Glamour Dolls failed to comply with those obligations when it engaged in a
failed online advertising campaign on Kickstarter, using LFI, Lisa Frank's brand
without LFI's approval and then refused to pay royalties due when LFI properly
terminated the party's contracts as a result of Glamour Dolls' misconduct.
Wait a minute. She didn't know about the Kickstarter? Hello my friend, I will
honestly tell you that until late last night, I did not think that I was filming
a video about Lisa Frank and Glamour Dolls today. I actually had a full video
planned about preservative-free cosmetics and how freaking ridiculous and dangerous
preservative-free cosmetics are. But then I got a very interesting comment from a
person named "Fake Goth Girl." Okay. I get a link. The link is to a court document
that I had not previously had access to. This document is Lisa Frank's point of
view. It is her counter suit. This is Lisa Frank saying "Glamour Dolls is the bad
guy, not me. I didn't do anything wrong - they're the ones that did something
wrong." So in today's video, I want to go over Lisa's side of things - what she says
in the court documents is the reason why she pulled out of her contract with
Glamour Dolls that left backers of the Kickstarter out all of their money - over
$400,000 of their money, including my money. My $75? Gone. If you have no idea
what I'm talking about, that's because this is Part 2. I strongly strongly
suggest you please watch Part 1 of this. It will be linked below. It will be up in
a card. It is the background for this video - this video might not make sense
if you don't watch that one first. If you don't feel like you have time for an hour
and a half long video, what you can do is you can scrub through the timestamps, kind
of get the idea of what it is. You can also play it on 1.5 speed if you want to.
And I will tell you that the average amount of watch time on that video for a
single view is about 40 minutes. That has literally never happened on my channel.
This is a story that I think you want to hear and and that I think that you are
going to be engaged in if you choose to. That being said, we are starting at Part
2. I'm assuming at this point that you have seen that video and that you have
that background knowledge. And also side note, I mentioned this at the end of,
the video, but there's probably about 40 comments mentioning Bailey Sarian's video
on Lisa Frank, based on the Jezebel article that we talked about in the first
part of this. Yes, I am fully aware of Bailey's video. I have met Bailey. I have
collaborated with Bailey. Bailey did a fantastic job on that video. That video is
more about Lisa Frank as a person, so if you want even more context for the story,
I highly recommend you go watch Bailey's video as well. What we're gonna do with
this part is I'm actually gonna put Lisa Frank's lawsuit on the side of me so if
you are fluent in Legalese, you can follow along and see the match up of what I'm
saying. Surprisingly, a lot of is is pretty clear cut and there isn't a ton of
lawyer language in this that was difficult to understand. So if you would like to
read along, it is going to be next to me over here. Here we go. So this is what
Lisa says. This is her side of things. This is all about the deal in 2016, the
original deal that she had. Lisa says they struck the deal in June of 2016 that would
end on December 31st of 2017 - that matches up with Glamour Dolls' side, so
I'm assuming there's legal contracts, so there's evidence of this. So Glamour Dolls
in that original contract, agreed to pay Lisa Frank 15% royalty on the net sales
of the products made under the deal, with a minimum payment of $100,000 for the
duration of the agreement, including a $25,000 advance. Glamour Dolls promised to
do their best, to make, sell, promote, and market the products to get as many sales
as possible, always focusing on high quality. Now this part is very very
important because this is really the root of why everything went wrong. They had to
get Lisa Frank's approval on literally everything, from the design concepts to
the artwork, to the molds for production, to the final product samples before going
into production. Lisa Frank had the right to approve or reject the elements and
Glamour Dolls had to follow Lisa Frank's directions on quality standards. Now
listen to this because this is part of the reason why things were taking so long. So,
for designs, Glamour Dolls had to wait up to 10 business days - that's about two
weeks or so - for Lisa Frank to approve or reject anything that they submitted to
her. If Lisa didn't respond in time, Glamour Dolls was allowed to ask after
those 10 business days, "Hey, what's going on? I need a full description of why you
reject this or I need an approval." But this is the kicker! Because even after
approval, and remember, this is according to Lisa herself, Lisa could stop the
production and distribution of the products if they didn't meet her quality
standards. That's a subjective thing - that is not something that can be
measured. Lisa can just for any reason, just say "This doesn't meet my quality
standards" and stop production at any point. And it wasn't just for production
of product. It also had to do with advertising, packaging, display methods,
press releases - anything using Lisa Frank artwork - Glamour Dolls had to run this by
Lisa. They had to wait for those 10 business days and then if she didn't
respond in 10 business days, then they had to poke her about it and be like "Dude,
what's going on?" They had to keep poking her if she didn't respond after those 10
business days. So remember this original contract that I personally believe was to
create the blush, the highlighter, and the two brushes - that contract was ending
in December. But remember the Kickstarter had started in February. We're now in
December. February - they promised backers 10 additional products beyond these four
that had already been funded. Lisa's contract is about to end, so they need to
start a new contract. This is what Lisa says was in the new contract: same 15%
royalty on the net sales of the products plus 20% royalty on sales made directly to
retail customers. So this would be if people bought it off of Ipsy's marketplace
or if people bought it from Hot Topic, or at one point they were talking to
Walmart - any of those, Lisa would get a 20% royalty off of. Beyond that, in the
first contract, Lisa asked for at least $100,000 for her fees. In the new
contract, Lisa upped that to $500,000. That included an up front payment of
$125,000 that needed to be paid when the contract was signed. Three more payments
would be paid throughout the year to total that $500,000. The rules for making the
products were pretty much the same as the first contract. All of the levels of "you
need to send it to Lisa and she needs to approve it" and then the 10 business days
- all of that was pretty much the same. The only thing that changed, which we'll
find out more about in just a minute, is that they did not have to get pre-shipment
approval. So Lisa has already approved the final draft of the product, they have
put that into production, they now have the products - they've got thousands and
thousands and thousands of these products - they don't have to send those products
to Lisa for approval anymore. But there is a clause - because of course there is -
if there were any production problems, if after all of these things were sent out
Lisa decided that there was a production problem, there was something
she didn't like, Glamour Dolls would have to pay damages for that. What would those
damages be? I have no idea, it's not in here. Another thing that's very important
in Lisa's side of the story is that they said that Lisa could end the deal
immediately if Glamour Dolls broke certain rules, like not following the approval
process or having production issues 3 times. If Lisa decided that she was
going to terminate the agreement, Glamour Dolls had to not only stop making
products, they also they had to stop selling their existing products. Then they
had to turn over the rights to the artwork. Anything that Lisa had created
for Glamour Dolls would now be owned by Lisa. And you might be seeing where this
might be going - maybe if you watched Part 1. Because she did that. That happened.
In context, you have to remember that this is 3 months past the date that Glamour
Dolls had promised products would be done and shipped to backers. So they are deep
deep in it now. They are sending out that digital Christmas card, where people can
send it to their families, saying "Hey, you know, you might be getting some Lisa
Frank products that I bought for you at some point. This is what's coming." That's
where we're at. A lot of the backers are already irritated by this point. From
Lisa's side, she says in her court documents that LFI, or Lisa Frank
Incorporated, fully performed its obligations under the license agreements -
I do believe Glamour Dolls would argue against that. They say specifically
Glamour Dolls repeatedly failed to meet their responsibilities under the
agreements they had with Lisa Frank. This is how Lisa says Glamour Dolls messed up.
And remember, she's going to have to prove this for her counter suit. This is what
she says - she says they didn't put in enough effort to produce, distribute,
promote, and sell the products that they were supposed to. She says that they
didn't aim to sell as many high quality products as they could, that they had
signed off in their contract. She says that they use Lisa Frank artwork in ads
and packaging without getting approval first, which was against their rules of
the contract. She says Glamour Dolls was late in making and delivering the
products, which they were. She says that Glamour Dolls didn't follow the agreed
upon process for getting products inspected and approved, that they didn't
pay the royalties and the minimum amounts that they were supposed to, and that they
used the Kickstarter to sell products without getting the okay from Lisa Frank
Incorporated, which was of course not allowed. Finally, they say that Glamour
Dolls promised products to backers and then never shipped them out, which is
true. But the question is: why didn't they ship them out? What was stopping them
from doing it? Was it a fault of Glamour Dolls or was it a fault of Lisa? We're
still in Lisa's perspective, so let's follow that. Lisa says that even through
all of the things that I just listed - the things that are in Lisa's filing - she
continued to try to work with Glamour Dolls to make things work. She says she
did this only because she felt like, if she didn't continue with Glamour Dolls and
see this through and get the backers what they ordered, that it would damage Lisa
Frank. It would damage her and her brand. It wasn't about making sure that people
got what they paid for, it was about the damage it would cause to her reputation
and her brand's reputation. She says in her statement that, you know, that Glamour
Dolls had made all these promises and they failed to go through on them, that
they even said that they were shipping things to people that they never shipped
to them, which I don't know if it's actually true. Because from what I've
seen, anybody that was supposed to get the eyeshadow and the bronzer and the
postcard did get those things. There is some question, at least in the comments
underneath my last video of whether people who ordered the brush separately, whether
they actually got their brush. So maybe that's what Lisa is talking about. Lisa
says that Glamour Dolls ignored rules that they had to follow to get Lisa's
approval before making anything. She says that they attempted to make or change
products without talking to her first. And also that they didn't give her the
samples required that she needed to review. The perspective here is that
because of those failures, people started blaming Lisa Frank and not Glamour Dolls,
where she's saying it wasn't her fault, it was Glamour Dolls' fault. She said that
people began to think that Lisa Frank was scamming them, leaving negative comments
and complaints online that damaged LFI's reputation. It was only because Glamour
Dolls broke their side of the contract so many times that she ended the contract
formally in July of 2018, which is what Glamour Dolls had said, that she abruptly
just ended the contract. What Glamour Dolls had said was before she ended the
contract, she required them to pay that final $125,000 to her and then once she
got the money, she terminated the contract and that they didn't know she was going to
do that when she took the money. Supposedly, LFI reminded Glamour Dolls
that they needed to do the things that were in the contract, that if she ended
it, that they needed to do - things like returning all the artwork and paying any
royalties owed. However, she says Glamour Dolls didn't pay what they owed or follow
through on other responsibilities after the termination, leading to more problems
and losses for LFI. So at the final part of the complaint, Lisa says "This is what
I want the court to give me." She says she wants to be paid damages, which means all
of the money that they should have received under the agreements with Glamour
Dolls - the exact amount of how much she should be paid would be decided at trial.
Then she wants to be paid back for all of the costs and all of the expenses and the
lawyer's fees as allowed by law. She also wants to receive interest on any money
awarded to them, both before and after the court's decision at 18% per year and it
looks like, you know, this happened in 2018, it's now 2024, so that's a lot of
freakin' interest. I'm not going to do the math in my brain right now because it's
physically and mentally impossible for me but that's a lot of money. And finally,
she's like "And if the court wants to give me something else, if you think
there's something else that's fair, feel free. You can give me that too." So that
is Lisa's filing. I have lots of thoughts my friend. Do you have thoughts? Because
if you have thoughts, put 'em in the comment section because I'm wondering if
we have the exact same thoughts. That's what the collective brain is all about, is
us bouncing ideas off of each other and in a recorded video, it's a little harder. So
if you have thoughts, definitely leave them in the comments. I'm gonna tell you
mine. Okay, so I have questions. [laughs] I have 3 major questions. The first one is
"What was the timeline for approving the Kickstarter?" Because eventually, Lisa was
participating in the Kickstarter, at least it looks like she was participating in the
Kickstarter. So I am curious what Glamour Dolls' side of this is, in that do they
say that they did the Kickstarter without talking to Lisa? Because I noticed
something that was in their paperwork that they filed. They label Kickstarter as a
business that they were trying to get to work with, right? So it's listed in with
Ipsy and Hot Topic; they also list Kickstarter. So it was seen by them - it
looks like - as just another way to sell products and I don't know if that was in
the contract, that they had to clear what retailers they were gonna work with with
Lisa. Where I think that Lisa may have them on this is that they had to use Lisa
Frank artwork and they had to promote this using Lisa Frank branded stuff for the
Kickstarter before it even started. Remember Candy's video. I wish I could
show you the video - it is killing me that this video is private and I can't show
you the full video. But Candy clearly uses Lisa Frank artwork in the video to
promote this Kickstarter. If Lisa didn't know about the Kickstarter, then she
didn't approve the artwork to be used in Candy's video or any other promotional
things that they did for the Kickstarter. So then Lisa would have them on that.
That's what I'm thinking most likely happened - I mean of course it's possible
that Glamour Dolls did talk to Lisa and tell her about the Kickstarter beforehand
and did get all of the artwork approved and all of that, but it sounds like Lisa
is saying "No, that didn't happen." So my next question associated with that -
that's kind of a sub question to question number 1 - is "When did Lisa find out
about the 10 products that they promised to the Kickstarter backers? When did she
agree to that?" Because it seems like that first contract from 2016 was really for
those 4 products that they actually did produce and put out there - the blush
brush, the crease brush, the bronzer, and the eyeshadows. Single eyeshadows, not
eyeshadow palettes, the single eyeshadows. The ones that were sold at Hot Topic. It
is very very likely that Lisa was on board with the Kickstarter about a month after
the Kickstarter started because in March, they show posts that are specifically from
Lisa, participating in encouraging people to enter these contests, to perform these
tasks, to show their nail looks and things like that. Lisa is posting there. So if
this is really Lisa posting - which it doesn't really make any sense to me that
it wouldn't be Lisa because Glamour Dolls wouldn't be able to, like, hide that from
Lisa - they would have to explain that so it doesn't really make sense to me
that that wasn't actually Lisa posting. But she was clearly participating and
on board in March. Another clue that Lisa was involved in the Kickstarter from the
launch of the Kickstarter was that just a few days after the launch, Glamour
Dolls posted that Lisa was going to go into her vault and the first 1,000 backers
were going to get a very special gift from Lisa in their box when they got their
stuff. They would get a second - what they called a treat - if they hit 2,000 backers
and that Lisa had something really special planned if they made it to 10,000 backers.
So I'm very curious to see if this piece comes out in court. My second question is
"Why the hell did Glamour Dolls sign this terrible ass contract?" This is the most
bull**** contract I think I have ever read. It is absolutely nuts. The part that
is the most unbelievable for me is that Glamour Dolls signed this is the whole
approval process. It is absolutely ridiculous. Both sides agree that this was
the process. So they have an idea, right? They start with the idea. Let's use the
Trapper Keeper palettes as an example. So they have an idea that they want to
create a palette that looks like a Trapper Keeper. So they get this plain white
Trapper Keeper palette made by the factory. Glamour Dolls then takes this
white packaging, this plain plastic packaging that's the mock-up, send it to
Lisa, wait 10 business days. If she doesn't answer, they have to poke her and
get her to give feedback. If she doesn't approve of it, Glamour Dolls then takes
her ideas, whatever she wants changed, and lets the manufacturing facility know. Then
they get another mock-up. Then they send that to Lisa. They wait 10 days, they wait
for the feedback. All of that happens all over again until Lisa's happy. I didn't
see anything on either said that said Lisa had a limit to how many changes she could
make. So let's assume she's now approved the mold. Now they have to wait for Lisa
to make the artwork. Once the artwork comes in, again, they send it over to the
manufacturer. The manufacturer puts it on the product. Then Glamour Dolls has to
have two samples of it that they then send over to Lisa and wait those 10 business
days again. If she doesn't respond, then they poke her - same process all over
again, where she can either reject it or accept it. Do you see how this is so
freaking ridiculous? Because it's not even over then! Even after Lisa has approved
the final designed product, when they manufacture it - let's say they make
10,000 of them, because this did happen - they make 10,000 of them, they have to
send 2 of the 10,000 to Lisa for final approval before they can ship those out
to customers. And I will tell you my friend, this actually happened -
according to Glamour Dolls - with the vegan leather makeup bag. This is the
draft picture of the vegan leather makeup bag that was not designed, that people
were really excited about. This is the final design that was supposedly "The
One," the makeup bag. Well it turns out, according to Glamour Dolls, Lisa didn't
like this and after they had printed 10,000 of these, Lisa said she didn't
want it to be vegan leather anymore; she wanted it to be glitter plastic. And
because of the sh**** ass contract that they signed, they couldn't sell those
10,000 bags that they had already made because she had approved the sample. They
had to start all over again with a glitter bag design. I mean how f***ing ridiculous
is this? The fact that Glamour Dolls signed this contract, did they not have
a lawyer read it? Like what happened? How did this get through? From the very jump,
this should have just never happened and I'm sure Glamour Dolls in hindsight is
thinking the exact same thing. And my third question is "Why would they start a
Kickstarter in February, knowing that Lisa's contract was ending in December?"
Because that's where they really got screwed. This is what I'm thinking: I'm
thinking Lisa designed all of the products and got everything going for those first
four products before the Kickstarter even started. And that was why Glamour
Dolls wanted to do more work with her. They were like "Yes, this was so smooth,
this was so easy. Let's keep this going a little longer. We have until December,
it's only February. We have all this time. We pushed out those four products pretty
quickly as far as getting through this process, so let's do 10 more! We've got
this." Glamour Dolls said publicly that they didn't start having problems with
Lisa slowing down the process until June of 2017. So that was after the Kickstarter
had already started, but before the estimated ship date that they told the
backers of September. And it makes sense because if they started signing the
contract in June of 2016, by February, they had made and designed 4 products.
Assuming that Lisa was done with all of the designs and all of the things and all
of the approvals by the time that the Kickstarter started so that's about 8
months. So they're thinking "Well yeah this was so easy, we should be able to
push out more products by December, by the time Lisa's contract ends." So now I
shall present to you the worst case scenario of Lisa's a raging b****.
[laughter] That's where we're gonna go with this. This is worst case scenario
what happened, in that Lisa knew her contract was ending in December, she knew
that she could slow down this process in order to get a new contract in December
and price gauge the hell out of Glamour Dolls. She knew that they had already
promised all of these products to the backers. She knew that they probably
given her $125,000 of the backers' money. She knew that Glamour Dolls was already
using the backer money in order to get these samples and ship them to her. The
$370,000 that the backers had paid, probably a lot of it was already spent
because that's why they started wanting - needing more money. They started selling
the products on BackerKit, they started selling the crease brush on their website,
they really started courting Hot Topic to try to sell products over there because
Lisa was taking all of the Kickstarter backers' money for herself and they were
using it for the manufacturing of these products and they knew it wasn't enough to
see this whole project through because remember they've got 10 products they're
trying to make by December. So time passes, Lisa drags this out, drags this
out, and then drops the bomb on Glamour Dolls: "If you want this to continue,
after all this money that you spent, you're gonna have to pay me $500,000, not
$100,000 anymore. It's $500,000 and you know when you sell to Hot Topic? You're
not gonna give me 15%, you're gonna give me 20%." But at that point, they were so
far deep in it that they couldn't get out of it. They absolutely couldn't get out
of it. Another place that they probably spent the backers' money was on Wengie
because remember the call that Peter did with the backers? He mentions very
briefly paying for a video. I'll play that for you.
(Peter): We actually didn't make a profit off of this Kickstarter campaign. I know
that's, um, it's a hard thing for people to, um, to kind of believe with the size
of it. But, um, we have to manufacture all those goods, uh, we have licensing fees
to pay to Lisa, um, we had to pay for, you know, uh, for production of the video and
for all these different things.
(Jen) I don't know this for a fact but I think he took the money from the backers
and paid Wengie to make that video. Who knows how much he paid her because
influencer rates back then, you know, it was brand new, you know, influencers
getting paid for sponsored videos and things like that. I have no idea how much
they paid Wengie but I would imagine that was part of where the money was going and
why they needed to raise more money. Because now in December, they not only
have to get all of these 10 products manufactured but they also have to pay
Lisa this $500,000. Lisa officially had Glamour Dolls by the unicorn balls. I mean
like, she was-she had them. They had no choice, in my opinion, if this is the way
it played out, other than to sign that contract and just hope for the best. If
all of this is true - let's say they say "Screw you Lisa, we're not paying you
$500,000, we're cutting off the contract now." How do they pay back the backers?
They can't. They don't have the money anymore. It's gone. They don't have the
money to pay back the backers so they are absolutely screwed. Some other things
that I found in the Glamour Dolls part of the lawsuit that I didn't see when I made
the last video that I want to let you know because now, I imagine at some point,
there'll be a part 3 [laughter] of this video is that they were saying more
things about how Lisa interfered with the production of the product. So in the court
filing, it says "Lisa Frank frequently and unreasonably rejected already manufactured
samples without being specific as to the reason for disapproval." In their filing,
they said that there was a problem with the Ipsy products. They said "in one
instance, due to the defendant, Lisa Frank's failure to timely provide artwork
for the Ipsy sales order, Glamour Dolls missed the artwork deadline and was forced
to pay a fine in the amount of $50,500." The filing continued on and said that
Glamour Dolls was shipping her out samples and then she'd be like - 10 business days
later - "Oh I lost them, can you send more of them?" It's like, "wait what? What?"
And in this case, they may not have more samples because they requested a certain
number of samples from the lab and then they mail the samples to Lisa Frank and
then Lisa loses them so then they have to ask the lab for more samples and they have
to pay for that and then get those samples and then send those - wait for
those to come in - then send those to Lisa and then they have to wait for Lisa to
approve those. Do you see how it's just dragging everything out? And you remember
how I said as part of the contract - this was so, so if this is how it happened -
that part of the contract was that Lisa would get her artwork back and that's
what she did. She used that artwork on the Morphe products. The artwork she made for
Glamour Dolls. You can see it on the Trapper Keeper-style palette that Morphe
had made. But to be true to the title of this video, Lisa says that "Glamour Dolls
failed to comply with the inspection and approval process. Lisa's gonna have to
prove this in court. She's gonna have to show them the evidence that Glamour Dolls
didn't go through the proper approval process because even if it's unfair -
this is the thing about the law - even if it's unfair, even if it's unreasonable, if
Glamour Dolls signed that contract and said that they were gonna follow a certain
process, they had to follow that process, even if it's bull****. And if Lisa can
prove that they did things that were against the process, then she had a right
to terminate the contract and get her artwork and then sell it to Morphe. It's
just so fu***d up! [laughter] It's just so messed up! But we definitely need to
end this video the same way we ended the last one in that the most current ruling
by the judge for the 9 claims that Glamour Dolls has against Lisa Frank - the judge
only dismissed part of claim 1. That was the breach of contract; they partially
dismissed that but the judge says that Glamour Dolls can go forward on part of
the breach of contract and everything else - including unjust enrichment, fraud,
defamation, and all of those things - that they're moving forward with those
claims, which means that the judge thinks that Glamour Dolls has enough evidence to
support that these things happened. Not that Lisa isn't going to counter with
something else but Glamour Dolls does have a case to present. And also like I
mentioned in the last video, the last court filing for this was January 24th,
2024, so this is going to be ongoing, so I imagine at some point, there will be a
part 3. I don't imagine it will be soon but I said that last time, so [laughter]
who knows? At this point my friend, it is your turn in the collective brain of
makeup awesomeness. I would love to know your thoughts on this new information that
was sent to me and thank you again so much to the person who calls themself "Fake
Gothic Girl," thank you for sending me the link to this court document that I
previously didn't have access to. It really opened my eyes to a lot of things
and hopefully it added some context to you - if you watch the first piece - to what
Lisa was saying about what was happening and what her counter suit is all about.
Let me know any and all thoughts down in the comment section down below. Thank you
so so much for watching, I hope you enjoy. If you would like to hang out just a
little bit longer, YouTube should be recommending a couple of videos over here
to watch. I'm gonna put a previous episode of "Behind the Controversy" down there.
In case you didn't see it, that's a really good one. If you would like to
watch the top one, that one YouTube's picking for you based on your viewing
history, which video they think that you're gonna like. But if you gotta go
cuz you have things that you gotta do, I get it. Thank you for hanging out as
long as you did and mad love to you and I will see you in a video very very soon.
Bye!