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 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 and 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 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 agreemnts
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