One of Marion’s newest businesses is moving soon – to one of Uptown Marion’s most iconic buildings.
The Purple Wagon, which focuses on custom-curated gifts and accessories for babies and toddlers – and its associated business, Frankie P’s, which serves girls ages three to 10 – are relocating to the historic former Marion Maid-Rite building in the heart of Uptown Marion.
The building, at 1000 Seventh Ave. traces its history to the early 1880s. It’s the longtime anchor of what’s known as the “Owen Block,” encompassing the corner building and several others to the east.
The main portion of the building has been vacant since the Marion Maid-Rite closed its doors Jan. 31, 2017 after a 31-year tenure, and Purple Wagon co-owner Karlee Peters said she’s keenly aware of the building’s legacy for longtime Marion residents.
“We’re excited to fill it for sure, adding to the street,” Ms. Peters said.
“There’s so much character,” added co-owner Danielle Frein, Ms. Peters’ mother.
History of Purple Wagon, Frankie P’s
Ms. Peters started The Purple Wagon with a longtime childhood friend, Bre Degelau, when both were students at the University of Iowa. The name came from a wagon that Ms. Peters’ father painted purple “when I was probably six or seven, and we would use that to go back and forth (between) our houses when we were little.”
A late-night creating session for the two friends led to a spontaneous Facebook sale of hand-painted signs.
“We started making lots of handmade artsy stuff,” Ms. Peters said, “whatever we could think of in our college apartment.”
The friends sold their items at area farmers markets, and when The Purple Wagon was accepted to the Cedar Rapids downtown farmers market in 2016, Ms. Peters said her mother came on board, with hand-sewn baby bows and other items. Ms. Degelau moved on, and Ms. Peters and her mother two began touring the Midwest, attending markets in Des Moines, Omaha and Chicago.
“I actually skipped my college graduation at Iowa for a market in Des Moines that I wanted to go to,” Ms. Peters said.
Ms. Frein – who still lived at the time in Fort Dodge, where the family’s children were raised – drove to Eastern Iowa regularly to help with setup and teardown duties at the markets.
It didn’t take long, Ms. Peters said, for her mom’s handmade baby items to take center stage.
“The baby stuff pretty quickly outsold my artwork,” she said. “That became the part that really took off.”
After graduating from the UI, Ms. Peters moved to the Marion-Cedar Rapids area and began working and designing for a screenprinting shop in the NewBo District, where she began designing baby onesies and T-shirts. She transitioned to The Purple Wagon full-time after the birth of her first child, Frankie.
Meanwhile, Ms. Frein, who had moved to the Cedar Rapids area in 2016 while continuing her marketing career with State Farm, continued to sew her handmade baby items, many featuring Ms. Peters’ graphic designs. And Ms. Peters decided to leave her screenprinting job in 2019 to focus solely on The Purple Wagon.
Then, as for so many businesses, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be a turning point.
“That canceled a lot of markets for us,” Ms. Peters said. “That was the natural force of finally starting a website, which our local customers had been asking for a while, so they could get (items) when they weren’t at markets. And that ended up kind of being a blessing in the middle of a horrible situation like COVID. Our website just took off, and we started doing monthly drops on the website that we were shipping nationwide.”
The first move into a brick-and-mortar location came in October 2020, after Ms. Peters had discovered the Shops at West End in Marion, a collection of small cottages near the West End Diner, and opened her first Purple Wagon storefront in October 2020.
That location fostered even more growth for the business, and in 2022, The Purple Wagon moved to a new location in the Broad and Main on Seventh building. But that didn’t mean the end of the company’s presence in The Shops at West End.
“We didn’t want to give up that space at the Diner, with the community over there, and the foot traffic the diner and the other shops create,” Ms. Peters said. “So we had to think of something that would differentiate it from the Purple Wagon.”
Ms. Peters’ oldest daughter, Frankie, had just turned five at the time, and was growing out of the baby items stocked at The Purple Wagon, “as were a lot of our customers who started at farmers markets with us,” Ms. Peters said. So that’s when the idea for Frankie P’s was created for girls ages three and older. That became our older girls’ shop.”
Frankie P’s, focused on apparel and other items for girls ages 3-10, opened at The Shops at West End in the spring of 2023, and has continued operating as a separate location.
A family affair
Ms. Frein retired from State Farm in 2022 and became a full co-owner of The Purple Wagon.
“I was kind of always a partner,” Ms. Frein said. “From the beginning, everything has been very gradual, baby steps. It’s felt very natural. It was never like a sit-down ‘this is now when you’re going to be half owner’ situation.”
She, along with several contracted seamstresses, continue to produce the handmade items that still comprise about 30% of the business’ inventory. The remainder is carefully curated from a number of businesses, mostly small businesses – and many owned by other “momtrepreneurs.”
“Anything that I bring into the shop that isn’t Purple Wagon brand, I’m really particular about,” Ms. Peters said. “It’s only brands that I’ve used with my own kids, or would use with my own kids, and they’re products that I’ve tried and used multiple times. When we first opened at West End, we initially thought it would only be handmade, but then I started to dive into the world of wholesaling, which I knew nothing about before – and very small at first. We were only going to bring in toys and feeding supplies, and still only going to have the (handmade) clothing. But then, as we saw the demand, we broadened the scope.”
Ms. Frein said she’s enjoyed helping to develop The Purple Wagon as a family business, with husbands and siblings involved, along with Ms. Peters’ children – first as models for the clothing, then selling their own handcrafted items at farmers markets in Marion and other locations.
“It’s fun, for sure, and it’s just become like a whole family thing,” Ms. Frein said. “I have two other kids here in the area, and they have little ones, and they help us. The older granddaughters come and help unpack merchandise and price things. They love it all, wanting to be involved and be little entrepreneurs. And my role with State Farm was on the marketing side, so it all just kind of fits together.”
Moving to the Maid-Rite building
The building most recently known as the former Marion Maid-Rite has a rich history in Uptown Marion. According to documents from the Marion History Center, the building has been occupied at various times by a grocery store, meat market, barbershop, pool hall, Box Kar Hobbies and an auto parts store – even, for a short time, by the Marion Public Library.
For Ms. Frein and Ms. Peters, the building will provide more than double the retail space of their two existing stores combined – and despite the remodeling now under way, it will also provide a nostalgic environment for longtime Marion residents.
“It has the potential to feel very homey and traditional, like an old toy store,” Ms. Peters said. There’s going to be something for everyone in the family, no matter what age their kids are, from newborn baby gifts up to NeDo squishes for middle school and high schoolers … Marion people who’ve been here for a while might remember it as a Maid-Rite, with their family going there, and maybe it’ll bring back some of that nostalgia of being here as a kid.”
There are more practical considerations as well, from the extra space to combining the two stores’ operations under a single roof.
“I think it will help both customers’ ease of shopping, and also us not having to run back and forth so often, not having to staff both spaces,” Ms. Peters said. “It also creates opportunities for new businesses starting out at West End, to get some movement over there with the switching out of the space.”
Ms. Peters said she’s also appreciated the opportunity to work closely with the building’s owners, Jamie and Kelsie Hoth of Hoth Properties, who purchased the property in 2019. Ms. Hoth owns the neighboring Frydae ice cream and fry shop.
“We’re pretty lucky with our landlord, and he’s taking on most of the buildout for us,” Ms. Peters said. “We’re not like a restaurant needing a full kitchen or anything like that, so our buildout isn’t too expensive. And he’s a contractor by trade, so the things that we’ve asked for, he’s said, ‘that’s no problem.’ Things that we felt might have been a little bit challenging, he’s said ‘I can put a wall there.’ He’s just been really good to work with.”
The move will come in stages. Frankie P’s will close its Shops at West End location at the end of May. The Purple Wagon will remain open at its current location through the end of June, and after a brief closing to relocate inventory, Ms. Peters said the plan is to open at the new location in early July.
Ms. Peters said she relishes the opportunity to keep her businesses in Uptown Marion, especially in an iconic and highly-visible location.
“It’s one of the first things you see in Uptown,” she said. “I think it’s the busiest intersection in town, and it’s definitely a pillar of the Uptown Marion community. When we were thinking about moving, I don’t think it was ever even a consideration to leave Uptown. We didn’t even want to leave Seventh (Avenue), actually.”
And then it was just a matter of matching the opportunity and the circumstances.
“We needed to grow a little more before we could take this on,” Ms. Peters said. “A year or two ago, there was an opening in a hair salon directly across the street that I would have loved to jump into, but it wasn’t the right time. We were still pretty new, and we were trusting that something would work out when it was the right time to expand. And I feel comfortable with it now.”
