Is This Any Way to Run a Family?

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Back when Michael was a teenager, and Best Fares was starting to make a name for itself, Parsons gave his son a mission: Do well in school, work hard, "and then someday you can own this company." And despite scholastic shortcomings, Michael did have a promising start at Best Fares, where he worked up to manager in the travel agency. Over time, though, he began trading on his father's authority to goof off and undermine his bosses. About two years ago, Parsons told Michael to find something else to do. There is no longer talk that Michael might someday run the shop. "I'm not going to let him take over the company if he can't keep focused," Parsons told me. "I'm not going to let him jeopardize everything I've built." Indeed, in 2004, Parsons was negotiating with two separate investor groups to sell the company.

And he was determined to chart a different course for his younger boy, starting by spending more time with him. The summer when Bryan was 14, he got into some trouble with the authorities, involving fireworks, and that fall Parsons started thinking about a job for him. "When I looked," Tom said, "he could either be flipping hamburgers or working at Six Flags." Tom wanted to instill discipline and responsibility in his son (most of Bryan's wages would go into savings or substitute for allowance) but not a punch-the-clock mentality. He hoped his son would acquire a taste for running a business and, yes, for thinking like a conniver, in that nonpejorative sense.

Bryan was the one who came up with the company name, Parsons & Sons; he liked the old-time connotation. Tom liked the hint of filial ties. Perhaps he saw the plural as a good omen. To launch the venture, Parsons would draw on his experience building Best Fares, but even this would not fully prepare him for the volatile world of online auctions, where the margins are thin and the customers fickle. In the end, Bryan would not be the only Parsons to find the joys and dangers of starting a business sometimes overwhelming.

"Hey, Bryan, are you awake?"

One Monday afternoon in late August 2004, the staff of Parsons & Sons--Bryan Parsons and his friends Aaron Fenton, Jorden McMullen, and Garrett Lagow--assembled at company headquarters, a small room off in a corner of Best Fares' suite of offices. The kids knew their responsibilities--they did not need Tom Parsons to direct them, though he showed up eventually--and they had plenty of orders to fill. One hundred and one eBay auctions had ended the night before, and Parsons & Sons had received some 60 payments over the weekend, most sent by eBay's electronic payment network, PayPal. Others had come in the mail as checks or money orders. Coldplay pounded from the boom box as the boys set to work on these first, printing out copies of receipts and readying packages for shipment.

In many ways, Parsons considered this the most crucial element of his operation. EBay enforces fair trade through a system that allows buyers and sellers to comment on their transactions and then rate them as positive, negative, or neutral. Ambitious eBayers, sellers especially, work hard to maintain a high feedback score. For part of the afternoon, Parsons and his charges tried to sort out what had happened to a package that a buyer claimed had never arrived. It had been shipped to Troy, Mich., then forwarded to South Carolina before returning mysteriously to Arlington, empty but for a newspaper from Troy stuffed inside. Ultimately they mailed out a replacement. For this sort of diligence, Parsons & Sons had been rewarded by customers and suppliers alike: By early August, the team had received more than 3,200 individual comments, and of these, exactly one was negative. The rest gave them high marks, often expressed as "Mickeys"--as in, "Great seller!! Will recommend!! AA++!! Thanks!! ºoº ºoº ºoº ºoº ºoº ºoº"

"Hey, Bryan, are you awake?" asked Tom. Earlier, the younger Parsons had reached into bins filled with pins, picked out a handful that appealed to him, and begun scanning them so that they could be listed. But after a while he slumped, his head resting in his hand. This was the first day of school, and Bryan, like his friends (and his father, for that matter), had awakened early, at 5:30 a.m. Classes were in session from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., followed by work. Then twice a week came soccer practice. And after all of this, presumably, came homework. Aaron crumpled paper into a ball and threw it at Bryan's head; it bounced off and after a long moment, Bryan rose to get some beef jerky and an A&W out of the fridge.

Parsons intended to keep the boys as busy within the office as without, employing a sales strategy that tied his remaindered merchandise to current events. Anticipating the summer 2004 release of blockbuster sequels, Parsons & Sons had begun listing quartz watches from the first Spider-Man movie and Harry Potter action figures in early June. Now they were gearing up for the summer Olympics in Athens with hundreds of pins and miniature medallions from NBC, even as they continued to present a broad menu of other gear.

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