Healthy halo effect
This year, with an average of more than 30,000 visitors a week, Magnolia Market in Waco, Texas, should draw about 1.6 million people.
WACO, Texas — On a recent Thursday afternoon at Magnolia Market at the Silos, tourists lined up for $3.50 “shiplap cupcakes” where mill workers once weighed wagons of cottonseed.
The Waco Tribune-Herald reports in the shadow of the rusted silos, children toss beanbags on a village green of artificial turf. Parents slouch in striped beanbag chairs. Food trucks dispense wood-fired pizza, crepes and pineapple-kale smoothies.
A young woman from St. Louis walks out of the retail store with a $70 wooden sign: “Laundry: Wash-Dry-Fold.” A journalism teacher from Chino, California, carries a wreath of artificial magnolia leaves, as seen on “Fixer Upper,” the wildly popular home improvement TV show that is about to start its fifth and final season.
A retiree who has flown here from Chandler, Arizona, boards the “Silo District Trolley” with her goodies, content with having been to the capital of the lifestyle empire that Chip and Joanna Gaines have created from their TV fame.
How big are the Silos as a tourist attraction?
Bigger than the Alamo. This year, with an average of more than 30,000 visitors a week, Magnolia Market should draw about 1.6 million people, according to the Waco Convention and Visitors bureau. Those include four chartered buses that have carried tourists from New York to Waco over the past year.
The Silos are the signature of a growing Waco company that now employs 600 people, according to the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce.
But it’s not the stuff that brings the crowds. It’s a brand, the glow of a couple have become icons of faith, family and affordable home design to millions of Americans.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way about any show before,” said Annette Deming, the California journalism teacher, who made a threehour round-trip to Waco while attending a convention in Dallas. “I think it’s because of the strong marriage they have. I resonate with this idea of getting into a project with the person you love. I really do love (Joanna Gaines’) style. She’s super talented.”
‘Magnolia effect’
Tuesday marked the beginning of the end for “Fixer Upper,” the show that has become HGTV’s biggest hit, catapulted the Gaineses to national fame over the last four
years, and served as a weekly infomercial for Waco’s homey charms and affordability.
The show’s fourth season ended in March with a peak of 5.21 million viewers, the second-biggest cable telecast of the second quarter of the year, according to Variety.
Then, in September, the Gaineses announced they would walk away from the show and devote their attention to their other business projects and their four children.
Since then, Waco watercooler talk has centered on whether this is also the beginning of the end of the Gaineses’ cultural relevancy and for the jolt they have brought Waco’s economy.
Are Chip and Joanna a fad that will fade as the fickle American public moves on to other charismatic personalities? Is the much-touted “Magnolia effect” — the force that has filled hotels, roiled the local housing market and fueled a downtown development frenzy — just a bubble?
As you might expect, local tourism and economic development officials say no, as do local businesses who have hitched their wagons to the Gaineses’ star.
“I absolutely believe it has staying power,” Waco Main Street manager Andrea Barefield said. “They have so many irons in the fire. What we need
to do is take this and capitalize on it and really create a brand for Waco.”
Retail and branding experts from outside Waco agree the Magnolia brand, and the halo effect it has brought to Waco, can continue to grow if the Gaineses and the community play their cards the right way.
Adam Hanft, a nationally known brand strategist based in New York, said the Gaineses’ decision to shift attention to their home and hometown could actually bolster the wholesome image they have already earned. Ultimately, they could return with another TV show, perhaps focused on a different topic, such as parenting or entrepreneurship.
A lasting brand?
Magnolia spokesman Brock Murphy declined to comment for this story and said the Gaineses are taking a break from interviews. The couple are vacationing in Italy after wrapping up filming.
But those who know the couple say they have a strategy to make Magnolia a lasting brand.
“I’ve seen some of their internals and the consultants they’ve brought in to make the company stronger,” said Ryan Gibson, a founding partner of the Rydell real estate and investment firm who has known the Gaineses about a decade. “You don’t invest that kind of money without a longterm plan.”
Magnolia Silos, which opened in 2015, is only one piece of the emerging Magnolia business empire. Other ventures include:
• Magnolia Home, a line of furniture and accessories that has commanded space at Nebraska Furniture Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Bob Mills Furniture
• Hand & Hearth, a home décor line of 300 everyday items that was introduced this month at every Target store in America, with its own “store within a store”
• Books, including “The Magnolia Story,” which topped The New York Times bestseller list a year ago, and “Capital Gaines,” by Chip Gaines, also a best-seller since its release in October.
• Magnolia Journal, a quarterly lifestyle magazine introduced this year, with a newsstand price of nearly $8. Its last issue went out to 700,000 subscribers, plus 300,000 newsstand sales, and 1.2 million copies will be printed for the spring issue
• A top-tier social media presence: Joanna Gaines’ Instagram account has 5.6 million followers, and the Gaineses’ Twitter accounts have a combined 1.2 million followers
• Magnolia’s two short-term rental properties in Waco and McGregor, which are booked for months solid
• Magnolia Table, a destination restaurant that is to open early next year in the historic Elite Cafe building on the Circle.
Impact on the city
The economic impact of all that on Waco is hard to quantify, because Magnolia doesn’t share sales numbers, and sales tax numbers can’t be traced to individual businesses. But it appears this young company is now among Waco’s top 20 employers, on par with Texas State Technical College.
But tourism officials say the spinoff has been dizzying. Attendance at Waco-area attractions is estimated to be 2.6 million this year, a fourfold increase over 2015, the Convention and Visitors Bureau reports.
Hotel occupancy rates in the second quarter of 2017 were 75.5 percent, the secondhighest in the state, and hundreds of new hotel rooms are under development.
“Our colleagues in the convention and visitors industry are very jealous,” said Carla Pendergraft, marketing director at the bureau. “They ask us what it’s like, and I say, ‘lightning in a bottle.’ We make sure people understand we just kind of got lucky. But maybe we were due for a little good luck.”