Written by Ron Wilson, Director, Huck Boyd National Rural Development Institute, Kansas State University
A package ordered by the Prince of Dubai arrives at the Royal Palace. His order was for weightlifting equipment from a company halfway around the world in rural Kansas.
Today we’d like to introduce you to the rural entrepreneurs who run this amazing company.
Brad and Lynn Roepke are the founders and owners of Solid Bar Fitness, which produced this order for the Prince of Dubai. Brad and Lynn’s married daughter, Joe Hummel, is the company’s sales manager.
Brad Ropke is from Waterville, Kansas. Lynn is from nearby Burns. Ropke became a Hall of Fame football player at Baker University. He returned to Waterville and worked in his father’s business, Roepke Processing.
Brad remained interested in sports. In fact, he started building his own weightlifting equipment in his garage.
Lin was also interested in track and field. She ran a gym downstairs at Ropke Processing. She called it “Fitness Down Under.”
At Coach’s clinic in Topeka, Ropke met a man selling hexagonal barbells for weightlifting. Ropke asked him the price. When the man told him the price, Ropke replied, “If it’s cheaper than that, I can make it myself.”
The man answered: “If you can make it cheaper, would you make it for me?”
The two agreed, and Ropke began manufacturing the barbell. He then redid and improved the design.
In 1986, the Roepke family entered the business of manufacturing weightlifting equipment on their own. They named their company Solid Bar Fitness after the high-strength steel used in weightlifting bars.
“My father’s full name is Bradley Alvin Ropke, so I often say BAR comes from his initials, but my mother doesn’t buy it,” Joe said with a smile.
Joe played basketball at Washburn University. After graduating, she joined the family business and married Brady Hummel, a farmer and construction worker.
“Our family is all about athletics and farming,” Joe Hummel said.
Today, Solid Bar Fitness is the leader in the Olympic weightlifting products industry. The company offers multiple styles of stress-resistant, high-strength alloy steel bars, as well as weights and collars to hold weights in place. The Ropke family owns a patent for a removable collar.
Solid Bar Fitness outfits entire weight rooms in schools and universities and manufactures weightlifting products for other companies using other companies’ labels.
In 2018, Ropke was approached by a Kansan man named Zach Mars with an idea for a shoulder lift bar with curved foam pads. Other manufacturers turned him down, calling it a manufacturing nightmare, but Ropke saw potential in it.
Solid Bar Fitness currently manufactures this product, called the Marrs-Bar, and it’s a popular item.
One day, Joe Hummel’s husband’s boss asked him to help sell his new product, a tractor attachment designed to clean cow feedlots. She was so impressed with the product that she asked if she could buy it. Currently, they have partnered with the EZ Sweet sleeper cleaner company.
“We made a demo video on TikTok and it got 1.3 million views,” Hamel said. EZ Sweep Bed Cleaner is sold in the Midwest and Canada.
Meanwhile, Solid Bar Fitness products are sold throughout the United States and internationally. Clients include the Prince of Dubai, Odell Beckham Jr., Aaron Rodgers, Danica Patrick, and many Division I schools. The company recently won an Army contract to produce 27,000 combat fitness bars.
A remarkable business that can be found in the middle of Kansas. Waterville is a rural community with a population of 658 people. It’s rural, but it’s so much more than that.
The company’s headquarters and shipping facility are located in Waterville, but its manufacturing plant is located in the rural town of Morganville, population 180. Now, it’s the countryside.
For more information, please visit www.solidbarfitness.com. For more information on bunk bed cleaners, please visit www.ezsweet.net.
It’s time to leave the palace in Dubai with Olympic bars delivered to you by this business in rural Kansas. We salute the entrepreneurial spirit of Brad and Lynn Ropke, Joe Hummel, and everyone involved. Because being an entrepreneur is not easy.
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