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Amazon docuseries 'LuLaRich' takes on embattled retailer LuLaRoe and the 'honey trap' lure of multilevel marketing for moms and families

LuLaRich Amazon Studios
DeAnne and Mark Stidham, the founders of LuLaRoe. Courtesy of Amazon Studios

  • Amazon Studios docuseries "LuLaRich" is the latest non-fiction project to explore scam culture.
  • LuLaRoe, a multilevel marketing company founded by DeAnne and Mark Stidham, has faced lawsuits.
  • Directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason call the series a "cautionary tale."
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By turns fascinating and infuriating, Amazon Studios' docuseries "LuLaRich" — about the multilevel marketing (MLM) company LuLaRoe, founded by DeAnne and Mark Stidham, and the lawsuits alleging that the purveyor of printed leggings is a pyramid scheme — is the latest in a string of buzzy projects exploring scam culture. 

The four-part series offers a bevy of oddities: adopted siblings married to each other, cult-like conventions, luxury car cliques, moldy legging shipments, a fake cannabis farm Ponzi scheme, and DeAnne's attempts to get LuLaRoe members to fly to Tijuana for weight loss surgery, to highlight just a few jaw-droppers.

"LulaRich" producing and directing duo Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason, known for "Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story," and "TIME: The Kalief Browder Story," also made Hulu's "Fyre Fraud" — one of two TV docs about the disastrous 2017 Fyre Festival in the Bahamas — so they understand the allure of the scam.

"People are getting tired with watching murder over and over and over again," said Furst of the genre's allure amid a sea of police procedurals. "And everybody loves the experience of schadenfreude." 

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What makes his and Nason's work in this arena distinct is that "instead of laughing at someone, you're really, in a sense, laughing at yourself, because we're all part of this," he said. "We highlight systemic issues. And our work has been dedicated to all of the different things that the human experience is in the 21st century." 

Furst credits Amazon Studios for fast-tracking the project. 

"[It] takes a very committed partner in a studio to get a project that went from development 14 months ago to a global event that is garnering millions and millions of viewers every day," he said. 

But some observers (and social media chatterers) have raised eyebrows at Amazon's involvement. As the Hollywood Reporter critic Daniel Fienberg asked in his review, "Is Amazon actually in any position to be lecturing any other primarily online retailer on questionable business practices and employee treatment?" 

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"We'll leave it to you and others to report on," said Furst. "That's not for us to discuss, because that isn't our story. Our story is this story. But the big story is all of our stories, and whether we want to point the finger at one institution or another, everyone is complicit in the dance that's happening in the world right now." 

In addition to academic experts and reporters — including Insider's Áine Cain — "LuLaRich's" on-screen commenters include LuLaRoe workers who defected and Becca Peter, a washi tape seller who researched the company "for fun" and discovered sales tax discrepancies in its billing system. Calling Peter "an amazing resource," Furst alluded that she came across their radar by way of a confidential source. 

"We have great sources, some of which are confidential, and who never make it onto the screen," he said. "And that allows us to find the real characters involved in the story." 

"LuLaRich" is careful not to make light of those characters, some of whom lost tens of thousands of dollars in bids to become successful LuLaRoe sellers and — aside from the Stidhams — all of whom were women trying to find financial and professional purpose. 

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"This generation of women are highly educated, like never before — they're a huge force … that society is still, tooth and nail, trying to continue to repress," said Nason. The notion of empowerment has been commodified by society generally, she said, and by MLMs in particular, which represent "a honey trap" for mothers and their families.

"And when women are hurt in this society," she added, "everyone suffers."

Nason praised the courage of "LuLaRich" subjects in sharing their experiences and their shame. "We hope that this will encourage and inspire more people to come forward with their stories where they may not 'look good' in a capitalist, materialist society,'" she said. 

Even the Stidhams can inspire empathy, said Furst, "because who doesn't want to be a millionaire nowadays? Who doesn't want to start a company that becomes a unicorn? That's what's promoted. That's what's advertised. And this is a cautionary tale for everybody all up and down the line." 

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