By Dalya Eichler, Staff Writer and Photographer
Our world is driven by money and materialism. However, consumers often hope that today’s brands stand on a foundation of good morals. Certain brands uphold that foundation, or at least appear to. When it came to Lisa Frank Incorporated’s rainbows and dolphins, it would be difficult to consider that the inner workings of the company were anything but kind. However, in the 2024 docuseries, Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story, the dark reality of Lisa Frank’s beginnings are unveiled.
The documentary spans the establishment of Lisa Frank’s brand to its downfall. Born in Michigan in 1955, Frank began her career as a young woman with an idea, and eventually became a huge corporation, making millions selling sticker books, coloring books and school supplies.
Frank’s business started out in her college dorm as a small jewelry brand called Sticky Fingers. She made funky products that sold in Bloomingdales and other department stores, which brought her moderate success. Her brand was bold and fun from the start, and all it needed was the latest trend to help it soar.
In 1979, when stickers were all the craze, she coined the name Lisa Frank Incorporated, and the brand took off from there. Frank began working with artists to create fun animal characters to transform into cute and colorful stickers, and found true success. Her ideas were fresh and exciting, drawing in the attention of young girls all over the country. From folders designed with leopard print dolphins, to rainbow peace sign stickers, her designs were one of a kind.
Over the years, by bringing in more team members and constantly hunting for new creations and characters, Lisa Frank Incorporated became a global phenomenon. Frank married a man in the business, collaborated with many other brands and became a household name. Although her story of being a female business owner in the late 1970s began as an inspiring one, it quickly shifted to a morally questionable company behind closed doors.
Her now ex-husband, James Green, was known to be very critical and harsh in the workplace. Employees saw him as corporate head, being good at marketing and business, but also a dictator at the office. He would not allow regular breaks, or for workers to leave early or step out for important appointments or health purposes. From cheating other businesses, overworking employees and creating a generally unfriendly work environment, the brand began to resemble the sticky back rather than the rainbow front of the stickers.
One of the most recent Lisa Frank scandals was the collaboration the company did with Glamour Dolls in 2017. Glamour Dolls was an up and coming makeup brand advertising affordable, vegan and cruelty-free makeup. It was reported that during the collaboration, customers lost hundreds of dollars buying products they never received, mainly due to Frank controlling contracts, pushing off dates and not showing up with product designs.
As someone who was a “Lisa Frank kid” and still loves color to this day, the idea of balancing inward values with outward self-expression was loud as I watched the Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story. I saw how people, like Lisa Frank, could use this glamorous facade of pretty products alongside a nice ideology for monetary gain. People love to sell a good story and pull at consumers’ heartstrings, but how many companies actually mean what they say? The docuseries demonstrates this effectively through its use of fun, Lisa Frank-style animated stickers, colors and animals to tell a very dark story. This mechanism fits well for such a glitz-and-glam exterior brand shielding a rotten core. While all the pretty items and pictures on the screen clearly scream “Lisa Frank,” fans hear her name in the stories of those involved now, too.
If the younger Lisa Frank knew what her company would become, would she approve of it? Is the corruption and lying something she could have seen herself getting into? On a deeper level, when does the shift from a person with a vision to do good for the sake of helping others to actually just working to help themselves occur? How do artists and creators view the reason for their work once they gain influence? How does power affect the human condition?
Frank’s story begins to shed a sliver of light to these questions.