How we began
The history of our company is not as direct as simply telling the tail of one story. The inspiration for our company is found in another company which was formed in 1933. My father, Edgar Lee Parris, left our family farm at the age of 17 and began a small trucking company which he called Parris Grain Company. He hauled grain and hay from point to point and slowly struggled through the great depression. In 1940 he shut the company down and went to work for Hobbs Trailers as a salesman. In 1960 he used the name again when he purchased Temple Hay & Grain in Fort Worth, Texas. I grew up watching my Dad wheel and deal in grain and molasses products. At an early age I was inspired to have what he had... my own company.
Fast forward to 1994. I started a company called Recycle-It. It did very well and allowed me to make a good living throughout the ’90’s. At the same time my wife, Sheri and brother-in-law, Brent Smith, opened an employment service called TempWorks Inc. When Sheri became pregnant with our son, Alexander, she retired to housewife status and I took over TempWorks Inc.
As TempWorks grew we needed a separate company which could be independent from TempWorks and be, what we call, a non-subscriber temp agency. Non-subscriber means that you have an accident insurance policy instead of state workers compensation insurance. So in June of 1998 Brent and I created the Couloir Company. We split our clients between the two companies at first, but then sold TempWorks Inc. in 1999. Couloir was our bread and butter through the turn of the millennium. Eventually we created a sub group under Couloir called “Time Capsule Recordings” which produced full color biographies for funerals. To this day we still own and operate Couloir, but no longer are in the human resource industry.
In the spring of 2001 we were still running some employees though the Couloir Company. Brent and I wanted to do some consulting work which would be independent of the red tape involved in the employment business. Thus we created a new company. We admit that “Couloir” was an off brand name and hard for folks to relate to. Couloir is a french word that refers to a ravine of rocks on a mountain side. Climbers use these couloirs to find there way to the top. Thus our motto was “pathway to the top”. Great concept but we has to explain it everywhere we traveled.
For our next venture we needed a name that would be meaningful, yet at the same time to not sew us into any particular industry. I also needed it to inspire me each day and remind me of something good to strive for. It came to me one day as I was driving along. What better inspiration in the world than the inspiration that one receives from your own blood. My children are the nucleus of my universe. Thus AlexIndia was born. Alexander Benton Parris is my son and India Lee Parris is my daughter. The state of Texas gave me several choices to add to the end. Apparently they felt that AlexIndia was too close to another registered company called “The Alex Company”. So of the endings I chose “Group”. Then the State forced the last name on me of “Corporation” since I was filling as a sub chapter S.
On “D-Day”, June the 6th, 2001 AlexIndia Group Corporation was born. Each year we bake a cake and have a birthday party for it. The kids love it. Though Alexander did complain that we used all of India’s name and only part of his. He thought we should simply call it AlexanderIndia, or better yet drop India all together. I quickly reminded him that for marketing purposes AlexIndia rolls off the tongue better and that his name does come first. With that he smiled and turned to India and said “yea, my name is first”!
And that is how we came to be.