Chaos Coordinator
“I tell people, ‘Go to Facebook Marketplace and search air filters,’” she says. “People are constantly buying the wrong ones. One wrong set of air filters is more than one month of Propperly.”
Propperly is the property‑management app Fralinger developed to wrangle her own rental portfolio – six properties at its peak, now four – and the thousand tiny details that quietly defeat multiple homeowners, of which there are about 10 million. It’s the binder of warranties, model numbers, passwords and expenses that no longer lives in a dusty closet but in your pocket. It’s also the logical extension of a career spent coordinating a lot of moving parts to create memorable experiences for clients.
As the chief operating officer of Icebox – once a bar catering outfit, now a national experiential marketing firm – she and a small team design and execute large brand activations for spirits portfolio heavyweights like Pernod Ricard and Diageo. Her informal title is “chaos coordinator” because of the seat-of-the-pants nature of each event.
At first, after joining the firm in 2015, Fralinger was on the road much of the time, overseeing all special events, which included batching cocktails on site – five gallons at a time. “I always joke I can make the best margarita you’ve ever had, but only in a five‑gallon bucket,” she says with a laugh.
But as liability insurance crept skyward, Fralinger and her boss made a deliberate pivot in 2018, refocusing on experiential events and big‑ticket weddings, including one in 2022 for two A-list celebrities in Riceboro, Ga.
The spark for Propperly came that same year when she was living in Miami while managing six properties in Charleston. “I couldn’t remember air filter sizes,” she says. “I had 12 filters across houses. Were these 20x20s or 18x20s? I was so frustrated, I sat down and did a mock-up of the app.”
After a lot of research and legal due diligence, such as getting trademarks, she sold one of her properties to fund the initial development with a team in Mumbai, India. Propperly launched last June and now has a host of practical features like AI-assisted onboarding and tap-and-track expenses.
But success involves a lot more than a helpful interface; it takes cash flow and patience. “The fastest way to fail with a startup is to run out of cash,” says Fralinger. “Icebox affords me the ability to do Propperly.”
Though she was raised in southern New Jersey, Fralinger’s Charleston thread runs deep. Her maternal grandmother, Caroline Molony, grew up south of Broad and did a stint at the College before life took her north. Two of Molony’s daughters returned to attend CofC, followed by Emily and three cousins – and, soon, a niece.
Fralinger, who majored in hospitality, bought her first home, in North Charleston’s Park Circle for $220,000 right after graduating. “I cried at closing because they asked me to write a $200 check, and I had $212 left,” she recalls. She still owns it and now rents it as an Airbnb – a cash cow that’s been refinanced and leveraged to fund other investments and, ultimately, Propperly.
No risk, no reward, she believes. But no panic, either. A small tattoo on her left wrist reads memento mori – remember you’re mortal – anchoring a stoic practice she shares with her brother. “You can only control what you can control,” she says. “Outside forces happen. It helps me to stay calm in crazy situations and reminds me to prioritize what matters.”