'It's very culty': the bizarre billion-dollar downfall of fashion company LuLaRoe
Roberta Blevins first heard about the leggings in the fall of 2015, in a post by a fellow member of a motherhood-themed Facebook group. They were loudly patterned, buttery soft, interesting – clothing functional for chasing around young children, accommodating of changing bodies post-birth, and cute enough to be socially acceptable outside the home. The woman who advertised the leggings said she bought them wholesale from a company called LuLaRoe, and sold them for double the price.
Blevins was intrigued. She was struggling with the alienation of young motherhood and looking to supplement her family’s income, and LuLaRoe offered an alluring, soothing promise: sign up to be a retailer, and you could run a successful virtual boutique out of your home while still being present for your kids.
LuLaRoe seemed to offer “this built-in community, where I knew I could have an instant friendship”, she told the Guardian. As Blevins recalls in LuLaRich, a four-part Amazon docuseries on the beleaguered multi-level marketing company, LuLaRoe women added her to Facebook groups, texted her, invited her to parties that doubled as fashion sales, and showered her with encouragement. By March 2016, Blevins paid $9,000 to become a LuLaRoe consultant and receive a starter package of clothing to sell.
At first, things went well – she was enthusiastic about the clothing, and made money selling LuLaRoe on Facebook out of her home in suburban San Diego, California. But Blevins quickly felt the strain of the company’s precipitous growth, owing to its emphasis on recruiting new “consultants” – people on the “downline” whose start-up costs traveled up the ranks as “bonus checks”. By the end of 2016, what had started in 2012 as a homespun business selling maxi skirts out of the trunk of a car by two Mormon grandmothers had reached over $1.3bn in sales with over 60,000 consultants – and faced lawsuits alleging that LuLaRoe founders Mark and DeAnne Stidham misled retailers and ran a pyramid scheme.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/15/lularich-lularoe-amazon-docuseries
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One of my former co-workers was into this; thank goodness she now is not
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I think she made a profit because she had a ton of sales and then got out. I have a few pieces that are amazingly attractive and classic that I still wear, and I have a frickin ton of those leggings that she just gave me because the whole order was ridiculously small, and I was her only birdlegged friend. 
I think not being able to return that order was what made her get out when she did because she was still selling like crazy. And those weird patterned leggings are just fine as underlayers for winter walking.
I’m definitely looking forward to seeing this show.
