Jezebel Article

Inside the Rainbow Gulag: The Technicolor Rise and Fall of Lisa Frank

by Tracie Egan Morrissey for Jezebel.com

To her fans, Lisa Frank is almost as mythical a figure as her beloved unicorn. For women in their twenties, thirties, and forties, Frank's name alone conjures up a specter of koala bears clinging to rainbow-flavored ice-cream cones, neon tiger cubs frolicking with surfing penguins, and, of course, majestic unicorns prancing before a swirl of hearts and stars. But the company is now a shadow of what it once was, and its fall from grace—a story of scandal, greed, and abuse—is in stark contrast to its shiny, happy aesthetic.

It's unclear whether Lisa Frank—the real woman and artist who founded the school-supplies brand in 1979—was fully aware of the whispers that had been circulating for years around her company's headquarters in Tucson, AZ. It's possible that she had no idea what people were saying about her husband, Lisa Frank Inc. CEO James Green. Rumor had it that Green was an unfaithful monster with a cocaine problem; employees feared he would destroy the company.

As it turns out, those fears were not unfounded. According to court documents and first-hand accounts from former employees speaking exclusively to Jezebel, the personal drama of Frank's marriage quickly turned into professional disaster.

 …So what happened?

Inside the Rainbow Gulag

"Lisa Frank is notorious in Tucson as the world's shittiest employer," said Caroline, who considered applying for one of the many job openings at the company she saw advertised when she moved to Tucson in 2001, but decided against it after speaking with locals. "Every single person I talked to advised me to avoid Lisa Frank at all costs," she said. "I didn't know a single person who had not heard horror stories about the work environment there."

Even court documents reflect those sentiments, with one longtime employee, Dan Mullen, stating how lowly regarded the company was in the community. "The word in Tucson is that 'you don't want to work for the Lisa Frank Company,'" he said.

"I don't know if it's possible to really communicate how bad their reputation was in town," Caroline stressed, before adding, "Every person who ever worked there seemed to have a case of PTSD from it. 'Rainbow Gulag' is really an apt description."

            While there was an emphasis on productivity, the rules that were implemented seemed counterproductive to a creative environment. According to former employees, the office was a place of silence and co-workers were not allowed to speak to one another. The management secretly (and illegally) recorded phone calls. … No visitors, including family members, were allowed. The penalty for any violations ranged from verbal abuse to name-calling to screaming to automatic termination to even more bizarre restrictions. (One time, after discovering that someone left the office 10 minutes early, an enraged Green instructed the warehouse manager to put chains and padlocks on all the downstairs doors so that "the staff can't escape.")

"There was just this air of fear there," said Marcia, a onetime graphic designer for LFI who remembered the office as being cold, both figuratively and literally. "It just seemed very clear, the mentality of it: keep it ice cold, keep people miserable and on edge. It was just insane—totally insane."

And if working there was difficult, so was leaving. The company allegedly often failed to give promised severance packages, fought unemployment benefits, and former employees had to sue for their final paychecks or sales commissions as evidenced by public records of numerous civil judgments entered against LFI.

In addition to the bad publicity stemming from a series of lawsuits from local who claimed hadn't been paid for $4 million worth of work on the corporate headquarters, LFI's image problem stemmed from the company's unusually high turnover rate, with numerous former employees available to poison the well with first-hand accounts of just how unpleasant it was to work there, and others corroborating those stories. …One year, almost a third of the entire staff turned over." According to Susan Russo, who worked as the Sales and Marketing Manager, "over 80 people walked out the door," between February 2003 and December 2004, "most without notice because they had been treated so poorly."

Mean and Green

When asked what the root of the problem was at LFI, former employees—some of whom spoke directly to Jezebel, while others are on record in-court documents—all had the same answer: LFI CEO James Green.

Green began working at LFI in 1982 as the company's first in-house illustrator and designer. Shortly after beginning a romantic relationship with Frank—"sometime in late 1983 or early 1984"—Green began to move up the corporate ladder. He became an officer of the business in 1988 and was named president and CEO in December 1992.

Green and Frank married on October 22, 1994 in what was described as "an extravagant affair." Their first child was born the following July, when Frank was 41.

It was then, at the height of her products' popularity, that Frank "relinquished day-to-day management duties to Green" in order to focus on raising her children. Shortly after each of her sons were born, Frank—who had once been the sole shareholder in her company—made gifts of her stock to Green in what would amount to 49% of the shareholdings in LFI. "She wasn't that interested in being a businesswoman," said Karen. "She wanted to just enjoy her life."

Once she had her children—Hunter and Forrest, who were named after two characters in Lisa Frank's multi-chromatic menagerie (a leopard cub and a tiger cub, respectively)—Frank worked from home and rarely participated physically in the office. "Maybe like once a month, Lisa would come in, kind of poke her [head] around and just see what everybody was up to," said Kyle, who worked as an illustrator in the mid-2000s.

For the next 10 years, Green ran the show. "[He] really turned that place into a shit hole," said Justin, who added, "The guy's kind of dick." It seems to be a sentiment shared by others who've been in Green's employ. In 2005, 16 people who had worked for or with LFI in various capacities submitted sworn affidavits in a lawsuit brought against Green, attesting to his management style. Allegedly prone to fits of rage and loud, profanity-laden outbursts in which he would publicly berate people—including his then-wife Frank—Green was described as "abusive, arrogant and extremely difficult to work with." Several former employees witnessed Green throwing chairs and other objects in the office.

…Justin recounted a particularly cruel facet to Green's personality: he wouldn't bother to learn employee's names so he would give them nicknames of his own invention. "I had a friend there and she was not the most attractive girl…she was sort of portly. [Green] used to refer to her as 'That Guy.'"

Several people who had worked for or with the company over the years repeatedly remarked on the "oppressive management style" that contributed to a "hostile" corporate culture of "intimidation and insecurity," according to court documents. "He was a very angry man…a pompous jerk," said Karen, echoing a sentiment expressed by many former LFI staffers who spoke to Jezebel. "He was very yell-y and mean."

… According to another former employee: People who worked directly with James couldn't wear heels. He said it was because they couldn't walk fast enough to keep up with him. In reality, he has short man syndrome and didn't like working with women taller than him.

The staff's feelings for the company's vice president, Rhonda Rowlette—who had been with the company since 1984 and was effectively Green's Girl Friday—weren't any warmer. …Or as Kyle put it, she was the Darth Vader to Green's Emperor. Dan Mullen, who had worked in the art department at LFI for 14 years stated in court documents: Rhonda Rowlette is the enforcer. James uses her to maintain control of the employees. Through Rhonda employees' jobs are threatened and an atmosphere of hostility is maintained. Employees are consistently called to her office and subjected to threats and harassment.

But even Rowlette was the target of Green's abuse, according to court documents, which only baffled employees.

[M]any have wondered why she has taken it for so long. He sometimes has been heard screaming at her…calling her fat or stupid or belittling her. Many former employees interviewed for this story believed the aggression, hostility, and paranoia—"the earmarks of addiction," as Jacob put it—exhibited by the company's leadership stemmed from drug use.

"James and Rhonda were pretty big into coke," said Kyle. "There would be days when James would come down [to the art department] super sweaty and super paranoid and just like walking really fast back and forth through the design area. And there was nothing to be stressed about, it was just a regular day."

According to former employees who spoke to Jezebel, it was accepted by much of the staff that Rowlette and Green were not-so-secret lovers. "When I [started working] there, people were telling me that [Rhonda] and James had this thing going on behind closed doors," said Kyle.        

At some point, Frank picked up on the alleged peculiarity. In September 2005, she filed for divorce. According to the court documents, noted that "the precise date being unknown…Green and Rowlette formed a close personal bond and secret partnership."

"It wasn't a surprise," Karen said of the breakup of Frank and Green's marriage. "They had a tumultuous relationship, it was no secret." Frank had confided in her friend Roy Hayes, Jr. that she was "frightened" of Green and had been a victim of his verbal abuse for years. She was looking for a way out. According to Karen, years before Frank filed for divorce, she would test the waters by regularly asking the staff, "If James and I divorced, would you stay with the company?"

Green moved out of the family home in June 2005 and Frank spent the rest of the summer "getting more involved in the day-to-day activities [of the company]," according to Kyle. Frank undoubtedly knew that ending her partnership—both in life and in business—with Green would be a contentious, litigious mess. She began increasing her presence in the office, according to legal documents, and taking a more active role.

"[I] would get [art] direction from her and then James would come down and be like, 'That's bullshit! I run this fucking company and you've got to do it [my] way," Kyle said. Sensing that his wife was angling to oust him, Green seemingly began a campaign of his own, enlisting Rowlette's help, according to court records.

"James and Rhonda put pressure on people [to] pick a side: either you pick Lisa or you pick James," said Kyle. "James was telling people if the company splits up he's going to start his own company. He was trying to recruit people to go with him so that way, if Lisa did get the company, she wouldn't have anybody to help her."

For her part, Frank had virtual spies. Green claimed that Frank hired an outside IT consultant to provide her with direct access to all company emails, which she used to monitor their communications, and delete and redirect emails, which he said created a "siege-like atmosphere."

Gearing up for a war to regain control of her company, a siege was probably her aim. One has to wonder, though, what Frank was searching for with her access to employees' email accounts. And it's odd that something like that would anger Green, a man who—according to former employees who spoke to Jezebel—didn't have even the most basic human decency with regards to respecting those who worked for him. Besides, as Betty Hack said: [It] is a known fact throughout the company that James has had this very same access for years and has [been] doing this behavior all along. I was also told by several IT managers over the past years that…phones and offices were also sometimes bugged at the request of James.

One month after filing a civil suit (to force Green to attend the annual two-person shareholders meeting so she could elect a new board of directors) and an application for a temporary restraining order against Green (to keep him away from the business and stop him from "harassing employees, blocking purchase orders" and removing assets from the company)—Frank won the first battle in what would be a long, drawn-out, dirty war. She arrived at the company's headquarters with the police, who escorted Green, Rowlette, and Rowlette's secretary from building…