September 30, 2019 • 38 mins
We're going back to the days of colorful Trapper Keepers for this one! Lisa Frank is a person and a company, known mostly for colorful designs on school supplies. But for every shiny rainbow, there's a dark cloud.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. Growing up in the
nineties were Technicolor animals writing rainbow hearts and stars reign supreme,
at least on school supplies. The Lisa Frank Company had
more than thirty years of success before bad management and
(00:27):
less than ideal work environments started to dull the shine
on this company's tiara. But despite dwindling sales and changing fads,
it keeps fighting for a major comeback, making Lisa Frank
a Business on the Brink. Hi, everyone on Jonathan Strickland
(00:51):
and I'm Ariel cast In. And this episode requires a
little explanation apparently, right, Ariel, Because you said that you
were chatting with Oaks about the fact that you were
doing an episode on Lisa Frank, and a lot of
them had the same reaction that I had, which was
who is Lisa Frank? Yeah? Yeah, To be fair, I
didn't just pick this out of the blue. This is
(01:13):
a listener request, and the listener request is from Leslie Valdez.
Thank you, Leslie. I knew who you were talking about. Um,
Lisa Frank was an artist in the still is an artist, Yes, UM,
primarily popular in the nineties. She started in the seventies.
She's still around today and of course has some of
that retro fad. And we'll get into all of that.
(01:35):
Um if if you remember school supplies in the nineties,
really you could find her anywhere. It was, especially things
like trapper keepers, trapper keepers, or pencils or stickers or
or erasers. She was the one with the dolphins with
the multicolored ice cream cones, or the unicorns and the
rainbows everywhere, the rainbow leopards. Yeah, cats wearing fluffy cats
(01:58):
wearing jewelry. So like, I had no idea what Ariel
was talking about when she said, let's do Lisa Frank
and so I don't. I don't who what And then
she said trapper keepers. They said oh, and she said rainbows,
Like oh, now I know. Like I my high school
career ended like the trapper Keeper Craze was. I was
(02:22):
through that. It happened by the late eighties, early nineties,
that's when I was in school, but I graduated by
the early nights. It was kind of when trapper Keeper
Craze was dying down, at least as far as I
could tell. Of course, I was also in high school
at that time, where we were all using much more
suber notebooks. Yeah, I was in elementary school when Lisa
(02:43):
Frank was super ashamed of that. You should be proud
that you are not ancient like I am. And I
had a Lisa Frank trapper keeper, but I was not
allowed to stick it in my desk because it took
up too much space. Oh gotcha. So so yeah, we're
gonna talk about this artist and this company, and uh,
to be completely honest, I mean everything in this episode
(03:05):
was new to me. I had not I was not
aware of any of this stuff. Honestly, you know, I
enjoyed Lisa Frank, but I never really dived into it
before this. A lot of it was new to meet
you and kind of surprising. Well let's start with who
is Lisa Frank? All right? Well, Lisa Frank, as we said,
as an artist. She was born near Detroit and she
loved art ever since she was a little kid. Her
(03:28):
dad collected art. He worked, he worked in the mechanic
in the automotive industry, was an art collector, that was collector. Yeah.
Her parents encouraged this in her. They put her in
classes in art classes starting at age five. No cool,
and yeah, so she goes to class, she starts to
learn the craft of art, so she already had the interest.
(03:49):
She actually starts painting when she's still in school, and
by the time she's in high school, she's not just painting,
she's actually selling artwork, like like doing it's a it's
a nice sight hustle. I mean she was making like
like three grand. Yeah, she made three grand selling. Yeah,
I don't know how many pieces. Uh. Apparently she sold
(04:12):
one piece to Leaya Coca. I mean it was Detroit. Yeah.
So yeah, this that was from a piece that was
in jezebel dot com. Jezebel dot com has a huge,
huge article full of documents about what happened to the
Lisa Frank company or what people think was the downfall
of her prominence. Yeah, so I want to give a
(04:34):
shout out to them because if you have more questions
after this, you should definitely check out their article. Right. Also,
we want to point out that a lot of the
information we're pulling from here it comes from like second
hand accounts that have been given to various media sources,
So we're we're doing our best with that as well. Uh,
this is one of those where we're looking at a
lot of like testimonials from people as opposed to things like,
(04:56):
you know, documents that were filed with the SEC or something.
I mean, there are court documents of testimonies. But still
so we'll get into that too. So all right, So
she she's in high school, she's she starts already selling art.
She's already technically a professional artist. What happens after that, Well,
she graduates high school and she starts college. In the
early seventies, she went to the University of Arizona, where
(05:19):
she studied art. Big surprise, and before she started Lisa
Frank Incorporated because she did that. Not too far off
from this point, she tried her hand at making jewelry.
So first she bought jewelry and sold it, and then
she sourced jewelry basically asking for specific things in the
jewelry and then selling it. And then she started making
(05:39):
her own. She made plastic charm bracelets, or at least
charm bracelets with plastic charms on it um and she
launched that when she was twenty. The line of jewelry
was called Sticky Fingers, and again she had pretty good success.
She was selling it in Bloomingdale's and New and Marcus. Yeah.
Not not bad for a twenty year old. That's a
(05:59):
very into a prising young woman at that stage. Uh.
And this meant that she had the was the story
we've seen a thousand times before. People we all know,
making her own jewelries a gateway for very serious things
like making your own line of stickers, yes, which is
what she did, stickers and then buttons, and she sold
(06:19):
that at first. Um, and she changed her company name.
I guess I couldn't find what her original company name was.
I'm guessing maybe Sticky Fingers Jewelry or probably And she
changed her company name to Lisa Frank Incorporated in when
she was twenty four. And within a year she got
an order from the novelty store Spencers. I don't mean
(06:41):
that's another store we should probably put on the brink
at one point, because I remember like that was omnipresent.
Every mall had a Spencer's in the in the eighties
and nineties. And anyway, Spencers puts in an order and this, Uh,
this certainly helped the fledgling business because it was for
a million dollars worth of stickers. Yes, that's that's not bad.
(07:04):
Year old, not at all in two and we're already
kind of getting to the precursors to the brain here.
So yeah, this this is like, this is like setting
up the the the Chekhov's gun that we will later
see fire. That's for those who don't know what Chekov's
(07:25):
gun is, just do a quick Wikipedia search. That's a
drama reference there. Yes, all right, So in two a
guy by the name of James Green started working at
Lisa Frank Incorporated as an illustrator and designer. He was
her first illustrator designer. Okay, and so at this point
he and Lisa are actually still doing all the illustrations
(07:48):
themselves by hand, like there, this is. This isn't computer
aided design or anything. They're making all those designs, all
of the drawing and the painting and the coloring. And
the next year he and Lisa's started dating. Okay, So
I have a feeling that this might come back to
play when we talk about lessons learned. Seven that's when
(08:10):
they launched the school supply line, which would be an
incredible success for the company. Yes, and they also within
the next year started working with computer illustrations, not just
hand drawn illustrations. Yeah, Lisa wasn't as computer savvy at
the time, so that's why it took so long. Also,
computers were newer. Yeah, I mean, it's that's pretty early.
(08:32):
If you're getting into self the self publishing self, like
you're you're doing all this work yourself, You're not. You
didn't come up through the school system learning graphic design
on computers. So yeah, this is you know, it's a
it's a challenge, it's a barrier to entry if you're
self taught. Yeah. Also, by eight James Green was an
officer in l F I. Lisa Frank Incorporated, and by
(08:55):
two he was the president and CEO of the company.
And then a couple of years later he and Lisa
Frank got married and they had kids, and then she
gave over most of the company's operations to him to
run the company while she raised the kids. She would
check in now and then, but he dealt with a
lot of the day to day. And they were the
two shareholders of this company. There were only two owners
(09:18):
stake owners in the company. She was one of them
and he was the other. Yeah. She actually gifted half
of her almost half of her stock to him. Yea,
so he had ownership she had fifty Um, things seem
to be going well. You know. The school supply line,
of course, was a big hit, and Lisa Frank Incorporated
reached its peak of popularity in the nineteen nineties, at
(09:41):
which point Lisa opened a three hundred and twenty thousand
square foot factory in Tucson, Arizona. And yeah, this one,
Uh you like your description that you wrote in the
notes here. It was brightly colored with art and statues
and characters like the ones in the products and illustrations.
It was supposed to be a magical place to visit
and work. Um, except for later on we'll learn that
(10:05):
maybe not many people visited it. Yeah, and maybe working
for Lisa Frank was a different horrible, scary kind of magical. Yeah,
I mean, it was supposed to be all of the
things that she loves. She loves color, she loves animals,
she loves everything that she says is quote unquote girly.
So she wanted to promote that and encourage that and
(10:31):
have it have it just kind of ingrained into company
culture and company buildings and furniture and things. Yeah, I mean,
And and opening a uh factory at this point was
not that out of a thought, because they were making
over sixty million dollars a year at that point, right,
and that meant that she and her husband were getting
(10:54):
you know, a nice, healthy profit. They were the two
stake owners, right for this company. So between nine and
two thousand five, in that decade, they ended up getting
shareholder distributions of more than one hundred million dollars, which,
you know, providing their houses reasonably affordable, reasonably a hundred million.
(11:14):
This is the furthest thing from a starving artist you
could possibly get. Anyhow, the factory was producing two hundred
and fifty million dollars of product a year, according to
a report from CNN, So I'm gonna guess that that
number is fairly accurate. Okay, So we're building up here.
We've got a company that is doing crazy popular business
(11:41):
in the nineties, hundreds of millions of dollars in sales
and you know, hundred million dollars in profit over the
course of ten years. You've got an artist founder who
has put that stamp on the company itself. Where do
things start to go wrong? Because right now just sounds
like this was just a almost the Willy Wonka and
(12:04):
the Chocolate factory kind of company. UM. If it was,
then her employees felt like very um, poorly treated in
Polopas apparently. Oh interesting. Yeah, there was a lot of
high turnover. On top of that, there was also um,
you know, just changing market like you have to do
(12:24):
with fads. They come and go. Sure, Yeah, some things
are a fad, some things are a trend, and it's
good to know the difference between the two. And I
will definitely get more into that, but I think first
we need to take a quick break, Okay, Ariel. Before
we went to break, you were talking about how there
(12:46):
were some UH employees who were starting to express unhappiness,
like there was a high turnover rate. That was just
sort of the tip of the iceberg, though, because you
have some very specific incidents here in our notes, starting
with some people who were actually responsible for building that
(13:08):
factory we mentioned before the break. Yeah, so the contractors
in the builders, at least some of them, filed a
four million dollar lawsuit against Lisa Frank Incorporated UM because
they were saying they hadn't been paid for their work
in building the factory. Right, And this was just the
very beginning of that change in public perception of the company.
(13:31):
Because by two thousand one it had a very different reputation,
at least in the Tucson, Arizona region. Right. Yeah, people
would call it the crappiest place to work in the world.
It had a nickname of the Rainbow Gulog because again,
this factory was like again according to Jezebel dot com
(13:52):
and then some other personal accounts. Um. I don't know
how widespread that was, but I've seen it referenced a
few times. Um. It just people would warn against working
at this company. That's yeah. I mean that's obviously anytime
you run across that, like let's say you go on
the glass door or something and you're just trying to
get a quick snapshot of what is it like to
(14:15):
be part of this organization and you start seeing things
like that, I mean that's never good. And if you're
seeing like that's the overwhelming consensus, that's that's a huge warning. Yeah,
They're glass door rating is ridiculously low, and it has
I mean, it has a review from two thousand nineteen
on there. Um, I don't if the person said they
(14:37):
were former employees, So I don't know how far back
how far back it was, but reports and reviews both
both on glass Door and other places, say that the
factory has poorly maintained, deadlines are poorly organized, the company
lacked compassionate management, talent wasn't nurtured and guided. And that's
all putting it very nicely. Um many reports say the
(14:59):
man it was often outright cruel. And again we'll get
the more we talk about this will uncover more of that.
Just trying to sound like the factory and lame is
where the foreman is just the absolute worst tyrant in
the world. And in val Jean, the owner walks in
is like, whoa, I totally had no idea. Yeah, people
(15:21):
say they were micromanaged and underpaid. Uh, that they weren't
allowed to talk to each other or have visitors, and
that you know, well Amazon has sure, but that also
doesn't like a lot of talking. But they as they
also get a lot of criticism for that very fact.
I mean, you've seen a lot of calls for boycotts
(15:41):
of Amazon on things like Prime Day because of the
conditions that have been reported in their warehouses. So yeah,
this is I opening stuff. It's also I mean, it's
just also such a juxtaposition of the appearance of the
products is all bright, shiny and happy, and then these
stories which could not be further from that appearance. Yeah.
(16:04):
I mean a lot of companies are poorly organized, a
lot of companies are poorly maintained. UM, and especially in
later years of Factory, was poorly maintained as things continued. Yeah,
all right, but I mean it's really hard to work
with management who is not appreciative, and most of that
(16:26):
blame falls on James Green. Yeah. There were a lot
of allegations made against him, and we're not necessarily saying
these allegations are true. We're saying that people made these
allegations against him. I mean, he there were rumors that
he did drugs, that he cheated on his wife that uh,
and and that he was going to take the company
(16:47):
UM and specifically rumors that he was cheating with the
VP of Lisa Frank Rhonda Rolette. Yeah. Lisa didn't get
very high marks herself from several of the former employee reviews.
I've read like she would watch over your shoulder while
you work and corrected you. She'd correct you and it
wouldn't always make sense. Um. There were some accounts of
her yelling and threatening lives of employees. If they messed
(17:10):
up a presentation or if mistakes happened a little extreme.
It seems a little extreme, but most most of what
I've read, Um, most of the fault goes to James.
Not all of it, but a lot of it. Um,
they said, I mean, it really chalks up to the
fact that Lisa and James are not business people. They
(17:34):
didn't really know how to run a business. Lisa had
a great product and she had great design concept, but
running a large company she wasn't. That wasn't her that
wasn't her skill set. Yeah. And he had been hired
on as an illustrator yeah. Yeah. And that they just
weren't nurturing the people who could help them succeed. Um.
In two thousand one, the factory was listed for sale
(17:57):
for the first time. Yeah. Um, And I take it
since you said for the first time there were no buyers,
I don't believe. So it's been on and off the
market I think up until this point today. Um. Between
the year two thousand three and two thousand four, UM,
eighty employees walked out with very little notice or reason
(18:19):
because they were just done. Well, how how many how
much of that? How big was their workforce? Entirely like UM.
I saw some reports saying somewhere around three fifties, some
some saying around four hundred. Okay, so that was a
significant number of their employees. Yeah. Yeah. And then in
two thousand four there was a large round of layoffs,
(18:40):
bringing staff down to around so the people who got
out might have just been like, at least I got
to leave on my terms. I mean, there was a
lot of turnover, so a lot of people left on
their terms or got fired on Sundays when they didn't
know what was going on or why, so they'd come
in and find out they don't have a job. Yeah, yikes.
(19:00):
In two thousand five, it looks it looked like Lisa
Frank was trying to correct course. She divorced her husband.
Some reports say she had been toying with that idea
for a while, but she was worried about how it
would affect the company. Some reports say that he was
abusive to her, like he was abusive in the company.
She sued him for poor management of her company, h
of the people and the funds within the company. UM
(19:24):
and James and Rhonda both got really, really, really negative
reports from the employees that Lisa was able to get
affid David's from regarding this. So the content of those
statements painted a pretty grim and uh and unflattering picture,
(19:46):
which again is in line with the stuff we've already
said earlier in this episode. Right. Yeah, people said that
Green was intimidating and abusive, grading disrespecting, and these are
words I'm pulling directly from the court documents. Yeah, this
isn't just like a piece that sums everything up. Yeah,
he called the names, he threatened them, he would monitor
(20:09):
their phone calls and emails for no apparent reason other
than he just didn't trust them. He harassed people, He
let people go without reason, which that's iffy because cause
for firing, there's you can fire people for a lot
of reasons. Yeah, if you work in certain states like ours,
you can fire them for no reason. Yeah, and then uh,
(20:36):
you know, the these documents also said that Ronda was
helping enforce him enforce these tactics, and she was also
abusive as well, which goes back to that rumor that
they were having an affair. Um, I could go on
and on. That's just a small sample of the things
people said that he did in the company and the
ways that he was taking the company. We don't have
(20:58):
time to go into all of them. It would be
also just be depressing. Yeah, and they are personal people's
personal I guess testimonies. Um. But you can look up
these documents online if you're really interested. And uh, James
Green was not going to go quietly. He actually would
(21:18):
counter sue the Lisa Frank Incorporated company because he didn't
want to have to give up his nearly half share
of that company. I mean that was the substantial source
of his income, like millions of dollars worth of value there.
But that battle would be one he would lose though.
(21:40):
As we understand it, court cases take awhile. So that
case stretched on for about five years. Yes. Um. Also
in two thousand six, so before this case is over,
Ron Darrowlett's has been sued Lisa Frank in regards to
allegations of stolen property. That lawsuit was dismissed. And we're
not done with lawsuits yet. No, no, So two thousand nine,
(22:02):
James Green tries to evict his wife from the factory
and he is trying to convince his children, his sons
to let him do it, and they had to give
him written consent in order for this to go forward.
And he was trying to do this by established establishing
his own company. He had his own company established, UM
(22:26):
and I think his sons were a part of that,
and that's why they had to have this buy in.
But they didn't buy in. Yeah, they did not side
with him on this case. No, And and since then, uh,
Lisa and James have had fights over um all sorts
of aspects of their lives. And when we say fights,
(22:47):
we mean like like lawsuits, lawsuits over who gets what
furniture even Yeah, I mean, you know, granted, I mean,
there's only so many unicorns you can fit into a house,
but come on, you know, I bet that number is
pretty high for Lisa Frank probably um. By two thousand
and eleven, the Lisa Frank Factory was considered vacant, although
(23:08):
she was still doing some design work there in keeping
some inventory there. UM. She had cut most of her
staff do A due to an exclusive licensing agreement with
CSS Industries, so they were actually making the stuff that
she was designing. They were no longer producing this out
of the factory in Tucson. No. No, they CSS said,
(23:29):
will manufacture and sell your products for you, and we'll
get you distributed nationwide and make you fifteen million dollars
a year. I mean, that's not that's not a bad
you know, that's not a bad piece of cheddar there
fifteen million. But it's still amazing to me to think
that there is a practically empty warehouse where there's like
(23:50):
maybe a couple of offices that people are working in,
and maybe there's like, I don't know, a metric crap
ton of ringers and unicorn stickers. It seems it's the
story is so weird, it is. I mean, we'll get
to it later. Reports say that closer to the time
(24:12):
we're recording this, she was around to six staff members
who then had to I guess report to the office
at the Lisa Frank factory that was getting overgrown with
weeds and basically a ghost town. Well and and to
make matters more complicated in the time frame we were
just chatting about. So this agreement was that she was
(24:34):
led to believe she'd be making fifteen million a year.
That's not exactly how it turned out, though, is it.
No the first year she only made two point eight million.
So she sued CSS Industries in two thousand twelve for
basically breaking their promise and breaking their agreement with her
not getting her enough market saturation to meet the estimated revenues.
And she's tried to protect her intellectual property through this
(24:55):
whole process. That included against other organ zations like ORB
Factory for their designs, saying that their designs were far
too similar to hers. That happened in two Yeah, they
had a court case but settled before the ruling. Yeah,
which frequently happens when when parties aren't entirely certain how
(25:16):
it's going to go. Um Orb had to pay the
jury fees for the trial in that settlement. Yeah, But
like we said in the intro, Lisa Frank is still around,
still trying to make a comeback, and we're going to
talk a little bit about that side of things, try
to get a slightly more positive view on stuff, slightly
shinier rainbow. Yes, but we'll do that after this next break. Okay.
(25:45):
Two thousand twelve was the year where Lisa Frank was
upset that she only got that two point eight million
as opposed to the fifteen million she had been sort
of promised. She also did an interview with Urban Outfitters
in two thousand twelve and This was in an effort,
sort of a marketing effort about launching an apparel line
(26:07):
with sort of a retro appeal to it. Yeah. Yeah,
she was going to sell apparel with her designs on
it Urban Outfitters. Now, the big thing about this interview,
and it's under five minutes in length, is that she
does not issue interviews. She doesn't let people take pictures
of her. She just yeah, she's had demands that when
(26:27):
she appeared in media that they blur out her face. Yeah,
she wants to maintain her privacy. Yeah. So in this
in this video which is online, it's on YouTube, she
talks about her method, she talks about her passions. At
one point she calls herself a lunatic, which I mean,
you know, she puts a lot of moons on stuff
that would make sense. She's yeah, hey, I like that.
(26:50):
I mean she's just very, very passionate about her brand
and her product. And so in that interview, she's just
in silhouette. It's kind of like if you were watching
an interview where someone's witness protection and they're just you know,
their voice has been altered and you only see them
in darkness. Yeah. But the reason that she didn't do
interviews that she didn't want to be seen on camera,
and there are some pictures of her out there is
(27:13):
because she thought she was She wanted to stay out
of the limelight, and she thought she was super super famous.
Like at one point she said she understood how Michael
Jackson felt about fame um and and people gave her
a hard time about that too. But I mean, her
name is her brand. So I guess if if you
(27:33):
go to a store where somebody's ringing you up and
they really like Lisa Frank and they see that your
name is Lisa Frank on a credit card, they might
be excited. I guess. I mean, you know, I am
not one to besmirch anybody on their perception of their
own fame, as I am someone who constantly misjudges the
(27:54):
extent or lack of fame I have. You're super famous
to me, JOHNA, thank you, Ariel. All right. So two
thousand and thirteen revenues are now down to two point
three million a year, so even less than it had been,
uh and so still not like an embarrassing small amount
of money, but it was a far cry from the
(28:16):
glory days of Lisa Frank. Incorporated. Yeah. Yeah, Um, it
was around that point that she had to close all
of her retail stores. Ye. Yeah. This was also when
we found out that her staff, which at one point
had been three fifty maybe four hundred people, was now
down to six, like you had mentioned before the break
(28:39):
and the the interesting thing was that this was a
report that was in the Arizona Daily Star, and Lisa
Frank's own executive assistant said, well, that's not true, and then,
when asked to elaborate, did not do so, and then
referred the reporter to the PR firm that handled press
(29:02):
relations for Lisa Frank Incorporated, who hadn't been hired yet. Wow,
that's so the potential PR firm. Yeah. Yeah, though by
two thousand and sixteen, it was pretty much confirmed that
the staff was down to less than ten. Yeah. I mean,
because you're getting these class door reviews. Um, it's just
(29:25):
it's ridiculous to me. Um. You know a lot of
employees look at it and say that she possibly could
have written the nostalgia market back into prominence. Yeah, because
stuff from the eighties and nineties is coming back. The
eighties and nineties, it's it's a big trend. Um. But
she's estranged all the people who would be really successful
(29:46):
at helping her get there, or at least her company has,
if not heard directly. Um. In two thousand and sixteen,
there was a list price on her factory for thirteen
million dollars or so. UM. But I don't have that
much rattling around, so I guess I'll have to stay.
All the market for warehouses in Arizona it was looking
(30:07):
kind of kind of faded by that. And anyhow, a
brokerage firm was hired to find a buyer for the factory. UM,
I don't think they did. In two thousand seventeen, this
is really interesting, there was a report that there would
be There were quite a few reports. A bunch of
(30:28):
of news outlets were reporting on this, saying that there
would be an animation, live action hybrid movie based on
Lisa Frank characters developed by John she Stack, who did
Air Force One. I mean, that's so exactly who I
would go for. You know, he was excited about it.
Get off my plane and onto my trapper keeper In
(30:49):
at least one interview, he was excited about it. But
there's an IMDb page for it. It was last updated
June of two eighteen, and other than being announced, there's
absolutely no information on this movie. Yeah, so this could
just be another one of those projects that was talked
(31:09):
about but never win any further than that. UH Factory
got it listed again in two thousand and eighteen, but
this time apparently maybe maybe it it had matured in value,
because now it was seventeen million dollar asking price. We're
out of the bubble bubble, the market crash. I can't
imagine it got more valuable in those years, but okay,
(31:32):
maybe just the land around it. Um. And the thing is,
Lisa Frank is still out there, so you can't find
her urban outfitters anymore other than occasionally calendars or Christmas
ornaments that big push they made in two thousand twelve.
They're not selling those adems anymore. But you can occasionally
find her at places like Target or Hot Topic Hot Topic,
the Spencers of modern day. Yeah, I mean Spencer still
(31:53):
still exists kind of at a mall near me. There's
a hot topic on one side and the Spencer's on
the other. Wow, living a dream. Yes, the j C
Pennies they're is still open to UH. You can also
find her is your mall stuck in a time warp.
It's actually very up and coming, thank you. You know.
So she's still in these places, but she's just not
(32:15):
as prolific as she used to be. Um. Now, she,
as we said, largely focuses on licensing her characters and
artwork to other companies and letting them take care of
the production. Um. But even that hasn't always gone smoothly, right. Yeah.
So in two thousand seventeen, she did she collaborated on
a makeup blind with Glamor Dolls and uh, they well
(32:37):
exceeded their Kickstarter goal of thirty thousand dollars. They made
uh ten times that over, but as of two thousand nineteen,
there was still no makeup. No, this is starting to
sound like coolest cooler man, It's rough. So Glamour Dolls,
on the updates on the Kickstarter page listed their expenses,
(32:57):
how much they made, and how much they need to spend.
Part of their costs were five hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in contractual payments to Lisa Frank Incorporated for artwork
and the characters and the licensing and things like that.
That sounds to me like maybe that thirty dollar goal
that they had set. Yeah, that they they maybe there's
(33:22):
something really hanky going on in the background there, like
there were costs that had not yet been discussed before
all that went forward, because that just seems weird to me. Yeah,
they they had some some so they had to have
the designs approved and then they had to have the
artwork done, and then they had to get them manufactured.
And they had some stuff that was approved and some
(33:42):
stuff that had artwork, and some stuff. It was all
over the place. Some stuff hadn't been approved, some stuff
had been approved but didn't have artwork. UM. The last
update on the pages in September two eighteen where they
said they were still trying to deliver products but obviously
they haven't UM. And then in April two nineteen, so
(34:04):
not too long before we recorded this episode, Yes, it
was announced that Lisa Frank would represent America in Venice
Biennial Exhibition, which is a big art to do. UM
and we got word that there might be a Lisa
Frank subscription box in the works. Now. I don't know
if Lisa Frank agreed to this biennial exhibition. I don't
(34:26):
know why she wouldn't, but they did basically wanted to
have a spotlight on I guess teenagers in the nineties
or something. Um, so, I mean she's taking some step forward,
she's taking some steps back, it seems like, but she's
still around. You can still quench that nostalgia crave if
(34:48):
you really want. And I think if we're talking about
lessons learned, I think a big one that I would say,
and this is one that we've chatted about in previous
episodes too, is that that when you are a creative
in individual and you create a successful product of some sort,
it really behooves you to find a business partner who
(35:09):
is more business oriented and has that management skill and
that uh, that outlook and that approach, rather than try
and force someone else who also is a creative individual
into that role, because, as we've seen in many cases,
not just with Lisa Frank, that can that can ultimately
(35:29):
lead to uh a bad situation. Maybe not quite as
toxic as this particular one turned out to be, but
it it rarely turns out well. In the story also
kind of well not kind of. It really drives home
why a lot of companies don't want intercompany dating. Yes, yes,
(35:50):
it's kind of the worst case scenario of that. Yeah, yeah,
I can think of a lot of stories I've heard
about people who got into relationship while they met at work.
I can't think of any that that had quite as
much vitriol involved as this one. But yeah, this is
(36:10):
about his worst case scenario as I can image, Like
we're bordering on War of the Roses territory here and
I'm talking about the film. Um, yeah, that that was
scary stuff. But it's still kind of amazing that her
products still perseveres through that. Well. Yeah, I mean the
talent is still there, right, it's just the it was
(36:31):
the execution, the management of that talent that became a
real issue. It's also I would imagine there was another
challenge of any creative type handing over their their work
to other people. That's always a risky endeavor. I mean,
as someone who has written things that were directed by
other people, that that alone is a challenging situation. It is,
(36:56):
so yeah, I would imagine that that also played a part. Well,
this was a strangely moving story for me because I
you know, again on the surface, it's all rainbows and
uns yeah, and then you look at what's going on
behind it and you realize, Wow, there's there's some dark
(37:16):
stuff here. Yeah, I put a little bit of a
shadow on my own childhood there. Gosh, I can't wait
until we do the Muppets and I somehow get incredibly disillusioned.
That'll that will be all very happy. Yes, yes, I
actually know quite a lot about the Puppets already, but
that's a story for a different time. Well, Ariel, thank
(37:37):
you for all of your hard research into this topic,
and of course thanks to our listener for suggesting it.
We hope that this hasn't completely depressed you. But Ariel,
where can people write to us? If they want to
give us suggestions for future episodes? They can write to
us at Feedback at the Brink podcast dot show, and
you can go to our website that is the Brink
(37:58):
Podcast dot Show. They're going to find an archive of
all of our past episodes, plus information about your two
beloved hosts. And until next time, I have been Jonathan
Strickland and I've been aerial casting. Business on the Brink
is a production of I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works.
(38:18):
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Business on the Brink, a production from I
Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. Growing up in the
nineties were Technicolor animals writing rainbow hearts and stars reign supreme,
at least on school supplies. The Lisa Frank Company had
more than thirty years of success before bad management and
(00:27):
less than ideal work environments started to dull the shine
on this company's tiara. But despite dwindling sales and changing fads,
it keeps fighting for a major comeback, making Lisa Frank
a Business on the Brink. Hi, everyone on Jonathan Strickland
(00:51):
and I'm Ariel cast In. And this episode requires a
little explanation apparently, right, Ariel, Because you said that you
were chatting with Oaks about the fact that you were
doing an episode on Lisa Frank, and a lot of
them had the same reaction that I had, which was
who is Lisa Frank? Yeah? Yeah, To be fair, I
didn't just pick this out of the blue. This is
(01:13):
a listener request, and the listener request is from Leslie Valdez.
Thank you, Leslie. I knew who you were talking about. Um,
Lisa Frank was an artist in the still is an artist, Yes, UM,
primarily popular in the nineties. She started in the seventies.
She's still around today and of course has some of
that retro fad. And we'll get into all of that.
(01:35):
Um if if you remember school supplies in the nineties,
really you could find her anywhere. It was, especially things
like trapper keepers, trapper keepers, or pencils or stickers or
or erasers. She was the one with the dolphins with
the multicolored ice cream cones, or the unicorns and the
rainbows everywhere, the rainbow leopards. Yeah, cats wearing fluffy cats
(01:58):
wearing jewelry. So like, I had no idea what Ariel
was talking about when she said, let's do Lisa Frank
and so I don't. I don't who what And then
she said trapper keepers. They said oh, and she said rainbows,
Like oh, now I know. Like I my high school
career ended like the trapper Keeper Craze was. I was
(02:22):
through that. It happened by the late eighties, early nineties,
that's when I was in school, but I graduated by
the early nights. It was kind of when trapper Keeper
Craze was dying down, at least as far as I
could tell. Of course, I was also in high school
at that time, where we were all using much more
suber notebooks. Yeah, I was in elementary school when Lisa
(02:43):
Frank was super ashamed of that. You should be proud
that you are not ancient like I am. And I
had a Lisa Frank trapper keeper, but I was not
allowed to stick it in my desk because it took
up too much space. Oh gotcha. So so yeah, we're
gonna talk about this artist and this company, and uh,
to be completely honest, I mean everything in this episode
(03:05):
was new to me. I had not I was not
aware of any of this stuff. Honestly, you know, I
enjoyed Lisa Frank, but I never really dived into it
before this. A lot of it was new to meet
you and kind of surprising. Well let's start with who
is Lisa Frank? All right? Well, Lisa Frank, as we said,
as an artist. She was born near Detroit and she
loved art ever since she was a little kid. Her
(03:28):
dad collected art. He worked, he worked in the mechanic
in the automotive industry, was an art collector, that was collector. Yeah.
Her parents encouraged this in her. They put her in
classes in art classes starting at age five. No cool,
and yeah, so she goes to class, she starts to
learn the craft of art, so she already had the interest.
(03:49):
She actually starts painting when she's still in school, and
by the time she's in high school, she's not just painting,
she's actually selling artwork, like like doing it's a it's
a nice sight hustle. I mean she was making like
like three grand. Yeah, she made three grand selling. Yeah,
I don't know how many pieces. Uh. Apparently she sold
(04:12):
one piece to Leaya Coca. I mean it was Detroit. Yeah.
So yeah, this that was from a piece that was
in jezebel dot com. Jezebel dot com has a huge,
huge article full of documents about what happened to the
Lisa Frank company or what people think was the downfall
of her prominence. Yeah, so I want to give a
(04:34):
shout out to them because if you have more questions
after this, you should definitely check out their article. Right. Also,
we want to point out that a lot of the
information we're pulling from here it comes from like second
hand accounts that have been given to various media sources,
So we're we're doing our best with that as well. Uh,
this is one of those where we're looking at a
lot of like testimonials from people as opposed to things like,
(04:56):
you know, documents that were filed with the SEC or something.
I mean, there are court documents of testimonies. But still
so we'll get into that too. So all right, So
she she's in high school, she's she starts already selling art.
She's already technically a professional artist. What happens after that, Well,
she graduates high school and she starts college. In the
early seventies, she went to the University of Arizona, where
(05:19):
she studied art. Big surprise, and before she started Lisa
Frank Incorporated because she did that. Not too far off
from this point, she tried her hand at making jewelry.
So first she bought jewelry and sold it, and then
she sourced jewelry basically asking for specific things in the
jewelry and then selling it. And then she started making
(05:39):
her own. She made plastic charm bracelets, or at least
charm bracelets with plastic charms on it um and she
launched that when she was twenty. The line of jewelry
was called Sticky Fingers, and again she had pretty good success.
She was selling it in Bloomingdale's and New and Marcus. Yeah.
Not not bad for a twenty year old. That's a
(05:59):
very into a prising young woman at that stage. Uh.
And this meant that she had the was the story
we've seen a thousand times before. People we all know,
making her own jewelries a gateway for very serious things
like making your own line of stickers, yes, which is
what she did, stickers and then buttons, and she sold
(06:19):
that at first. Um, and she changed her company name.
I guess I couldn't find what her original company name was.
I'm guessing maybe Sticky Fingers Jewelry or probably And she
changed her company name to Lisa Frank Incorporated in when
she was twenty four. And within a year she got
an order from the novelty store Spencers. I don't mean
(06:41):
that's another store we should probably put on the brink
at one point, because I remember like that was omnipresent.
Every mall had a Spencer's in the in the eighties
and nineties. And anyway, Spencers puts in an order and this, Uh,
this certainly helped the fledgling business because it was for
a million dollars worth of stickers. Yes, that's that's not bad.
(07:04):
Year old, not at all in two and we're already
kind of getting to the precursors to the brain here.
So yeah, this this is like, this is like setting
up the the the Chekhov's gun that we will later
see fire. That's for those who don't know what Chekov's
(07:25):
gun is, just do a quick Wikipedia search. That's a
drama reference there. Yes, all right, So in two a
guy by the name of James Green started working at
Lisa Frank Incorporated as an illustrator and designer. He was
her first illustrator designer. Okay, and so at this point
he and Lisa are actually still doing all the illustrations
(07:48):
themselves by hand, like there, this is. This isn't computer
aided design or anything. They're making all those designs, all
of the drawing and the painting and the coloring. And
the next year he and Lisa's started dating. Okay, So
I have a feeling that this might come back to
play when we talk about lessons learned. Seven that's when
(08:10):
they launched the school supply line, which would be an
incredible success for the company. Yes, and they also within
the next year started working with computer illustrations, not just
hand drawn illustrations. Yeah, Lisa wasn't as computer savvy at
the time, so that's why it took so long. Also,
computers were newer. Yeah, I mean, it's that's pretty early.
(08:32):
If you're getting into self the self publishing self, like
you're you're doing all this work yourself, You're not. You
didn't come up through the school system learning graphic design
on computers. So yeah, this is you know, it's a
it's a challenge, it's a barrier to entry if you're
self taught. Yeah. Also, by eight James Green was an
officer in l F I. Lisa Frank Incorporated, and by
(08:55):
two he was the president and CEO of the company.
And then a couple of years later he and Lisa
Frank got married and they had kids, and then she
gave over most of the company's operations to him to
run the company while she raised the kids. She would
check in now and then, but he dealt with a
lot of the day to day. And they were the
two shareholders of this company. There were only two owners
(09:18):
stake owners in the company. She was one of them
and he was the other. Yeah. She actually gifted half
of her almost half of her stock to him. Yea,
so he had ownership she had fifty Um, things seem
to be going well. You know. The school supply line,
of course, was a big hit, and Lisa Frank Incorporated
reached its peak of popularity in the nineteen nineties, at
(09:41):
which point Lisa opened a three hundred and twenty thousand
square foot factory in Tucson, Arizona. And yeah, this one,
Uh you like your description that you wrote in the
notes here. It was brightly colored with art and statues
and characters like the ones in the products and illustrations.
It was supposed to be a magical place to visit
and work. Um, except for later on we'll learn that
(10:05):
maybe not many people visited it. Yeah, and maybe working
for Lisa Frank was a different horrible, scary kind of magical. Yeah,
I mean, it was supposed to be all of the
things that she loves. She loves color, she loves animals,
she loves everything that she says is quote unquote girly.
So she wanted to promote that and encourage that and
(10:31):
have it have it just kind of ingrained into company
culture and company buildings and furniture and things. Yeah, I mean,
And and opening a uh factory at this point was
not that out of a thought, because they were making
over sixty million dollars a year at that point, right,
and that meant that she and her husband were getting
(10:54):
you know, a nice, healthy profit. They were the two
stake owners, right for this company. So between nine and
two thousand five, in that decade, they ended up getting
shareholder distributions of more than one hundred million dollars, which,
you know, providing their houses reasonably affordable, reasonably a hundred million.
(11:14):
This is the furthest thing from a starving artist you
could possibly get. Anyhow, the factory was producing two hundred
and fifty million dollars of product a year, according to
a report from CNN, So I'm gonna guess that that
number is fairly accurate. Okay, So we're building up here.
We've got a company that is doing crazy popular business
(11:41):
in the nineties, hundreds of millions of dollars in sales
and you know, hundred million dollars in profit over the
course of ten years. You've got an artist founder who
has put that stamp on the company itself. Where do
things start to go wrong? Because right now just sounds
like this was just a almost the Willy Wonka and
(12:04):
the Chocolate factory kind of company. UM. If it was,
then her employees felt like very um, poorly treated in
Polopas apparently. Oh interesting. Yeah, there was a lot of
high turnover. On top of that, there was also um,
you know, just changing market like you have to do
(12:24):
with fads. They come and go. Sure, Yeah, some things
are a fad, some things are a trend, and it's
good to know the difference between the two. And I
will definitely get more into that, but I think first
we need to take a quick break, Okay, Ariel. Before
we went to break, you were talking about how there
(12:46):
were some UH employees who were starting to express unhappiness,
like there was a high turnover rate. That was just
sort of the tip of the iceberg, though, because you
have some very specific incidents here in our notes, starting
with some people who were actually responsible for building that
(13:08):
factory we mentioned before the break. Yeah, so the contractors
in the builders, at least some of them, filed a
four million dollar lawsuit against Lisa Frank Incorporated UM because
they were saying they hadn't been paid for their work
in building the factory. Right, And this was just the
very beginning of that change in public perception of the company.
(13:31):
Because by two thousand one it had a very different reputation,
at least in the Tucson, Arizona region. Right. Yeah, people
would call it the crappiest place to work in the world.
It had a nickname of the Rainbow Gulog because again,
this factory was like again according to Jezebel dot com
(13:52):
and then some other personal accounts. Um. I don't know
how widespread that was, but I've seen it referenced a
few times. Um. It just people would warn against working
at this company. That's yeah. I mean that's obviously anytime
you run across that, like let's say you go on
the glass door or something and you're just trying to
get a quick snapshot of what is it like to
(14:15):
be part of this organization and you start seeing things
like that, I mean that's never good. And if you're
seeing like that's the overwhelming consensus, that's that's a huge warning. Yeah,
They're glass door rating is ridiculously low, and it has
I mean, it has a review from two thousand nineteen
on there. Um, I don't if the person said they
(14:37):
were former employees, So I don't know how far back
how far back it was, but reports and reviews both
both on glass Door and other places, say that the
factory has poorly maintained, deadlines are poorly organized, the company
lacked compassionate management, talent wasn't nurtured and guided. And that's
all putting it very nicely. Um many reports say the
(14:59):
man it was often outright cruel. And again we'll get
the more we talk about this will uncover more of that.
Just trying to sound like the factory and lame is
where the foreman is just the absolute worst tyrant in
the world. And in val Jean, the owner walks in
is like, whoa, I totally had no idea. Yeah, people
(15:21):
say they were micromanaged and underpaid. Uh, that they weren't
allowed to talk to each other or have visitors, and
that you know, well Amazon has sure, but that also
doesn't like a lot of talking. But they as they
also get a lot of criticism for that very fact.
I mean, you've seen a lot of calls for boycotts
(15:41):
of Amazon on things like Prime Day because of the
conditions that have been reported in their warehouses. So yeah,
this is I opening stuff. It's also I mean, it's
just also such a juxtaposition of the appearance of the
products is all bright, shiny and happy, and then these
stories which could not be further from that appearance. Yeah.
(16:04):
I mean a lot of companies are poorly organized, a
lot of companies are poorly maintained. UM, and especially in
later years of Factory, was poorly maintained as things continued. Yeah,
all right, but I mean it's really hard to work
with management who is not appreciative, and most of that
(16:26):
blame falls on James Green. Yeah. There were a lot
of allegations made against him, and we're not necessarily saying
these allegations are true. We're saying that people made these
allegations against him. I mean, he there were rumors that
he did drugs, that he cheated on his wife that uh,
and and that he was going to take the company
(16:47):
UM and specifically rumors that he was cheating with the
VP of Lisa Frank Rhonda Rolette. Yeah. Lisa didn't get
very high marks herself from several of the former employee reviews.
I've read like she would watch over your shoulder while
you work and corrected you. She'd correct you and it
wouldn't always make sense. Um. There were some accounts of
her yelling and threatening lives of employees. If they messed
(17:10):
up a presentation or if mistakes happened a little extreme.
It seems a little extreme, but most most of what
I've read, Um, most of the fault goes to James.
Not all of it, but a lot of it. Um,
they said, I mean, it really chalks up to the
fact that Lisa and James are not business people. They
(17:34):
didn't really know how to run a business. Lisa had
a great product and she had great design concept, but
running a large company she wasn't. That wasn't her that
wasn't her skill set. Yeah. And he had been hired
on as an illustrator yeah. Yeah. And that they just
weren't nurturing the people who could help them succeed. Um.
In two thousand one, the factory was listed for sale
(17:57):
for the first time. Yeah. Um, And I take it
since you said for the first time there were no buyers,
I don't believe. So it's been on and off the
market I think up until this point today. Um. Between
the year two thousand three and two thousand four, UM,
eighty employees walked out with very little notice or reason
(18:19):
because they were just done. Well, how how many how
much of that? How big was their workforce? Entirely like UM.
I saw some reports saying somewhere around three fifties, some
some saying around four hundred. Okay, so that was a
significant number of their employees. Yeah. Yeah. And then in
two thousand four there was a large round of layoffs,
(18:40):
bringing staff down to around so the people who got
out might have just been like, at least I got
to leave on my terms. I mean, there was a
lot of turnover, so a lot of people left on
their terms or got fired on Sundays when they didn't
know what was going on or why, so they'd come
in and find out they don't have a job. Yeah, yikes.
(19:00):
In two thousand five, it looks it looked like Lisa
Frank was trying to correct course. She divorced her husband.
Some reports say she had been toying with that idea
for a while, but she was worried about how it
would affect the company. Some reports say that he was
abusive to her, like he was abusive in the company.
She sued him for poor management of her company, h
of the people and the funds within the company. UM
(19:24):
and James and Rhonda both got really, really, really negative
reports from the employees that Lisa was able to get
affid David's from regarding this. So the content of those
statements painted a pretty grim and uh and unflattering picture,
(19:46):
which again is in line with the stuff we've already
said earlier in this episode. Right. Yeah, people said that
Green was intimidating and abusive, grading disrespecting, and these are
words I'm pulling directly from the court documents. Yeah, this
isn't just like a piece that sums everything up. Yeah,
he called the names, he threatened them, he would monitor
(20:09):
their phone calls and emails for no apparent reason other
than he just didn't trust them. He harassed people, He
let people go without reason, which that's iffy because cause
for firing, there's you can fire people for a lot
of reasons. Yeah, if you work in certain states like ours,
you can fire them for no reason. Yeah, and then uh,
(20:36):
you know, the these documents also said that Ronda was
helping enforce him enforce these tactics, and she was also
abusive as well, which goes back to that rumor that
they were having an affair. Um, I could go on
and on. That's just a small sample of the things
people said that he did in the company and the
ways that he was taking the company. We don't have
(20:58):
time to go into all of them. It would be
also just be depressing. Yeah, and they are personal people's
personal I guess testimonies. Um. But you can look up
these documents online if you're really interested. And uh, James
Green was not going to go quietly. He actually would
(21:18):
counter sue the Lisa Frank Incorporated company because he didn't
want to have to give up his nearly half share
of that company. I mean that was the substantial source
of his income, like millions of dollars worth of value there.
But that battle would be one he would lose though.
(21:40):
As we understand it, court cases take awhile. So that
case stretched on for about five years. Yes. Um. Also
in two thousand six, so before this case is over,
Ron Darrowlett's has been sued Lisa Frank in regards to
allegations of stolen property. That lawsuit was dismissed. And we're
not done with lawsuits yet. No, no, So two thousand nine,
(22:02):
James Green tries to evict his wife from the factory
and he is trying to convince his children, his sons
to let him do it, and they had to give
him written consent in order for this to go forward.
And he was trying to do this by established establishing
his own company. He had his own company established, UM
(22:26):
and I think his sons were a part of that,
and that's why they had to have this buy in.
But they didn't buy in. Yeah, they did not side
with him on this case. No, And and since then, uh,
Lisa and James have had fights over um all sorts
of aspects of their lives. And when we say fights,
(22:47):
we mean like like lawsuits, lawsuits over who gets what
furniture even Yeah, I mean, you know, granted, I mean,
there's only so many unicorns you can fit into a house,
but come on, you know, I bet that number is
pretty high for Lisa Frank probably um. By two thousand
and eleven, the Lisa Frank Factory was considered vacant, although
(23:08):
she was still doing some design work there in keeping
some inventory there. UM. She had cut most of her
staff do A due to an exclusive licensing agreement with
CSS Industries, so they were actually making the stuff that
she was designing. They were no longer producing this out
of the factory in Tucson. No. No, they CSS said,
(23:29):
will manufacture and sell your products for you, and we'll
get you distributed nationwide and make you fifteen million dollars
a year. I mean, that's not that's not a bad
you know, that's not a bad piece of cheddar there
fifteen million. But it's still amazing to me to think
that there is a practically empty warehouse where there's like
(23:50):
maybe a couple of offices that people are working in,
and maybe there's like, I don't know, a metric crap
ton of ringers and unicorn stickers. It seems it's the
story is so weird, it is. I mean, we'll get
to it later. Reports say that closer to the time
(24:12):
we're recording this, she was around to six staff members
who then had to I guess report to the office
at the Lisa Frank factory that was getting overgrown with
weeds and basically a ghost town. Well and and to
make matters more complicated in the time frame we were
just chatting about. So this agreement was that she was
(24:34):
led to believe she'd be making fifteen million a year.
That's not exactly how it turned out, though, is it.
No the first year she only made two point eight million.
So she sued CSS Industries in two thousand twelve for
basically breaking their promise and breaking their agreement with her
not getting her enough market saturation to meet the estimated revenues.
And she's tried to protect her intellectual property through this
(24:55):
whole process. That included against other organ zations like ORB
Factory for their designs, saying that their designs were far
too similar to hers. That happened in two Yeah, they
had a court case but settled before the ruling. Yeah,
which frequently happens when when parties aren't entirely certain how
(25:16):
it's going to go. Um Orb had to pay the
jury fees for the trial in that settlement. Yeah, But
like we said in the intro, Lisa Frank is still around,
still trying to make a comeback, and we're going to
talk a little bit about that side of things, try
to get a slightly more positive view on stuff, slightly
shinier rainbow. Yes, but we'll do that after this next break. Okay.
(25:45):
Two thousand twelve was the year where Lisa Frank was
upset that she only got that two point eight million
as opposed to the fifteen million she had been sort
of promised. She also did an interview with Urban Outfitters
in two thousand twelve and This was in an effort,
sort of a marketing effort about launching an apparel line
(26:07):
with sort of a retro appeal to it. Yeah. Yeah,
she was going to sell apparel with her designs on
it Urban Outfitters. Now, the big thing about this interview,
and it's under five minutes in length, is that she
does not issue interviews. She doesn't let people take pictures
of her. She just yeah, she's had demands that when
(26:27):
she appeared in media that they blur out her face. Yeah,
she wants to maintain her privacy. Yeah. So in this
in this video which is online, it's on YouTube, she
talks about her method, she talks about her passions. At
one point she calls herself a lunatic, which I mean,
you know, she puts a lot of moons on stuff
that would make sense. She's yeah, hey, I like that.
(26:50):
I mean she's just very, very passionate about her brand
and her product. And so in that interview, she's just
in silhouette. It's kind of like if you were watching
an interview where someone's witness protection and they're just you know,
their voice has been altered and you only see them
in darkness. Yeah. But the reason that she didn't do
interviews that she didn't want to be seen on camera,
and there are some pictures of her out there is
(27:13):
because she thought she was She wanted to stay out
of the limelight, and she thought she was super super famous.
Like at one point she said she understood how Michael
Jackson felt about fame um and and people gave her
a hard time about that too. But I mean, her
name is her brand. So I guess if if you
(27:33):
go to a store where somebody's ringing you up and
they really like Lisa Frank and they see that your
name is Lisa Frank on a credit card, they might
be excited. I guess. I mean, you know, I am
not one to besmirch anybody on their perception of their
own fame, as I am someone who constantly misjudges the
(27:54):
extent or lack of fame I have. You're super famous
to me, JOHNA, thank you, Ariel. All right. So two
thousand and thirteen revenues are now down to two point
three million a year, so even less than it had been,
uh and so still not like an embarrassing small amount
of money, but it was a far cry from the
(28:16):
glory days of Lisa Frank. Incorporated. Yeah. Yeah, Um, it
was around that point that she had to close all
of her retail stores. Ye. Yeah. This was also when
we found out that her staff, which at one point
had been three fifty maybe four hundred people, was now
down to six, like you had mentioned before the break
(28:39):
and the the interesting thing was that this was a
report that was in the Arizona Daily Star, and Lisa
Frank's own executive assistant said, well, that's not true, and then,
when asked to elaborate, did not do so, and then
referred the reporter to the PR firm that handled press
(29:02):
relations for Lisa Frank Incorporated, who hadn't been hired yet. Wow,
that's so the potential PR firm. Yeah. Yeah, though by
two thousand and sixteen, it was pretty much confirmed that
the staff was down to less than ten. Yeah. I mean,
because you're getting these class door reviews. Um, it's just
(29:25):
it's ridiculous to me. Um. You know a lot of
employees look at it and say that she possibly could
have written the nostalgia market back into prominence. Yeah, because
stuff from the eighties and nineties is coming back. The
eighties and nineties, it's it's a big trend. Um. But
she's estranged all the people who would be really successful
(29:46):
at helping her get there, or at least her company has,
if not heard directly. Um. In two thousand and sixteen,
there was a list price on her factory for thirteen
million dollars or so. UM. But I don't have that
much rattling around, so I guess I'll have to stay.
All the market for warehouses in Arizona it was looking
(30:07):
kind of kind of faded by that. And anyhow, a
brokerage firm was hired to find a buyer for the factory. UM,
I don't think they did. In two thousand seventeen, this
is really interesting, there was a report that there would
be There were quite a few reports. A bunch of
(30:28):
of news outlets were reporting on this, saying that there
would be an animation, live action hybrid movie based on
Lisa Frank characters developed by John she Stack, who did
Air Force One. I mean, that's so exactly who I
would go for. You know, he was excited about it.
Get off my plane and onto my trapper keeper In
(30:49):
at least one interview, he was excited about it. But
there's an IMDb page for it. It was last updated
June of two eighteen, and other than being announced, there's
absolutely no information on this movie. Yeah, so this could
just be another one of those projects that was talked
(31:09):
about but never win any further than that. UH Factory
got it listed again in two thousand and eighteen, but
this time apparently maybe maybe it it had matured in value,
because now it was seventeen million dollar asking price. We're
out of the bubble bubble, the market crash. I can't
imagine it got more valuable in those years, but okay,
(31:32):
maybe just the land around it. Um. And the thing is,
Lisa Frank is still out there, so you can't find
her urban outfitters anymore other than occasionally calendars or Christmas
ornaments that big push they made in two thousand twelve.
They're not selling those adems anymore. But you can occasionally
find her at places like Target or Hot Topic Hot Topic,
the Spencers of modern day. Yeah, I mean Spencer still
(31:53):
still exists kind of at a mall near me. There's
a hot topic on one side and the Spencer's on
the other. Wow, living a dream. Yes, the j C
Pennies they're is still open to UH. You can also
find her is your mall stuck in a time warp.
It's actually very up and coming, thank you. You know.
So she's still in these places, but she's just not
(32:15):
as prolific as she used to be. Um. Now, she,
as we said, largely focuses on licensing her characters and
artwork to other companies and letting them take care of
the production. Um. But even that hasn't always gone smoothly, right. Yeah.
So in two thousand seventeen, she did she collaborated on
a makeup blind with Glamor Dolls and uh, they well
(32:37):
exceeded their Kickstarter goal of thirty thousand dollars. They made
uh ten times that over, but as of two thousand nineteen,
there was still no makeup. No, this is starting to
sound like coolest cooler man, It's rough. So Glamour Dolls,
on the updates on the Kickstarter page listed their expenses,
(32:57):
how much they made, and how much they need to spend.
Part of their costs were five hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in contractual payments to Lisa Frank Incorporated for artwork
and the characters and the licensing and things like that.
That sounds to me like maybe that thirty dollar goal
that they had set. Yeah, that they they maybe there's
(33:22):
something really hanky going on in the background there, like
there were costs that had not yet been discussed before
all that went forward, because that just seems weird to me. Yeah,
they they had some some so they had to have
the designs approved and then they had to have the
artwork done, and then they had to get them manufactured.
And they had some stuff that was approved and some
(33:42):
stuff that had artwork, and some stuff. It was all
over the place. Some stuff hadn't been approved, some stuff
had been approved but didn't have artwork. UM. The last
update on the pages in September two eighteen where they
said they were still trying to deliver products but obviously
they haven't UM. And then in April two nineteen, so
(34:04):
not too long before we recorded this episode, Yes, it
was announced that Lisa Frank would represent America in Venice
Biennial Exhibition, which is a big art to do. UM
and we got word that there might be a Lisa
Frank subscription box in the works. Now. I don't know
if Lisa Frank agreed to this biennial exhibition. I don't
(34:26):
know why she wouldn't, but they did basically wanted to
have a spotlight on I guess teenagers in the nineties
or something. Um, so, I mean she's taking some step forward,
she's taking some steps back, it seems like, but she's
still around. You can still quench that nostalgia crave if
(34:48):
you really want. And I think if we're talking about
lessons learned, I think a big one that I would say,
and this is one that we've chatted about in previous
episodes too, is that that when you are a creative
in individual and you create a successful product of some sort,
it really behooves you to find a business partner who
(35:09):
is more business oriented and has that management skill and
that uh, that outlook and that approach, rather than try
and force someone else who also is a creative individual
into that role, because, as we've seen in many cases,
not just with Lisa Frank, that can that can ultimately
(35:29):
lead to uh a bad situation. Maybe not quite as
toxic as this particular one turned out to be, but
it it rarely turns out well. In the story also
kind of well not kind of. It really drives home
why a lot of companies don't want intercompany dating. Yes, yes,
(35:50):
it's kind of the worst case scenario of that. Yeah, yeah,
I can think of a lot of stories I've heard
about people who got into relationship while they met at work.
I can't think of any that that had quite as
much vitriol involved as this one. But yeah, this is
(36:10):
about his worst case scenario as I can image, Like
we're bordering on War of the Roses territory here and
I'm talking about the film. Um, yeah, that that was
scary stuff. But it's still kind of amazing that her
products still perseveres through that. Well. Yeah, I mean the
talent is still there, right, it's just the it was
(36:31):
the execution, the management of that talent that became a
real issue. It's also I would imagine there was another
challenge of any creative type handing over their their work
to other people. That's always a risky endeavor. I mean,
as someone who has written things that were directed by
other people, that that alone is a challenging situation. It is,
(36:56):
so yeah, I would imagine that that also played a part. Well,
this was a strangely moving story for me because I
you know, again on the surface, it's all rainbows and
uns yeah, and then you look at what's going on
behind it and you realize, Wow, there's there's some dark
(37:16):
stuff here. Yeah, I put a little bit of a
shadow on my own childhood there. Gosh, I can't wait
until we do the Muppets and I somehow get incredibly disillusioned.
That'll that will be all very happy. Yes, yes, I
actually know quite a lot about the Puppets already, but
that's a story for a different time. Well, Ariel, thank
(37:37):
you for all of your hard research into this topic,
and of course thanks to our listener for suggesting it.
We hope that this hasn't completely depressed you. But Ariel,
where can people write to us? If they want to
give us suggestions for future episodes? They can write to
us at Feedback at the Brink podcast dot show, and
you can go to our website that is the Brink
(37:58):
Podcast dot Show. They're going to find an archive of
all of our past episodes, plus information about your two
beloved hosts. And until next time, I have been Jonathan
Strickland and I've been aerial casting. Business on the Brink
is a production of I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works.
(38:18):
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Business on the Brink News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Ariel Kristen Kasten
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