horrible humans and treat them like crap. Since when does being in sales mean that you should have to dodge crap being thrown at you in all directions and then thank the righteous beast for giving you her horrible attention? Challenge me on this, and I promise you there will be screen shot upon screen shot shared. There are some really horrible customers out there. Terrible human beings that have learned the LuLaRoe culture tells the consultants to bend over without lube and say thank you, come again. Hell no, no more. On the flip side, there are horrid consultants on obsessive compulsive witch hunts bullying other consultants right out of business. Threats. I have been threatened bodily harm for voicing my opinion on this behavior. Bullies. Cultist, mean, bullies that are wolves hiding in wool suits waiting to shred their competition lest she have a human moment and react emotionally to someone berating her for not answering an email at 2 a.m. Since WHEN do we have to be at anyone's beck and call? Wasn't this whole petri dish shit show intended to afford housewives FREEDOM? I must have missed the change in act- because this isn't the play I bought tickets for. No, I am not going to fake it until I make it. I'm not going to ignore the issues and hope they go away. You had a really great thing going here. You have a lot of people that wanted nothing more than the message to be genuine. I am one of those people. I really hope you don't let your loyal to the death minions down. With great power comes great responsibility, and I am holding you responsible for manipulating a score of women that looked up to you to guide them. Sure, some of them are doing fantastically. But most are not. LuLaRoe did one great thing for me- they gave me a slew of other women to care very deeply for. I have made so many friends that are genuinely good people who are just tired of being abused and manipulated. Thanks, DeAnne- #becauseoflularoe, I have hundreds of friends that are sick of your shit. No one wants to hear about how your designer shoes hurt your feet when we're out here taking loans to pay for leggings that shred like wet newspaper. Thanks but no thanks. Fix the issues. Stop farming out our information, and stop trying to tell us how to live our lives. Compliance was kind enough to send me an email telling me I have the right to quit if I wasn't happy. You're a little late, guys.