the 2021 amazon prime seriesLuLaRich (reviewed in this volume) chronicled the meteoric rise and fall of LuLaRoe, a billion-dollar multi-level marketing (MLM) company founded in 2013 by DeAnne and Mark Stidham that specializes in women's clothing. The series explored the company's founding, growth, corporate culture, and recruitment and marketing strategies, as well as the particular appeal of the garments themselves. LuLaRoe's success in the 2010s can be attributed to the convergence of several factors: the growth of social media, the rise of athleisure wear, the economic impact of the 2008 recession, the company's ability to tap into a large pool of educated stay-at-home mothers eager for supplemental income, and the aspirational vision of White womanhood that LuLaRoe deployed and cultivated. The series also raises questions about the broader relationship between Mormonism and MLMs; specifically, this essay focuses on the connections between MLMs, entrepreneurship or startup culture, and the theological...
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January 01 2023
Startup Culture: MLMs, Mormons, and Entrepreneurship Available to Purchase
Deborah Whitehead
Deborah Whitehead
Deborah Whitehead is associate professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies and associate director of the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on intersections between religion and philosophy, gender, popular culture, and media in US history. She is the author of William James, Pragmatism, and American Culture (Indiana University Press, 2015), and her current book project is a study of contemporary US evangelical media.
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Mormon Studies Review (2023) 10: 31–41.
Citation
Deborah Whitehead; Startup Culture: MLMs, Mormons, and Entrepreneurship. Mormon Studies Review 1 January 2023; 10 31–41. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/21568030.10.04
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