Sparkly unicorns, DayGlo dolphins, bejeweled kittens — the vibrant characters of Lisa Frank adorned countless Trapper Keepers and pencil cases in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Despite the brand’s cheerful aesthetic, the real world of Lisa Frank was not all rainbows, according to a new Prime Video docuseries, “Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story.”
The four-part documentary includes interviews with several former Lisa Frank employees, as well as one of Frank’s sons and her ex-husband and former business partner, who say there was a darker reality behind the company’s playful public image, and instead a toxic work environment.
Executive producer Mary Robertson tells TODAY.com she “grew up obsessed with Lisa Frank products.” When she began investigating what had happened to the brand in recent years, she soon realized there was a story about Lisa Frank waiting to be told.
“We started making phone calls ... and reached out to as many former employees as we could find,” she says. “Many of them said, ‘I’ve been waiting for this call. Boy, do I have a story to tell you, and it’s a wild one.’ And at that point we were completely hooked.”
By the early 2010s, the Lisa Frank brand was fading. In 2013, its multicolored headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, which once employed hundreds of people, had just six remaining workers, according to the Arizona Daily Star. Eventually, the factory was abandoned altogether.
Lisa Frank has not disappeared, however. The brand’s website still sells versions of its signature rainbow-hued backpacks, makeup kits and other accessories, and they are collaborating with brands including Crocs and Morphe.
TODAY.com has reached out to Frank for comment and has not heard back at the time of publication.
In response to producers’ questions, Frank issued the following statement, which was shown at the end of each of the documentary’s four episodes:
“I have loved art and have been an artist ever since childhood. Lisa Frank, Inc. is the result of that passion. I’m incredibly grateful for the amazing artists and team members who helped bring my vision to life. I’m so excited about the future, as the next generation takes the helm. Stay tuned — the best has yet to come!”
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Who is Lisa Frank?
Lisa Frank is the artist and entrepreneur who founded the Lisa Frank brand, which she launched in 1979.
Frank, 70, was “totally a girly girl” growing up, she said in an interview for Urban Outfitters’ blog in 2012.
“I was not a jock. When I was 12, my parents got me a loom, so I was a weaver. I loved to read, I loved to do artwork,” she said.
Frank realized the potential for turning her creativity into a business while studying art at the University of Arizona.
“One day, I met a guy who said, ‘Anything you draw I can have made,’ so we started making things from my ideas,” she told the Urban Outfitters blog. “I also represented other people and sold their artwork, and then we realized that I was the one with the commercial sense, because if I said ‘Make a teddy bear or a unicorn,’ that was what sold.”
One of her earliest businesses was a brand called Sticky Fingers, which Frank described as “jewelry all made up of plastic that I glued together with glue gun.”
Eventually, she rebranded Sticky Fingers using her own name, and Lisa Frank, Inc. (LFI) was born. The company was established in 1979, according to public records.
The company boomed, bringing in more than $1 billion in retail sales between 1990 and 2005, the Tucson Citizen reported in 2005.
In 1994, Frank married James Green, an in-house illustrator hired in 1982 who later became the company’s president and CEO in 1992, per court documents, and gifted him 49% of LFI’s shares, according to the same court documents.
Green, in the documentary and on his social media pages, has taken credit for “establishing the look and feel” of Lisa Frank’s signature art, which persists to this day. “I am not the head artist. I am the artist,” he said in an Instagram video posted after the documentary aired.
TODAY.com has reached out to Green for comment and has not heard back at the time of publication.
Frank and Green have two sons, Hunter and Forrest. Their names were inspired by two characters from the Lisa Frank universe: Hunter the leopard and Forrest the tiger cub.
“We had created both characters before the boys were born, and then when they were born, we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, they really do fit their personalities!’” Frank told Urban Outfitters in 2012.
Frank filed for divorce against Green in 2005, marking the beginning of a years-long legal saga involving the former couple and other Lisa Frank associates, including former executive vice president Rhonda Rowlette.
Frank sued Green in 2005 to remove him as director, president and chief operating officer of LFI, and buy back his shares. The case went to trial in 2007 and ruled in favor of LFI, terminating Green as director, per a 2009 appeal.
“I lost my titles, I lost my business, I lost my building, I lost everything else ... She owns everything. She owns my life’s work,” Green said in the documentary.
Meanwhile, Frank fired Rowlette, who in turn sued her in 2006 for $2 million plus damages, saying that Frank had promised her that amount in the event that her job was terminated. LFI denied making any such promises and the claim was settled, per a court filing.
The docuseries also includes interviews with several former employees about their experiences at LFI. Many share anecdotes about times both Frank and Green allegedly treated them harshly.
“They definitely felt like they were trying to break my spirit,” Tony De Luz, an illustrator at LFI from 1996 to 2000, said in the documentary. “I think that was the way they operated, was that they wanted people who took whatever s--- they piled on them.”
Green, in the documentary, denied treating employees unfairly and calls the allegations a “crock of s---.” He said his ex-wife was the “tyrant,” not him.
Why is Lisa Frank not in the ‘Glitter & Greed’ documentary?
Frank is notoriously private. There are few photos available of her publicly, she seldom gives interviews and when she agreed to speak to Urban Outfitters on camera in 2012 in conjunction with LFI’s former collaboration with the brand, she asked for her face to be obscured.
She doesn’t appear in “Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story,” which explores the inner workings of Lisa Frank, Inc and suggests that the behind-the-scenes reality of the company was anything but rainbows and unicorns.
Director Arianna La Penne says they reached out to Frank multiple times, but she declined to be interviewed.
“I thought about Lisa Frank every day that I was making this ... I really wanted her to participate,” La Penne says, but added she has “no judgment” about the media-shy Frank declining to take part.
La Penne says if she did have a chance to speak to Frank, the first question she would ask her would be, “Was it all worth it?”
“In the sense of, is she happy now with where she landed?” La Penne says. “Because in this company’s life, the personal and the professional were completely intertwined, so it’s all connected and related. And I really would love to know what it’s like in her head.”
Where is Lisa Frank now?
Frank does not appear to have given an interview in years.
However, her brand has an online presence. The Lisa Frank website continues to sell merchandise, including backpacks, wallets, makeup palettes and laptop cases, all in Frank's signature style.
The website also highlights Lisa Frank’s collaborations with brands including Crocs, Morphe, Casetify and Hotels.com.
The brand’s TikTok page, which has more than 739,000 followers, has been hinting at a Lisa Frank renaissance for a while now.
One post from November 2023 shows two Lisa Frank mascots standing in front of what appears to be the revitalized rainbow-painted Lisa Frank headquarters in Tucson, Arizona.
“We’re baaaack!” reads the caption.
“When we casually make a major comeback,” the brand captioned a similar TikTok post in April.
One key figure in Lisa Frank’s new chapter is her son, Forrest Green, who has served as Head of Brand and Chairman of LFI since 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Forrest Green has worked closely with his mother from a young age, according to a 2021 Bustle profile. Frank was not interviewed for the article, but Forrest Green, then 21, said on the record he was behind the brand's recently revitalized Instagram.
Forrest Green said his mother used to pull him out of elementary school to sit in at meetings at LFI.
“One time when I was probably 8 or 9, I closed the meeting like, ‘All right, guys, this was awesome; what are the next steps?’” he told Bustle. “The licensing agent at the time looked at me and said, ‘Well, I guess Forrest closed the meeting!’”
In recent years, Forrest Green has worked to build the brand’s social media following. He has said one of his goals is to tap into ‘90s nostalgia while redefining the Lisa Frank brand for the 21st century.
“There’s just so much possibility. More than just people saying, ‘Make some folders again, make some stickers again,’” he told Bustle. “That’s definitely part of the plan, but it’s like people don’t even know who we are at this point. Lisa Frank is a lifestyle and it needs to be treated as such.”
The story of Lisa Frank is no doubt complex but for Robertson, working on the documentary ultimately increased her appreciation for the brand.
"I love the Lisa Frank work now more than ever after having spent several years deep, deep, deep in the story, and after having become aware of a really complicated reality that existed behind the scenes at the company," she tells TODAY.com.
After interviewing several former Lisa Frank employees, Robertson says when she thinks of Lisa Frank, she sees the "passions of all these people who left a part of themselves in it. And they want us to love that work. They want it to endure through the ages."
As for the brand's future, Robertson says she has witnessed first-hand the ability of Lisa Frank designs to captivate a new generation.
"I think they have timeless appeal," she says. "I remember as a girl, the attachment and attraction that I felt towards these objects and designs. And now I have a 6-year-old daughter, and she goes absolutely nuts for them."
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
