The Great Fail

By Debra ChenBusiness Entrepreneurship News True Crime Business News

The Great Fail episodes

October 20, 2022 Episode 54: LulaRoe Leggings Stretches the Law
Several legal cases were pending, culminating in January 2019, when a class-action lawsuit led by the Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson was filed against the multi-level marketing Company, LulaRoe. This one alleged that the founders of LulaRoe made false and deceptive representations regarding their business, inspiring thousands of optimistic entrepreneurs to invest their money into the lucrative venture-- only to find themselves drowning in debt, mortgaging their homes, and depleting their life savings.

Though many had not yet heard of LulaRoe, this lawsuit would soon topple the billion-dollar enterprise into one of the most well-known scandals in America.

Listen to Episode 54 of The Great Fail to hear the story. Special thanks to Professor Kelly Richmond Pope for her contributions to this segment.

LulaRoe Sources
LuLaRoe Was a Billion Dollar Leggings Empire Until the Lawsuits. LuLaRich Tells the Story
The Rise And Fall Of LuLaRoe’ Investigates Scandal Behind Marketing Company
The MLM LuLaRoe Has Seen Tons of Controversy — Here's Why
Is LulaRoe Still in Business? Amazon's 'LulaRich' Has Everyone Asking the Same Question
LulaRich! 9 Lessons You Can Learn From LulaRoe’s Downfall
Lessons from LuLaRich that Resellers Can Learn From
4 Shockingly Manipulative Work Moments In The 'LuLaRich' Documentary
‘It’s very culty’: the bizarre billion-dollar downfall of fashion company LuLaRoe
These Leggings May Ruin Your Life
LuLaRoe to pay $4.75 million to resolve AG Ferguson’s lawsuit over pyramid scheme

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27 min
October 06, 2022 Episode 53: Valeant: Death by Poison Pill
It was a somewhat ordinary day for David Pyott, the CEO of Allergan, back in April 2014. That is until his eyes glanced over at the TV screen in his office, where he learned that billionaire hedge fund manager and activist investor Bill Ackman was about to back the takeover of his company by way of a hostile takeover.

The acquirer was none other than the infamous and controversial pharmaceutical company, Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Valeant was a Wall Street darling and one of Canada’s largest companies. So why and how did this transaction lead to Valeant's downfall only a year later?

Listen to Episode 53 of The Great Fail to hear the story. Special thanks to Joe Nocera for his contributions to this segment.

Valeant Pharma Sources
The rise and fall of Valeant Pharmaceuticals
The Roll-Up Racket
What Valeant’s fall from grace can teach the drug industry
THE VALEANT MELTDOWN AND WALL STREET’S MAJOR DRUG PROBLEM
Valeant CEO didn’t tell investors real story about sales growth
Explaining Valeant: The Main Theories
A Buried Scandal, Shedding Of Assets, And Forthcoming Spinoff Means Substantial Upside For Bausch Health
The Demise of Valeant Pharmaceuticals: A Case Study in Rotten Culture and Business Ethics
Valeant Makes Hostile Bid For Allergan
Inside A Hostile Takeover: The Allergan-Valeant War
Wikipedia: Milan Panić

Special Guest: Joe Nocera, Business Columnist at Bloomberg
Joe Nocera is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. He is the host and writer of the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
24 min
September 22, 2022 Bonus Episode: Introducing Home / Work
The Great Fail is proud to present Home / Work, a new marketing podcast that is not about marketing. Hosted by AMA Marketing Hall of fame inductee Antonio Lucio, Home / Work is about the real talk on the good, bad, ugly, and extraordinary of balancing life and work. We will bring true role models of our industry together with their partners to discuss how they do it.

On the premiere episode of Home / Work, Antonio sits down with Carla Hassan, Chief Marketing Officer of JPMorgan Chase, and Tariq Hassan, Chief Marketing and Digital Customer Experience Officer of Mcdonald's to discuss balancing two incredible careers while raising a family, what they learned while raising a family during the pandemic, and why they don't consider themselves a "power couple."

Subscribe to Home / Work on your favorite podcast platform or by visiting adweek.com/podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
36 min
September 01, 2022 Episode 52: Bikram Yoga, From Super-Heated to Overheated
Bikram Choudhury was the founder of the wildly popular hot yoga practice that many considered to cure ailments, detoxify bodies, and change lives. At the height in 2006, there were 1,650 studios in at least 40 countries, but by 2013, a series of allegations surfaced when one by one, women stepped forward with accusations that included sexual assault, rape, and abuse against the man revered as a guru. Listen now to hear about the rise and fall of the Bikram Yoga empire on Episode 52 of The Great Fail. Special guest Dave Emerson, Founder of Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga. And shoutout to our partners at Adweek and Acast.

Bikram Yoga Sources

He made a fortune from his trademarked Bikram yoga, but now his empire is in tatters
The incredible rise and fall of yogi-to-the-stars Bikram Choudhury
'He said he could do what he wanted': the scandal that rocked Bikram yoga
Bikram yoga's moral dilemma
Wikipedia: Bikram Choudhury
New Netflix Documentary Shows Bikram’s Dark Side, So Why Are Yogis Still Doing It?
Bikram is Back: The Unapologetic Tour
The Horrifying Cult Origins of Bikram Yoga: Rape, Harassment and Lies
The Overheated, Oversexed Cult of Bikram Choudhury
Global Yoga Market Outlook

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
22 min
August 18, 2022 Episode 51: Why the World Unfriended MySpace
Before there was Facebook, there was MySpace, once the world’s most dominating social networking company. In the summer of 2005, one of the biggest deals in internet history made headlines when News Corp., famously known as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, acquired MySpace for $580 million in cash. In the business realm, it seemed that with the backing of the media giant, MySpace would have the world at its fingertips. And to the outside, it appeared that Myspace was going to be unstoppable. Find out how MySpace got unfriended on Episode 51 of The Great Fail.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
28 min
August 03, 2022 Episode 50: Terra: Crypto’s TERRA-ble Crash
We’re doing a special episode on cryptocurrency this week and covering what occurred in May of 2022 when the world watched as one of the biggest projects imploded. Once valued at $400 billion, the project was known as TerraUST, a stablecoin that was going to transform the crypto market and the way that traditional payments would be made in the future. Instead, investors watched as its market value dropped by almost 99% within 24 hours. What led to this death spiral and more importantly, what does the future hold for crypto investors?

Our special guest Omid Malekan, Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School, will break down the story in Episode 50 of The Great Fail.

Terra Sources

How a Trash-Talking Crypto Founder Caused a $40 Billion Crash
Terra Was Too Big to Fail, and It Failed: Bloomberg Crypto
TerraUSD’s collapse will take down every other algorithmic stablecoin, crypto analysts say
TerraUSD ‘stablecoin’ delisted from crypto exchanges
How $60 Billion in Terra Coins Went Up in Algorithmic Smoke
The Fall of Terra: A Timeline of the Meteoric Rise and Crash of UST and LUNA
The Terra (LUNA) Collapse: 4 Lessons To Be Learned (Opinion)
The Real Reasons Behind the Crypto Crash, and What We Can Learn from Terra’s Fall
Luna Crypto Crash: What Happened To Terra Luna?
Who is Do Kwon, the ‘lunatic’ who created a $60 billion cryptocurrency that collapsed in days?
Crypto investors contemplate SUICIDE and hide from friends seeking revenge for losing their life savings as currency crashes to zero
Terra LUNA Investors Lose Everything In 98 Percent Plunge, Suicide Hotline Posted At Top Of Forum
All Those Celebrities Pushing Crypto Are Not So Vocal Now

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
32 min
July 20, 2022 Episode 49: Von Dutch, From Price Tags to Toe Tags
Back in the early 2000s, the Von Dutch ubiquitous trucker hats were seen everywhere- and their line of denim brought us the classic low-rise, sometimes frayed at the hem, sometimes with tons of bling, but never without the iconic “Von Dutch” stamped logo. That uniquely distinctive font bared the cool culture Americana aesthetic. Von Dutch’s popularity was so tremendous that in 2003, the Company was raking in $33 million in sales from their jackets, denim, t-shirts, and trucker- until the brand got hit with counterfeiting. But the story of Von Dutch isn’t just about rhinestones and rip-offs, it was a story about deception, betrayal, murder, and a scandal that would serve as the epitaph of its tombstone. Find out how it all went down in Episode 49 of The Great Fail.

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Sources:

Inside The Messy, Chaotic Downfall Of Von Dutch
A New Docuseries Explores the Rise and Fall of Von Dutch
Drug fronts, murder, and Paris Hilton: the rise and fall of Von Dutch
The Untold Story of Von Dutch
Wikipedia: Von Dutch
S.C. man shot dead in Venice Beach
How Von Dutch’s Trucker Hat Empire Ended in Chaos and Death
1999 Week
Before There Was Snapchat: A Look Back At The Biggest Stars Of 1999

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22 min
July 06, 2022 Bonus Episode: The Speed of Culture Podcast
This week we’re releasing a bonus episode from one of our sister podcasts on the Adweek Podcast Network called The Speed of Culture Podcast. In this episode, host Matt Britton talks to Ken Ohashi about bringing a brand’s DNA into focus. Ken is a marketing expert with years of experience in the retail industry with brands like Aéropostale, and the Authentic Brands Group. Having acquired the iconic suit brand Brooks Brothers prior to the pandemic, Ken found himself navigating a new, potential post-office wear world during the Covid 19 pandemic and what that means for a brand synonymous with formal wear.

We’ll return in 2 weeks with another episode of The Great Fail.

Thanks to our partners Adweek and Acast.

www.TheGreatFail.com

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26 min
June 22, 2022 Episode 48: Phar-Mor, From Savior to Misbehavior
Get ready to hear about the most scandalous retail pharmacy chain of all time that was Phar-Mor. We hear about companies and financial misconduct frequently–stories of cooked books and misappropriated funds are hardly rare, but often leave us questioning–how do companies manage to pull these off, and more importantly how do they get past trained professionals, auditors and investors? In this episode, our featured guest Professor Kelly Richmond Pope of DePaul University, a forensic accounting expert with a specialty in corporate crime, will explain how an accident exposed a $1 billion fraud and took down one of the nation’s largest retail chains. Listen now to Episode 48 on The Great Fail.
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27 min
June 08, 2022 Episode 47: Kmart, From Blue Light Special to Candlelight Vigil
Who doesn’t remember Kmart? At its height, Kmart was the second-largest retailer in the United States, operating 2,400 stores with 350,000 employees. The company was generating around $37 billion a year in sales, ranking 2nd to Sears. But by 1990 it would see a tectonic shift, with its fortunes beginning to change. Find out how a series of missteps and poor management would bring down an American staple that had ruled retail for over 100 years. Listen now to Episode 47 on The Great Fail.
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28 min

About The Great Fail

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The Great Fail is a true crime inspired, business podcast that examines the greatest success stories of the most prominent and prolific companies, brands, and people and what led to their demise. If…