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 - 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 bouning 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 -
it'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 does
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
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,