Frankie Elder-Reedy, a rural Pleasanton entrepreneur, pitches her new line of Wrax sports bras on her company's website, mywrax.com. She will make that pitch in person Friday, Feb. 28, at the Union Station Planetarium in Kansas City, Mo.
By Roger Sims, rsims@linncountyjournal.com
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – This Friday, Feb. 28, will mark a milestone for Frankie Elder-Reedy, a rural Pleasanton woman whose name has been synonymous with entrepreneurship in Linn County for the last 30 or more years. She will be one of the presenters at the Pipeline Entrepreneurs’ Innovators Showcase at the Union Station Planetarium in Kansas City, Mo.
Elder-Reedy’s presentation will highlight her development of Wrax, a sports bra system that has been in development for several years. In addition to pitching at the showcase, Elder-Reedy has been accepted as a 2025 Fellow into the Pipeline program. The event offers an opportunity for the 2024 Fellows and Pathfinders to present the progress they've made over the past year.
Her presentation is set to begin at 11:40 a.m. as a part of the Pathfinders Group Three. The presentations are open to the public and are free to attend.
To add to the pressure in the sales pitch for her new product is the potential for money to help her develop her marketing strategy.
“Pitching on stage Friday to launch a new product, I could win a $5,000 prize,” she said.
According to a news release, Pipeline Entrepreneurs is an organization focused on supporting and growing innovative businesses in the Midwest. The Innovators Pitch Showcase highlights the accomplishments of its Fellows and Pathfinders. Pipeline's programs provide entrepreneurs with access to resources, a network, and guidance.
Pipeline Entrepreneurs have collectively generated more than $2.7 billion in revenue, contributed nearly $995 million in wages, and created more than 4,500 jobs across Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri, the release said.
A timeline of her endeavors started more than two decades ago. Elder-Reedy, along with her first husband, opened a carpet store in La Cygne that was in operation for eight years. In 2003, the county commission voted to make retail liquor sales legal, and she opened the county’s first liquor store, Frankie’s Liquor, again in La Cygne. She also opened a bait shop that same year.
In 2009, with several other practitioners, she opened Serenity Wellness, putting her certification as a hypnotherapist to work. Looking back, she concedes that a holistic wellness business did not find a ready market. However, she said that, along with sound healer Danielle Mornington, she still practices in a space at the Beauty of Broadway shop.
In 2014 Elder-Reedy opened Get Out the Funk laundromat. Later came an Airbnb house, and with her help, her son Ashton Howard’s Black Elk Coffee Bar, all of which were located in La Cygne.
She will be the first to admit that some of her ventures didn’t work out as well as expected, but several did. She sold the liquor store and the laundromat. When real estate prices soared recently, she and her husband, Daniel Reedy calculated their potential Airbnb earnings with their Two Creeks Lodge property compared to the price they could get for the property in a hot housing market. The property sold quickly.
Her son had a life-changing surgery in Spain a couple of years ago that freed his spinal chord and brought him relief from constant pain. As a young man in his early 20s, that allowed him to have a normal life and enroll in college, and the coffee bar became a victim of that newfound freedom.
In addition to those businesses, Elder-Reedy, along with her mother (who she says is her entrepreneurial role model) Linda Elder, run Grady’s Kids, a not-for-profit fundraising organization that raises money to help children who are sick or injured.
As these changes happened in her life, though, she began thinking of ways to solve a problem that had been on her mind for quite some time. A noncompetitive runner who has enjoyed distance exercise since her high school days, Elder-Reedy wanted to solve the problem that arises when sports bras don’t provide enough support.
Although the idea had been going around in her head for a while, several years ago she began to get serious about developing a bra that would provide enough support. Thus was born the Wrax Max sports bra, and over the next couple of years Elder-Reedy further refined and expanded the line to include a whole system that could be tailored to fit individual needs.
The original Wrax Max uses a system that included buckles. However one of her customers, a jiu jitsu instructor, pointed out that the buckles would not work in her line of work, so Elder-Reedy went to work designing a bra that met that the needs of that woman as well as others like her.
As she developed and expanded her product line, she took the step three years ago of applying for a patent. She said that her attorney has informed her that the application process is nearly complete and that she will receive a patent on not only her original bra design but for all of its variations.
Elder-Reedy admits that, at this point, finding the best way to market her line is at events where customers can try on the bras.
“When they put it on, they buy it,” she said.
There in lies the challenge.
“I’ve always been bricks-and-mortar,” she said. “E-commerce is so difficult.”
However, it’s a challenge she said she is up for.
“I’m trying to figure out how to sell to people on line,” she added.
She said that positive customer reviews have been “monumentally” helpful in driving sales.
She is hoping that a study by Kansas State University will be helpful in driving more sales. She said the study will use biometric research to show that her system allows for more dynamic arm movement, which translates into a more comfortable and effective workout.
But ultimately it will continue to take patience and hard work on her part.
“None of this is easy,” she said.
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