The Magnolia Story (with Bonus Content)

by Chip Gaines

  I had always been a religious person. I was brought up in the church, and my parents were very committed to getting the family there every Sunday without fail. So from the age of five to about twenty, religion to me was a matter of “you do this, and you don’t do that, and you do your best to walk the straight line.”

  I was good at that. I’m good at following the rules—most of the time. But once I was on my own in New York, my faith became something very personal. It was no longer about what my parents knew or what my pastor knew. I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become.

  When I came back to Waco, I had a very different perspective. I went back to work at my father’s Firestone shop knowing that I didn’t want to do broadcast journalism, but also doubting whether or not I wanted to take over the tire business. I spent a good part of my days in that back office daydreaming and sketching ideas out on a yellow steno pad.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to run my dad’s business, but I definitely liked the idea of owning my own business. I thought about what kind of business I’d like to own—a spa, a bakery, a home store. Whatever I chose, I wanted it to be as beautiful and welcoming as those boutiques in New York.

  I drew pictures of what the shops might look like. I designed logos. I never shared those ideas with anybody, and there were times when I thought I was just being foolish. In fact, I started to think about my degree and the fact that I’d worked at one of the top evening news programs in all of television, and I wondered if maybe I’d given up on TV news too soon. I wondered if maybe I should go back to New York and go for it. I was actually in the middle of pulling up all the old contacts I’d made during my internship on the very day I met Chip at the tire shop.

  And so I stayed in Waco, and my life took a sharp turn down a path I never could’ve imagined.

  We’d only been living in the yellow house for about a month when I flipped open that yellow pad and showed Chip some of my ideas. Remodeling and redecorating that house had filled me with all sorts of new inspiration, so I showed him the sketches and plans I had made for a little home décor shop. I told him I wanted to apply everything I’d learned from this house and my days wandering around Manhattan to a business idea I’d been playing around with.

  “Someday,” I said.

  “Why not right now?” Chip replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go drive around and find a building you like, and let’s do it. We’ll fix it up just like we’re fixing up this house, and you can open your business right now.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious! Go find a building and let’s do it! Why not?”

  Chip had this way of turning far-off dreams into something that seemed real and achievable in an instant. He filled me up with a confidence I’d never known. He made me believe I could actually do it.

  So I did.

  I drove around Waco with new eyes, searching around every corner and strip mall for something that I could turn into my vision. One day, I spotted this little building on Bosque (pronounced BOSS-key) Boulevard. It was sunburnt orange—a bit like Chip on our first date—and it was all boarded up, but it looked more like a little house than a cookie-cutter, strip-mall type of business. It backed up to a residential neighborhood, it had its own little parking lot, and it was right next door to a church. There was something cute and quirky about the place that just caught my eye.

  It wasn’t for sale. It basically looked abandoned. But I took a picture on my phone and sent it to Chip.

  “I love this building!” I told him.

  His response was, “Jo, that thing is ugly.”

  “But I love all the windows, and I can imagine these pretty displays . . .”

  I’ve picked some dumps, some buildings that weren’t pretty, either. But this place seemed like it was on the wrong side of town for a retail location. It looked more like a place that you’d turn into a little gas station or a used car lot or something.

  Chip didn’t feel good about it, but he did some research anyway and found out the property was owned by a woman named Maebelle, who was probably in her seventies at the time. We reached out to her, and she agreed to meet us at the building. She told us the whole history of the place. Her son had been renovating it for years, but he had gotten very sick and had never been able to finish. She’d received a couple of offers on the property, but she just wasn’t ready to part with it yet—especially since those bidders wanted to turn it into a used car lot or something else she didn’t want to see in the neighborhood. She and her son had been looking to open a tuxedo shop, and she was hoping for something along those lines.

  We had a good talk with Maebelle, and she loved the idea that I’d be opening a shop I would run myself, that I had no interest in tearing down that little building her son had worked on for so long. Before we left, we told her we’d like to make an offer too, and she said that when the time came she would rather sell it to us than to the other folks.

  So we got all excited. Thinking back, maybe we got excited a little too quickly. Because we’d never thought through exactly how we’d finance the place.

  I had a line of credit that worked well for flipping houses. It was a short-term thing. But I didn’t have the credit needed to do a long-term commercial purchase like that. Even though this was gonna be Jo’s business, it made sense to both of us that it should be in both our names.

  I had a tiny bit of savings tucked away that I decided I could use for a down payment. I’d never thought I would touch that money, but Chip inspired me to want to do something more with it than just let it sit in the bank earning next to nothing in interest. I also knew that if I filled out a loan application, I’d still be able to show the income I’d been making at my dad’s shop. I might even be able to qualify for some kind of small-business loan available to women. We decided to go for it and were excited to hear about some financing options Chip hadn’t used before.

  The bottom line was that I loved Jo, she loved me, and we loved being together. Working together energized us—it just worked out best. And no matter what it took, I was going to make this little shop work for her. When she shared that little yellow notepad of sketches with me, I knew this was like Jo sharing her diary or something. These were her innermost thoughts and dreams. I couldn’t help but push her toward them. And the quicker, I thought, the better. No time to chicken out. Just like our first date.

  After doing all the paperwork and scraping together as much as I could, I offered Maebelle $45,000 for her property. And she said, “Oh my. I’ve already had two offers for considerably more than that.” She had thought we would come closer to those other offers, and she’d been sure she’d pick us over them, even if we came in a little under, simply because she liked us. But $45,000 was just too low.

  “I am so sorry. I thought you guys were going to be a little closer,” she said.

  “I am so sorry if I offended you, Maebelle. That’s just what I have,” I said.

  “Well, if you could come up with more, call me,” she replied. “If not, I’m going to have to move on with these other people.”

  I knew we couldn’t come up with more. Putting together the financing on that $45,000 was a stretch as it was. That was that.

  I was really sad about it, of course. I’d managed to get all excited imagining the possibilities for what I could do in that location. I’d envisioned that shop from top to bottom. I swear I could smell the candles burning inside and see the looks on my customers’ faces when they found that perfectly unique item that would fit in that perfect spot in their home.

  I wasn’t ready to give up. I knew we could probably find another location somewhere. But it was very hard to let go of the store I’d envisioned in that quirky old building on Bosque.

  So that night and just about every night after that, I prayed: “Lor
d, that’s the building that spoke to me. And if it’s meant to be, please make it come back around.”

  FIVE

  OPENING UP

  Sometimes the thing we’re dreaming of doesn’t work out. But Chip and I weren’t going to give up on the idea of opening my shop just because the building I fell in love with seemed to slip through our fingers. So we kept on looking for other buildings. We searched and searched, but nothing we found had the character and charm of that little spot on Bosque.

  I was starting to lose hope when, a few weeks into our renewed search, my prayers were suddenly answered. Maebelle called me on my cell phone: “Joanna, I’ve been praying about it, and I do not know why, but I feel very strongly that God is saying I need to sell this building to you for $45,000.”

  I could hardly believe it. God made it so evident that this was meant to be. I was about to open my very own business!

  Some friends and family members tried to talk me out of doing this. They felt it was just too big of a risk to take because I had no experience running a business of my own, no training in retail sales or marketing. I had never owned property before. And I knew next to nothing about home décor or design. Truly, the only home decorating I’d ever done was in the house where we were currently living, and that had just been one big experiment for me.

  But Chip did what Chip does and made all those facts, all that logic, seem irrelevant. He really did. He believed I could do it, and he was confident that what I didn’t know, I could learn.

  I think part of what originally drew me to TV journalism was that I was a curious observer of other people. I may have been the quiet girl, but I was always the one who watched how things worked and took everything in. I’d told Chip all about how things worked in those shops in New York. Time spent by shoppers in those little boutiques was a sensory experience, and the store owners made sure of it. Women, especially, notice these kinds of details: the sweet smell of a candle burning, the color of a fresh bouquet of flowers next to the register, the music softly playing in the background, the allure of an interesting display—all of those things I’d mentioned earlier. As a shopper and a careful observer, I was able to appreciate the creative process that went into each little table and window installation.

  In that sense, I wanted to create a store that was an experience, not just a collection of things for people to buy. I wanted to design it with intention and be sure I set things up to catch the eye of my shoppers. I also wanted to make sure my displays were practical and inspired my visitors to know that they, too, could set up their homes like this. My goal was to make design relatable, to make it attainable.

  We took some time renovating that little houselike shop while I finished up our remodeling at home, and in the process I started collecting inventory. I bought inexpensive merchandise at the Dallas Market Center, an incredible wholesale marketplace filled with items sourced from all over the world. I hit garage sales and flea markets, too, and found old mirrors and furniture and knickknacks that I could fix up or distress to make them more appealing while adding some value to them.

  At one point I found a large brown wicker sleigh for five bucks. I couldn’t believe how cheap it was. I thought to myself, If I dress this thing up a bit, I could sell it for twenty-five dollars. Off to the local craft store I went. I found a fake ivy garland to wrap all around the sleigh and some battery-operated Christmas lights that I tucked into the ivy. I was so proud of the way it turned out that I thought maybe I could sell it before the shop even opened and get a taste for how this would all work. So I talked my father into putting it in his waiting area at Firestone with a price tag on it.

  But a week went by, and I noticed the sleigh was still there. The second week, I called my dad. “Yes, JoJo, it’s still here. But don’t worry. It will sell.” The third week went by, and I told my dad that if it didn’t sell, I would just come pick it up and get it out of his way. At that point I felt deflated. I questioned more than ever if running a store was what I was supposed to be doing. But I went in toward the end of that third week, and my father handed me an envelope with twenty-five dollars in it. “I told you it would sell,” he said. “Now go buy something for twenty dollars and see if you can sell it for fifty bucks. This is how retail works, JoJo.”

  Selling that sleigh made me feel like I could do this design thing despite the odds—and my lack of experience. But the more I shopped for bargains that I could turn around for profit, the harder it was to choose between what I wanted to sell and what I wanted to use to finish turning our house into a home over on Third Street.

  It took nearly eight months to get it to a point where that yellow house finally felt finished. I was so happy to be done, to be free of the dust and debris and tools everywhere, and to finally get the place neatened up and livable. I don’t like a lot of clutter. I like a clean house. If my house is too messy, I just can’t think straight. And remodeling a house is messy by definition. So nearly eight months after being carried into a house full of rotten meat and dog urine, I was thrilled to finally have a place where we could be comfortable. I was proud of what we’d done too. I hoped we’d live there for a long time, and I was ready to focus all of my energies on the shop.

  Then Chip came home one afternoon and said, “Hey, Jo, I bought a new house.”

  “Oh,” I said. “To rent out?”

  “Well, eventually, yeah. We’re gonna be able to rent this house out now, because we fixed it up. It’s ready to go. So let’s move down to this next house a few doors down and we’ll fix that one up, too, as nice as we made this one. We’ll be able to make better rent on everything if we make ’em all look this good.”

  As I rode down the street with him to see what he’d bought, I was in shock when he pulled up in front of this tiny white box of a house. I mean tiny—maybe eight hundred square feet. There was no cute front porch. The yard—front and back—was all weeds and overgrown bushes. When he opened the front door on that cabin-size house, I could see it hadn’t been touched in thirty years.

  She cried. Again. That was sort of her thing during year one. If we ever write a marriage book, chapter 1 will be called, “She cried.”

  Chip assured me this was the right thing to do. This was how we were going to get ahead and make real money. He tried to remind me of the fun I’d had fixing up the yellow house, and I had to admit that some parts of it had been fun. I’d loved coming up with the themes for the rooms, and picking out all the colors and textures, and learning how to do the work myself. But the yellow house wasn’t just some house to me after doing all of that work. It was my house. It was our home.

  But Chip never saw it like that. He really never got attached to anything that didn’t have a heartbeat. These houses, they were just inventory to him. He liked messing with them, but he certainly didn’t want to live in any of them forever.

  Even though he didn’t understand why I was upset, he was smart enough to just leave me alone for a little while. I went back home and sat on the porch and thought, How can we just rent this house out to college kids? My house. We’d only been in there eight months. Then I got to thinking about how much work it had been, and the idea of starting from scratch again seemed daunting, especially with everything I was trying to do to get the shop opened up. I cried it out until I reached a point where I realized there was nothing much I could do about it. He’s already bought it, so we’re kind of in this now. No one is going to rent that little white house out in the condition it’s in.

  One thing I learned there on that beautiful front porch was if I wanted to be successful, if I wanted to do important work one day, I would have to increase my capacity. I had to learn to manage disappointment. I needed to learn how to make the most out of those “opportunities” Chip seemed to keep finding.

  So I told Chip okay. We rented our house out that very week to some college students and moved ourselves down the block. We started renovating again. And because this house was half the size and I was already actively out there look
ing for inventory for the shop, it didn’t take nearly as long to get everything finished.

  We did suffer a few setbacks, like the time Chip decided to surprise me by using maroon grout on the white tile in the kitchen. He could tell I didn’t like it the moment I walked in the room, and he wound up ripping it all out and doing it all over again. I’m not sure why I had such clear ideas about what I liked and didn’t like, but I did. And the funny thing is that after a couple of months, once I had put my stamp on it, I was as much in love with that little house as I had been with the yellow one.

  She jokes to this day, “I liked that house because I could vacuum the whole place without ever unplugging the cord.”

  I could plug into one outlet and vacuum every room! I loved that. It’s true.

  Back at my shop, the one thing I was having a hard time designing was a sign for the front of the building.

  Chip and I had decided together that our little shop would be named Magnolia. I’ve always loved magnolia trees and their blooms—there’s something so beautiful about a magnolia blossom. It demands attention, and you can’t help but love those big, creamy petals and that fragrant smell. We’d handed out magnolia leaves at our wedding, and we’d had those two beautiful magnolia trees in the front yard of our first home together, so magnolias have always seemed like a part of us. Plus, they just seemed so entirely Southern. They reminded me of drinking sweet tea on the big wraparound porch of a nineteenth-century plantation home or something.

  The name Magnolia just fit my business and the feeling I wanted to create. We loved it. But I really struggled with how to put the name on that sign. I figured I would have to hand-paint the thing since I didn’t have a budget to have anything professionally made, and I just couldn’t come up with anything that worked. I kept drawing things out, trying to write the word Magnolia in different ways, using the flower itself in a logo of sorts, and it just never felt right to me.