By David DeWeaver

Standing in line at a Starbucks on Baltimore Avenue, Francie Wasser opted for a bottled herbal tea.

She can’t tolerate caffeine, she said. Lattes make her feel agitated and sick. It’s a curious discrepancy for someone not otherwise averse to excitement.

You’d be forgiven for thinking she was a Ph.D. student at first glance. Wasser has the clean, professional, working-woman aesthetic of a young person who’s long since stopped drinking at Cornerstone and started drinking at Busboys.

And you’d be partially correct, because in some respects her life is by-the-book. She completed a bachelor’s degree in cinema production in three years, graduated in 2006 and found work as a media coordinator for The Walt Disney Company soon after.

She went on to earn an MBA in 2011 from Washington University in St. Louis and worked at BTS, a global business consulting company, for nearly four years.

Everything was on the up for Wasser. She was making decent money, contributed to her 401(k) and even owned a home.

But by 2017, Wasser had decided to put it all on the line and start a women’s underwear manufacturing company.

The transition to business ownership was less jarring than it sounds. She’d already taken on freelance consulting work in 2015 and was slowly leaving the rat race behind.

Starting her own company was the logical next step. And the idea for an underwear company, while a seemingly random niche for a business consultant and former film producer, was born from practical need.

Wasser struggled with vaginal health issues in the past, and her gynecologist said that all-cotton undergarments could prevent further infections. But when she went searching for the right products, she was sorely disappointed by the available choices.

Most cotton underwear is pretty unflattering, as she found out. They are, as she put it, “granny panties.”

So for a while, her mother would sew cotton panties for her, sending samples from Maryland to Wasser’s then-residence in Chicago. After a while, the elder Wasser got tired of the work and told her daughter to learn how to sew herself.

When Wasser realized that sewing panties wasn’t actually that challenging, she had a eureka moment. As a businesswoman, she knew there was a need in the market for good-looking cotton panties. But she also saw a connection to the gig economy. Could under-employed people sew cotton panties on a freelance basis, not for themselves, but for the market? Could sewing underwear provide good-paying work?

It was an idea that admittedly left many of her friends and family shaking their heads. They worried for her and couldn’t understand why someone who started out knowing nothing about sewing would give up the security of a corporate job.

Wasser has certainly given them cause for concern. She’s tapped into her 401(k), racked up credit card debt and spent down her savings, breaking every personal finance rule to pursue her dream.

“I mean, I’ve had to. There’s a lot of different ways that people leverage their savings, leverage their assets. It’s really ‘how much personal debt are you willing to take out?’” she said.  

Her company, Franciepants, remains a small operation with just two employees and six freelance workers, or sewing artists, as she calls them. But thanks to her tireless work ethic and knack for promotion, she’s attained startup funding and a level of recognition in the local social entrepreneurship scene.

Eric Thiel, an adjunct professor at the university who teaches social enterprise, met Wasser at D.C. Startup Week in 2017. He realized that she was passionate and 100% invested in the idea of cotton undergarments, so much so that he arranged for her to come lecture for his class.

“She’s really working her butt off,” he said. “Just a textbook entrepreneur case. Giving up your lucrative job and following your passion and having a very personal attachment to the venture.”

Shruti Rastogi, operations manager at Franciepants and Wasser’s self-described “second-in-command,” put it another way.

“She’s no bullshit. I believe in her, because she believes in the product and she believes in the good,” Rastogi said.

As Franciepants continues to expand, Wasser remains grounded and aware of her blessings. Not all aspiring entrepreneurs start with the financial head start she had, she says. Wasser was able to take money out of her savings and rent out rooms in her home, both of which gave her the breathing room to take time off and focus on her business.

“I am privileged that I’ve been able to do this, and it’s one of the things that drives me, to be honest. I feel like I have this idea, I have this ability, I have the privilege of having enough credit that I can do this. Meanwhile, I think this is something that is really important to do,” she said.

When asked when a would-be entrepreneur should take the plunge, Wasser laughed and said there’s never a perfect time.

“Entrepreneurship is… a whole lot of disappointment and toughness and… hanging on, barely interspersed with a few moments of success and excitement and joy,” she said.

“But at the same time,” she said, “there is something really compelling about it. It almost borders into the spiritual realm of feeling like you’re doing something that is more important than yourself.”