Magnolia Empire Evolution

A story about how Chip and Joanna Gaines built their billion-dollar Magnolia empire from humble beginnings in Waco, Texas.

"They live in Waco, Texas. Chip goes into this car repair shop that her dad owns, sees a picture of her on the wall and decides he's going to marry that girl. Keeps going back to the car repair shop, eventually bumps into her, asks her out.

This is back in 2003-ish. He was doing house flipping, and she was working with doing commercials for her dad's car repair place. They get together and decide to try to make something of this house flipping thing. She could use her design sense, he's a contractor. They move into this 800 square foot house, renovate it while living there, end up flipping one, two, three houses in Waco.

Then a TV show from HGTV starts casting. They read about this husband and wife house flipper in Waco. HGTV said 'Well, Waco... we're kind of hoping for somebody in LA or New York or Atlanta, but okay.' They go down to meet them, he's got this big personality, she's really good looking, so it plays well for TV.

They get their show called Fixer Upper. From day one it's a hit. They go from small-time house flippers to TV famous. They do 5-6 seasons, build this following, and had this brand called Magnolia. When the show ends, they do two things: reopen Magnolia as a beautiful place in Waco, and go to Discovery Channel. Discovery gives them a whole network - the Magnolia Network - to create fixer upper content, cooking content, gardening content.

Now they've built this empire. They have their own town which gets 2 million visitors a year. They have book cookbooks, journals, retail stores, brand paint, furniture brand, TV show network - everything. This couple in a span of about 10 years has built a billion-dollar brand around themselves."