The Truth of LuLaRoe, throwing the idea of unicorns and rainbows in the trash

This is going to be long!  I promise it is worth the read. I have been thinking of writing this for a while because the consultants of LuLaRoe need a voice, along with straight out warning anyone contemplating joining this company so they can make an informed decision for their family and friends.  This LuLa journey affects a consultant’s inner circle financially, emotionally, and socially.

What you need to know:  yes, I am an ex-consultant and the details highlighted here have been experienced by your very own consultants at LuLaRoe.  I made money with LuLaRoe, and I am sad because of the way they treat their money makers — their consultants, both their leaders/top earners down to someone waiting to onboard/join. When I opened the door for consultants’ viewpoints, more than 65 current and past consultants poured out their LuLa journeys with me within a couple hours.  I had to stop collecting their comments for time’s sake!!  If I gave them longer, I can only imagine the responses. Some have been with the company for only a few months, and some have been with the company for years. All of their stories are shockingly similar  to mine.

The best way to share it?  In bullets because there is so much that needs to be shared!  Feel free to comment, but please remember that if the responses sound too good to be true, it probably is. LuLaRoe will do ANYTHING to protect its so-called culture and positive image. Negativity and valid questions are not allowed within LuLaRoe. If it looks like a LuLaRoe duck, well…
Questions and comments are allowed here because we are adults with our own intelligent brains.

• LuLaRoe has claimed for years that it had faster than anticipated growth and that everyone needs to be patient with them, regardless of their mistakes. Don’t worry, they love you!  When will they stop using the excuse that they are a new company?  They are almost 4 years in.  A four-year old is not a baby and knows many, many things….maybe more than LuLaRoe?
• There was dishonesty and lack of transparency with charging sales tax when LuLaRoe outright knew it was wrong. It was not a glitch in the system as they are using as a cover-up now. They tell their consultants to stitch up damages and sell them.  Or, how about being told by numerous LuLaRoe leaders to pretend that there is new inventory and post a shop the box event?  How about the “part-time work for full-time pay” when consultants regularly work around the clock? What about the consultants that are trying to truly run their businesses part-time and not round the clock? Where are the resources to help them?
• Consultants are told to check their own inventory for damages. There is no quality control before the clothing leaves the warehouse in CA.
• Greed and condescending nature for consultants to buy, buy, buy so more sells, sells, sells. If someone has a question or concern?  Don’t have a “tantrum!” Consultants go to the people being compensated to help them, their sponsors, and these sponsors delete comments if a question is asked on a team page because it looks negative.  Help is usually offered from other consultants, not from the leaders making money off their team.
• Consultants are told that they are retailers and can run their businesses how they like. Hmmmm, does never being able to choose specific patterns or colors in an order and having to buy at least 33 items (50 items minimum in a holiday release) for an average of $500 each order, being told where they can and cannot sell the clothing that they own, being told what prices they can sell at and do not hold sales although all other retailers hold sales to move inventory, needing to have any business cards or signs approved by home office, being sent heavy Nicole dresses in the middle of summer, needing to use only LuLaRoe processing system for sales so company can collect the additional fees and pay those bonuses too, and being told by “the LuLa sisterhood” that they are not working hard enough if they do not sell enough to qualify for the LuLaRoe incentive cruise, sound like running one’s own “business?” LuLaRoe is micromanaged, and it is more like a franchise situation versus owning one’s own business.
• There is a lack of leadership.  New consultants teach the higher-ups new technology and ways to sell.
• Rumor says that family and friends are in on the LuLaRoe business and are posing as top sellers with bigger teams in the company. They didn’t need to buy their own inventory. History shows that the family has been involved in many get-rich quick businesses.  LuLaRoe is the current one. Are they jumping ship soon?
• Consultants that joined a year or more ago are able to make money. The ones that joined recently or are joining now, they are most likely to be in LuLa debt.
• 250 to 500 consultants are onboarded a day. That is 250 to 500 new people selling LuLaRoe a day.  LuLaRoe will say that it cannot be an oversaturated market. Check your favorite consultants’ pages and notice many sites are dead — no sales. Who makes money when people onboard?  It’s a whooping $5,000 to $7,000 approximate investment that LuLaRoe gets right then and there from each of those onboarded consultants. About a year ago, there were about 5,000 consultants. Now, there are approximately 77,000.  Do the math. That’s a lot of money a day, and it does not matter to LuLaRoe if the consultants ever buy a stitch of clothing again or if they are successful.
• The high earners/coaches are promised big bonuses, so they keep recruiting to make more. Big bonuses and favoritism are given to the top sellers. They get items in their order when other consultants are not able to, and they get the best prints. They get “elite customer services.” The rest of the consultants?  They wait on hold for hours, deal with LuLaRoe tech issues, and get 10 Cassie skirts in the same poop print.  Yep, some prints literally look like dog shit.  Are there only a few thousand of each print out there?  Cannot be true if one consultant has 10 dog shit print Cassie skirts. It’s likely that the top sellers never had a poop print.
• While we’re talking about the prints, let’s talk fabrics.  They may be soft, but they are THIN.  See-through dresses for $45 and up for sale!!  Brand new $25 leggings that tear when delicately put on like pantyhose? Don’t miss out on holey leggings straight from the package!  Don’t forget that the lines and prints probably don’t match up and there are sizing inconsistencies from when they were hand stitched in another country.  LuLaRoe was made in the U.S.A. for a millisecond.
• LuLaRoe technology sucks. When ordering, the system never knows how many items are in stock. It breaks down when trying to process invoices, and don’t forget the security breach of the fantastic Audrey system last April. Why was there never a technology that could include pictures of the consultants’ clothing items and easily create an invoice on the spot similar to Amazon or any other online shopping experience?  Yes, technology roll-outs take time and testing, but LuLaRoe simply has excuses about its technology over the years.  It costs money, money that LuLaRoe doesn’t feel like spending.
• There is a new processing system now.  LuLaRoe sold all consultants’ private information for this new processing system, even if the consultants did not sign the agreement. If LuLaRoe had the person’s information, they sold it to the merchant company. Consultants were promised that there wouldn’t be a credit check. Oops, there was a credit check.  Oops, it was a hard check. That affected people’s credit scores. Get an iPhone or iPad because that is the only way the new system will work. Don’t worry, says Home Office, it’s a business expense and there are refurbished ones for a value.
• Consultants used to be marked as “inactive” if they didn’t buy a certain amount of items in a given amount of time.  On the same day, right before the selling of all the consultants’ information to that outside merchant company, all consultants were marked as “active” in the LuLaRoe system. Was this to show a larger number for retention of consultants or to sell everyone’s private information?
• Training?  LuLaRoe training is a bunch of ladies wearing 3 to 5 pieces of LuLaRoe each, pattern matched to look like they are trying out for Ringling Brothers. Brainwashing occurs, courtesy of the top sellers with huge bonus checks & big teams, and no one is taught anything about making their “businesses” better.
• Consultants are not heard or helped.  When they call home office, they wait on hold for 2 to 3 hours and sometimes the phone disconnects. When they get someone on the other end of the phone line, they are given a different answer than other consultants or they are told that “a ticket will be submitted” about this.  That ticket will go no where. Call or email again about the same issue?  If someone gets a response, it will be different than any other responses.  It’s easy to run one’s own LuLaRoe “business.”
• “Everything sells!”  Ugly duplicates in one’s inventory that aren’t selling?  Consultants are told, “You must not be marketing them right.”
• The policies change with the drop of a hat. Someone breaks a “rule,” even though everyone is a business owner, and another consultant rats the person out. “Compliance” emails within two hours to follow-up on the “rule breaking,” but send an email about any other topic and one may drop dead before there is a response.
• Home Office takes no responsibility for mistakes. They pin it on their consultants or technology.  Home Office says that consultants should be refunding damaged items. Well, Home Office does not pay its consultants back for those damages. Many times, Home Office states that the item can and should be sold and to “think like a retailer.”  If they are paid back for the damages, it sits in a credit in the consultant’s account until they place their next order; it is not credited back immediately to the consultant’s credit card as it should be. The unlawful charging of sales tax was a “glitch in the system,” although consultants were outright told to charge the tax.  Problems like the small arms in Irmas and see-through Perfects were not fixed; instead, Patricks were launched. Instead of fixing problems, more people are recruited and more items are sold.
• Webinars are on Tuesdays, smack in the middle of the day when many consultants are working other jobs.  Remember, “part-time work?”  No vital information is given during the webinars, and there is a pep rally berating, pompous attitude.  You don’t want it badly enough.  You don’t like it, kick rocks. And, don’t wear jeans!!  They have too many shoes and oh, the private jets!   Consultants are treated like crybabies when legitimate questions are asked – Don’t have a tantrum!  Feed your kids spaghettios or cereal, hire a house cleaner, so one can hustle “the business” instead. The leaders of an organization are the role models of its philosophy and beliefs. Is the puzzle starting to fall together?   Take a moment to reflect on the style sense of its leaders, too.
• Consultants wait on back orders for months and need to follow-up to get items they already paid for, although technology said that the items were available when they ordered them. Consultants also receive many shipments with missing items that were already paid for. Lacking quality control here also. Time to be patient – again -and wait for those items for months or for a credit to sit in the consultant’s account.
• Yes, I’m going here…  The clothing is overpriced for what you get. The clothing is not worth it.
• Yes, I’m going here also….this one is a doozy that needs to be said because LuLaRoe’s culture created this monster. The customers buy a lot of items and the  consultants make a good deal of money, myself included.  LuLaRoe customers were trained to expect giveaways because consultants are told to “bless” others with free items, and many would only join Facebook groups for the giveaways, never intending to buy anything.  Many of the customers are very appreciative and kind, and then there is the LuLaRoe-bred-culture-of-customer: one that is extremely needy, helpless, irresponsible, and unappreciative of the consultant’s time.  They ask a million questions, ask for additional pictures of the items even after most consultants have professional looking pictures, ask for consultants to hold items, ask if they can pay once their payday comes around, ask for items to be delivered, do not return items that they tried on and did not buy, request returns long after limits of return policy, expect answers ASAP round the clock and then never respond to the consultant, and/or need reminders to pay for the clothing they claimed after asking the one million questions.  LuLaRoe-bred-culture-of-customers are tiring, and they will hopefully realize that this behavior is not respectful, kind, or adult-like.
• No other clothing company pumps out and ships out as many products as quickly. How can it all sell?  Who cares because LuLaRoe already made its money when the consultants placed their orders!  Oh, the shipments may take forever to get to consultants — take the holiday orders that many even paid for expedited 2-to-3-day shipping. Their orders arrived one month later, after anyone was buying for that specific holiday!!
• Consultants can do better in other jobs with less hours and paid time off. In other jobs, there are paid vacation weeks and paid sick days, too.  Many leave LuLaRoe to go back to school or go back to a job that was less stress.
• Information is given to the leaders in the company. Then, through a telephone game type of dissemination of information, everyone else gets the myriad of  details.
• Here comes the worst part.  When a consultant sees all the writing on the wall and wants to get out before she/he loses money – or loses any more money – it is EXTREMELY difficult on purpose. Consultants are not employees of LuLaRoe, but they are asked to write a “resignation” letter and have it notarized and then email a screenshot of it to LuLaRoe.  If they are lucky enough to get a response from their email, their contract is terminated.  They may never get a response (see above about communication style). If the consultant has items left in her/his inventory, which is very likely due to those dog shit print Cassies, she/he has the option to send the items back to LuLaRoe. LuLaRoe will keep 10% or 25% of the wholesale cost of each item; no one knows if it is 10% or 25% because until the bitter end, LuLaRoe policies change on the dime.  Or, consultants can sell their items on their own and discount.  If they are still officially a consultant at this point, they can bet another consultant will rat them out to Home Office. They will receive an email within hours about their “rule breaking” from Compliance.  If the consultant has a credit for damaged items or missing items from previous orders, she/he can expect to email and call time and time again to receive their money back. Lawyers may be needed to get this money back.  Although it is customary for a company to refund as soon as asked and to pay one back in the manner it was paid to them, LuLaRoe withholds the money. Interest gained, people!!  It may not be much money to each consultant, but with so many damages with the declining quality and so many missing items in almost every order, that is a lot of money earning interest for LuLaRoe spread over 77,000 consultants’ credits in their accounts.
• If you hear the “I only work 8 to 11pm each night,” it’s not true.  Successful consultants, even part-time ones, work A LOT of hours.  There is always so much to do. Orders to place, boxes to  inventory, emails to send about missing items, clothing to hang, fold, and take out of packaging, pictures to take, pictures to load, events to post to, posts to write, questions to answer, events to book, events to pack up for, events to get to, events to unpack from, invoices to send, invoices to follow-up on, paid orders to ship, damages to submit, damages to follow-up on, etc., etc., etc. What is one willing to sacrifice to do this for peanuts per hour in the end?  Crunch those numbers from so-called successful consultants. 50% of what they made was spent on their inventory, and then factor in the initial cost of their inventory that they may still be paying off, business costs, hours put in each day, and hours spent away from those they love. Also, who are they willing to sacrifice relationships with to do this “business?” Relationships will suffer a bit, children will be ignored to work the “part-time business.” Ask any honest LuLaRoe consultant. If you hear differently, keep asking until someone spills a bit.
• If someone tells you only positives about LuLaRoe, talk to someone else. Rainbows are not around all.the.time. Unicorns are not real. There are negatives!!  There are positives. I met so many fabulous people. I enjoyed making people happy with the clothes, but did you see all these other bullets??!!
• When people left LuLaRoe, their smiles were enormous and they felt freedom. They felt like they got themselves back again.
• One more important thing — many joined LuLaRoe to find happiness and purpose. It is heart-breaking to hear the stories of people struggling with depression and anxiety who joined LuLaRoe as a means to assist in getting better.  Their depression and anxiety got worse.  If you are struggling with something similar, please go to your support circle and find a great therapist that you can trust, don’t turn to  LuLaRoe.

That was a lot of information. I am not making any of it up; I am not a liar like many at LuLaRoe. I have lived through all of this myself and have seen those 65 other consultants go through the exact same experiences.  We are not angry, just pouring out our hearts so others are well-informed. My advice?  Say no to LuLaRoe. That should become a motto similar to “say no to drugs!”  No to joining LuLaRoe, No to buying LuLaRoe, No to wearing LuLaRoe and supporting their vision of lies and hurt. A company that portrays itself as blessing lives and families but truly tears its people down is a NO.

Thanks for reading.  If you are thinking of getting out, please don’t send your clothing back to LuLaRoe and give them more of your money.  Look for discounted groups to sell in and discount in your own group. You can do it and be free.

Much love and true happiness to you!!