Interview: Property Brothers talk with MyFixitUpLife

Property Brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott, talk the new Scott Living Collection, their show and life growing up on a ranch with MyFixitUpLife’s Mark and Theresa.

Theresa: You are inside MyFixitUpLife, with my husband Mark. I’m Theresa. We’re here at the National Hardware Show in Vegas. We are sitting on awesomeness right now. The new Scott Living Collection from the Property Brothers.

Jonathan Scott: Ta-da!

Drew Scott: Ta-da!

Jonathan Scott: I told you the next time we saw you, we were going to make sure you were very comfortable. Have we succeeded?

Theresa: You have succeeded. I think this is a really cozy spot. Now that I know that it’s here, it’s going to be really hard for me to move along to go to our next thing.

Jonathan Scott: Are we going to have to call Security? Security! Move her.

Theresa: It Security wants to hang out with me and have a nice cup of coffee here, they could totally chill with me.

Mark: It will be more of a vagrancy charge, though, than anything. We’ve just … Loitering and all that other kind of thing. It’s comfortable.

Jonathan Scott: What you don’t realize, though, is this collection has been designed to match Drew’s socks.

Drew Scott: Everything that we’ve done.

Mark: (laughs)

Theresa: Ahh.

Drew Scott: It all comes down to my socks. This is great. This is actually the first glimpse anybody has had at our collection. This isn’t even a quarter of it. We’ve designed thirteen collections for every price point. We want it to be affordable luxury. You can see, if you walked around the show, there are hundreds and hundreds of vendors. There’s hundreds of different products, but there is nothing like this. This is very unique and very fresh.

Theresa: There is nothing like this. I was just talking with someone here at the booth, looking at all the beautiful fabrics and all of the just like, versatility, too, of all the pieces.

Jonathan Scott: … at the beautiful fabric.

Drew Scott: That’s exactly it. Of course, the model sitting at the booth. That’s the big thing here. On Property Brothers, the show, it’s all about your dream home. A lot of people feel they can’t afford to have their dream home. The renovation is one side of it, but the furniture, décor, the furniture design is a whole other aspect. We wanted to appeal to a lot of different markets. Here we have, this is our Tahiti Modular.

This is a nice, thick weave. We also have something that is a more of a contemporary feel with the weave. We also have a mahogany over here.

Jonathan Scott: Drew will literally never stop talking about it.

Drew Scott: Over here, I won’t stop talking about it. It’s also all

Theresa: You know what? I think that’s totally fine.

Drew Scott: That’s my job.

Theresa: You’re passionate about it and that shows. I think that’s a good thing.

Drew Scott: He smiles. I talk. That’s how …

Theresa: Ohh.

Mark: That’s a good balance. A good balance.

Jonathan Scott: Yeah. I’m here for good looks. Yeah.

Theresa: I tend to talk a lot.

Mark: By the way …

Theresa: He doesn’t smile at all, so …

Mark: I’m sort of with you on the ‘it’s going to end, someday, right?’

Jonathan Scott: Eventually you’ll run out of air, right?

Mark: No. No.

Theresa: I do want to compliment you on the fabrics, too. I remember not too long ago, trying to find an outdoor fabric that was cute. So hard. You have to really search it out. Now, you have all of these beautiful options.

Drew Scott: A lot of people … I don’t think that patio furniture has to be just boring, or you just have very, very basic pieces. We want everyone to feel that it’s an extension of your indoor living. A lot of people, they want to renovate, but they can’t add square footage to their home, they can’t afford it. They can’t do an addition. This is a way that you can have that indoor feel outside. You’re adding square footage in your patio space.

Jonathan Scott: We brought together a team. Woods Internationalist, who is manufacturing the goods with us, we designed everything right from the very beginning, brought in the experts. We brought in a textiles expert, because I said, for me it’s frustrating. I live in Vegas. Drew and I both do. Friends would invite me over. They’ll spend a fortune on this beautiful outdoor set and all the fabrics are bleached out in the sun. They’ve been worn and they’re run down.

We want this stuff, not just to be comfortable, but we want it to withstand the elements. We want it to look gorgeous. We have color combinations in every set. Versatility. It has impact. If you look over there to the Portofino, you can see the bold patterns. We wanted, really, to be a notch above anything else people have expected in their price point.

Mark: I’m looking at that over there. I see richness. I see a fleur-de-lis look and that kind of … Also, powerful, deeper colors that would be just as … Good is the wrong word. Just as appropriate in my living room as it would be on my deck.

Jonathan Scott: That’s exactly it.

Drew Scott: You’re right. You wouldn’t blend with that style. We’ve got a kegger set up over here.

Mark: No, hold on.

Drew Scott: You’re right. This is …

Theresa: Good profiling on him.

Jonathan Scott: Yeah.

Drew Scott: The big thing is that every room in a home, when I’m designing a home, every room needs to make a statement. You need to have statement pieces. Every piece of furniture. Every piece of décor we have here makes a statement, whether it’s the hanging candles we have. Whether it’s the candle holders, the water fountains

Jonathan Scott: A nice color pop over with our Nantucket over here. Actually, every lady that’s come into our display here at the booth, they automatically go right over here because they love the pop. They also love the look of the wood. There’s so many … Whether we want something that’s a blend of traditional and modern. Whether we want something very contemporary. We have something that appeals to everybody. We want to give people what we do on the show. You have that luxury feel for an affordable price. We’re hitting all these different price points for the different distributors.

Theresa: Not only just the fabrics, but these rugs, too, and all the accessories. There’s just tons of accessories that come with.

Drew Scott: We have over 400 additional accessories and décor pieces that we couldn’t fit into the booth. There are so many …

Theresa: What?

Drew Scott: Every collection has a whole series of décor pieces that go with it. They’re all interchangeable. You could take pieces from the Tahiti collection and they’d look great if you moved them into anything. The Charleston. All the different collections. It’s about having that versatility. Storage, too. A lot of our, for example, some of the stools that we have, you can open them up and inside throw some ice, put your drinks in there. It’s actually a holder.

Jonathan Scott: Put them in here. It’s all functional.

Theresa: No way.

Drew Scott: Flip it upside down, it’s a planter. Everything is multi-purpose.

 

Theresa: That is so cool.

Mark: Then we’ve got, because I tried to put my coffee down on it before, thinking it’s an end table.

Drew Scott: That’s a fountain.

Mark: Clearly, it’s a fountain.

Drew Scott: Yeah.

Mark: It’s a new kind, waterless fountain?

Drew Scott: Yeah. Exactly.

Theresa: Conservation. It’s all about it. Yeah.

Mark: It’s also a fire pit. There are flower pots. There’s planters. There’s all kinds of different stuff here. Are they all complete sets?

Drew Scott: We have, because it’s important for us, we have a large audience. We air in over eighty countries. In the US, on HDTV, we have a huge, huge audience. Everyone has different taste. A lot of people, they don’t know what they want until we actually show it to them. Same on Property Brothers. They think they know what they want, but everyone goes for something safe. We want to show people that you can have our outdoor space pop.

A lot of the different décor pieces that you see easily tie in, like Jonathan was saying, the Tahiti collection you can tie in with Nantucket. A lot of the décor pieces stand on their own as well. You don’t actually have to buy the entire set.

Jonathan Scott: We’re going to be integrating these products into our shows. Right now, I spend half my life in a million different stores, design shops. People don’t realize, my favorite spaces to design are outdoor living spaces. Usually I do renovate the entire house, inside and out, when I’m working on them. You only get to see three or four rooms. We’re going to make sure that we can start to focus on some more of those outdoor spaces.

You’ll see some of the steps. Sometimes we’ll just have a few décor pieces. Sometimes I’ll have entire collections. It’s going to be, the retailers that are carrying our line, it’s going to be a destination stop. People are going to want these collections and they are going to go there for it.

Drew Scott: Every collection you buy comes with a Jonathan.

Theresa: (gasp) No way! Is he inside only …?

Drew Scott: He will make your meals. In here, yeah.

Theresa: Oh, look. There he is! Right there!

Mark: Is that your carry-on bag?

Jonathan Scott: Yeah.

Theresa: I like it. Little action figure that comes with each set.

Mark: One thing. We’re talking about design. We’re talking about this collection. It’s beautiful, but I was looking at some videos on HDTV.com of you guys. I think it’s you narrating.

Jonathan Scott: Creepy, by the way.

Mark: It’s about …

Theresa: We’re watching them right now, actually.

Mark: It was super creepy, because it was the lobby of the hotel. I was like, are these guys going to walk by and be like … can someone …? No, but I think it was you narrating. It was about Property Brothers. You were talking about real people who need real skills and real strength and real tools to work on real houses. That’s where we come from. We’re like, we know who’s faking it. We know who’s doing this and that.

I practically, like, I can’t wait to talk to these guys. Hearing it from design. Hearing it from room to room. Now, outdoor living. It’s …

Drew Scott: Are you fan-girling right now?

Theresa: He kind of is.

Mark: No, I’m not.

Theresa: Let him go with it.

Mark: I wouldn’t say it, if I didn’t care. I’d just be like, yeah, that’s a nice color blue. I don’t really …

Jonathan Scott: I appreciate that.

Drew Scott: This is an important thing, what you’re saying, though. For us, we don’t want to … a lot of people out there, you know, they don’t have the background that we have. We actually are real estate agents. I’m a real estate agent. He’s a contractor. We do what we do. Property renovation is what we’ve done with people for years, even before the show.

Jonathan Scott: We’re not just a pretty face. We’re not even a pretty face. This is a lot of work.

Drew Scott: We want to make sure that

Theresa: Do you wear those like, rubber things you put on in the morning. Take it off at night.

Mark: Is this Mission Impossible? Is it? Is he going to …?

Jonathan Scott: Don’t touch.

Drew Scott: That’s the only way I could find somebody that looks just like me, willing to do the work.

Theresa: I love that.

Drew Scott: Yeah, we want to show people that this is stuff that they can do. The big thing with our shows, too. We always talk about when you know what’s outside your comfort zone. Not everybody should do a DIY, because we want to make sure that the house is safe, it looks great, but it’s also going to be great for the next person. Quality work. We really emphasize if you do know a certain task, take it on. Maybe you can save some money, or work with a professional.

Jonathan Scott: You want your relationship to withstand the renovation that you’re doing. Make sure you don’t take on stuff outside of your comfort zone.

Theresa: That is so true.

Jonathan Scott: It’s absolutely true. All of the families that we use on our show, they’re all real. These are people that are really buying. They’re really renovating. That’s why you get that real emotion. Of course, you’re seeing months worth of work being whittled down into forty minutes. You see the highs and lows. These families have been great. At the end, when they throw their arms around us and give us a big hug and say, “I never thought we could have our own dream home,” that’s when we know that we’re doing something right.

Theresa: That is so good.

Mark: You are doing

Theresa: I do have to … I want to ask a question. I’m dying to ask this. Outdoor living. We’re sitting here with all this beautifulness. I remember as a child growing up, what outdoor living furniture was like.

Mark: Metal. Rickety.

Theresa: I’m curious, what, growing up in your house, what kind of outdoor living did you experience?

Jonathan Scott: Collapsible metal chairs. Plastic straps.

Drew Scott: We grew up on a ranch. The ranch strategy, generally, is, no one’s died from it yet, so we’ll just keeping using it. It was … Those aluminum extruded frames with that banded plastic on it?

Theresa: Yes. Yes.

Drew Scott: After the 50th time you sit on it, you fall through it.

Theresa: Yes.

Drew Scott: That’s what we had.

Mark: It’s on the back of your legs, yeah.

Jonathan Scott: We grew up on a ranch. We were told to sit on horses. You don’t sit on chairs. That’s all we learned.

Mark: Did you have actually, just chainsaw logs sitting around the campfire coffee pot?

Jonathan Scott: Really. We literally did.

Theresa: Did you have to cut down a tree in order to have something to sit on?

Jonathan Scott: No, no, no.

Drew Scott: Not always chainsaw logs.

Jonathan Scott: Reclaimed wood.

Drew Scott: Sometimes it was actually axe cut logs.

Theresa: Really?

Drew Scott: I would never cut down a tree, but I …

Jonathan Scott: Shh! Don’t tell them that.

Drew Scott: My dad’s an old cowboy, though. We lived in the west. He had the o

ld logs set up around the fire. We’d play the guitar around the fire and sing.

Jonathan Scott: You should come join us. Drew’s going to segue into a song right now.

Mark: That would be awesome!

Jonathan Scott: I’m so embarrassed.

Theresa: Aww!

Mark: Is it your family ode?

Drew Scott: We have a couple of … so this is, I’m going to give you an exclusive inside that very few people know.

Drew Scott: We used to actually have a band with our other brother. There’s another brother. It was a country pop boy band called Western Union.

Jonathan Scott: Uh-oh.

Jonathan Scott: Terrible!

Mark: Ugh!

Jonathan Scott: There’s a reason why you will never find video ever

Drew Scott: Oh, you have our album?

Mark: Please, please God. Did you …?

Theresa: Totally. I actually have it tattooed right here.

Mark: Did you roll in on a stagecoach and just jump off in tight pants?

Drew Scott: We should have. We thought about it. We should have.

Theresa: Were you like a boy band? Did you dance?

Drew Scott: There were very simplified dance moves.

Jonathan Scott: It didn’t last long.

Theresa: Can we find a video somewhere?

Jonathan Scott: You cannot. I have destroyed every bit of evidence. Maybe one day we’ll do a rendition.

Mark: In the minute or so we have left, you guys, music. You’re an illusionist. Do I have that right?

Jonathan Scott: That’s right.

Theresa: They’re really not here, you know.

Mark: Are you really sitting here? … is the obvious joke.

Jonathan Scott: I’m actually just a total hallucination right now.

Drew Scott: A hallucination?

Mark: How is it that you got in to and made your lives homes? Contracting, realty, design, the whole thing.

Jonathan Scott: We’ve always been entrepreneurs since we were kids. Started our first business at seven. We don’t even have time to get into that. We’ve always been very creative.

Mark: Oh, we’ve got all kinds of time. Are you kidding me?

Drew Scott: Let’s kick back

Theresa: You know …

Mark: Look at all these people.

Jonathan Scott: You know, tell the people on the main stage to wait, because … you know.

Theresa: Whatever. We’re just chatting.

Jonathan Scott: We’ve always been very creative. We were actors as kids. I’m an ill

usionist. Drew’s a director. When we were coming out of high school, we didn’t want to be struggling artists, so we said, “Let’s invest in real estate.” We bought every book we could, every infomercial. Make millions with no money down. A lot of was misinformation.

Drew Scott: Crap.

Jonathan Scott: We found enough key points that we could buy. We bought our first house at eighteen. Only $250 down. It was a $200,000 home that we fixed up and made a $50,000 profit. That’s when the light bulb went on.

Theresa: Wow.

Jonathan Scott: Light bulb went on on. Continued from there. We grew a succe

ssful company. We came back to TV and film where we kind of began. Now, it’s sort of a blend of our two worlds. I like that we can reach a wide audience all around the world with our sort of design style. Hopefully, everyone likes our collections.

Theresa: Where can everybody go to check out pictures of the Scott Living Collection? Is there a website somewhere?

Drew Scott: Everything is in development right now. This show that we’re in, right here, this is the first peek that all of our retailers and distributors will get at it. When the line does come available, it will be through the Scottbrothers.com will be a portal with all that information. Then Scott Living, which is the name of the brand, will have it’s own site.

Theresa: Perfect.

Jonathan Scott: You’ll have a link for Woods Internationals as well, who’s our manufacturer. You’re really going to love some of the collections that we have.

Mark: Oh, that’s beautiful.

Theresa: Everybody needs to go check those out.

Mark: You have to check them out on Facebook. The Facebook servers actually warm up when these guys post.

Jonathan Scott: We have crashed Twitter.

Mark: Stay with them. They’re the real deal. This is the real deal. You saw it here on MyFixItUpLife.