The mistakes we made at Purplebricks - by the Bruce brothers

Michael and Kenny Bruce have for the first time given their views on what went wrong for Purplebricks during their time as founders and leaders of an agency that was attempting to transform the industry.

In a long video interview with Christopher Watkin, the brothers - who have not previously gone on the record about how they look back on their time with Purplebricks - explain that they believe their own interest in developing Purplebricks internationally cost them dear at home. 

In just a few of the many key elements of the interview, Kenny Bruce says:  “Both me and Michael going off to America, on reflection, wasn’t the right thing to do. If I’d stayed in the UK I might have been less interfering in the US and that might have been more successful, and I could have helped the UK exec team and management team to be even more successful than they had been.”

And Michael Bruce adds: “We failed to appreciate the impact we had on an organisation…it’s five years since I ran the UK organisation at Purplebricks and was going off to do other things in other places at the same time. Taking that strong cultural influence of what we were trying to do, out of the business was a mistake.

If we’d had stayed in there UK business we’d have made a better job of more innovation and more development. There’s no one thing but [leaving the UK to work on Purplebricks abroad] was at the top of the list.”

The interview is very wide-ranging and conducted by Watkin, who has spent over 18 months working closely with the Bruce brothers on the Agents Together mentoring and charity initiative. 

It covers their own backgrounds, introduction to agency, their time at Purplebricks and now their activities at Boomin, the portal which is a year old next week.

The interview is exclusively for EAT viewers and is in our Features section here.