Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason have pioneered a new genre in the real crime category, what they call “real comedy”.
2019 Emmy Nominated Documentary Executive Directors / Producers film fraud, Lux at a music festival that turned out to be ridiculously ugly. His latest documentary series, lularichFrom Amazon Prime Video, take a comical look at the rise and fall of LuLaRoe, a clothing company known for its pizza slice print leggings, smiling pineapples, eyeglasses and other great designs.
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LuLaRoe was founded by DeAnne and Mark Stidham, a duo steeped in multilevel marketing: companies like Amway and Avon that sell directly to consumers.
“They started from their garage and had to keep expanding until all supplies were removed from the parking lot, which meant it was contaminated with mold and some of the flavors represented in the film,” Furst explained. Nason and his co-producers Bly Faust and Corey Sheffield Stern appeared on Deadline’s Contenders Television: Documentary + Unscripted. “I think this is a wonderful metaphor for ‘bigger is better.’ “
Stidhams mainly invited women to sell clothes from their homes and these agents were called “fashion consultants”. In true multilevel marketing practices, consultants are encouraged to sign up for other recruits. Each new recruit paid LuLaRoe an initial fee and had to purchase thousands of dollars in inventory that they often couldn’t afford to offload.
“Multilevel marketing is essentially a legal form of a pyramid scheme,” said Nason. “They were sending dreams to families in the United States, which was not reality,” Furst added.
Stern said the company is likely to support women.
“It was covered in a kind of cheap feminism,” she said. “These women were created for failure, not success. My mom was part of a multilevel marketing company when I was a kid and I saw what a loss it was. And this was one of the reasons why I personally wanted to make this document. “
The Steadhams decided to sit down with the directors to present their side of the story, even though they have given up on a scheduled second interview.
Faust, who received an Oscar as a producer in 2015 in the spotlightHe said of Steedhams: “They are very good salespeople and this is what has allowed them to grow and grow. They had a good idea [originally] And unfortunately, they really abused this idea … and they grew very fast and actually used the women who sold them, saturating the market in a way that was just unbearable. And the business went bankrupt there. “
Watch the panel video on Monday.
Source: Deadline
