In what amounts to a paid advertisement for Bartercard, newser.com has the following to say about bartering…
(Newser) – The global recession has made bartering hot, but don’t go thinking it’s all a backrub for a plumbing fix. Big money—though no cash—is changing hands through the world’s largest barter service, Bartercard. The worldwide service’s transactions are valued at $2 billion this year, up 20% over last year. That makes it the leader in a global trend that saw 400,000 business make trades worth $10 billion last year.
Bartercard works because commitments are made to its whole membership and not between any two participants, says the CEO. “The restaurant owes $10,000 to the network, not to the printer,” he tells Time. “Many direct-barter transactions don’t succeed outside of our network because businesses have to match one another in timing and interest.” And he’s not just the CEO—he’s a client, too. Bartercard pays the rent on its UK headquarters entirely through bartered credits.
It’s interesting that Bartercard continually claims to be the largest barter exchange in the world. Can anyone verify this claim? I’m going to to my best to see if we can establish a baseline for who is big and who is not.
Kudos to Bartercard for the strategic placement of their PR.
thats rich. by whatever measure you care to name Bartercard is the largest in the world, i am proud to say. we have more active clients Globablly , more trade volume and more offices than any other exhcange- and we operate in more countries. Oh for good measure the highest eaverage trasantcuion per client, highest volume of trade per client and total, most new memeber sales (still) and the only exchange with now 8 active sales people who have each signed in over 1,000 memebers EACH (they aLL paid). i fidn it hilarious that givne we print our directory in Australia with circa 20,000 companies listed in it (we do in EVERY country). we dotn need a baseline - we are the bar to which others can aspire. sad we got ripped off by our licensee, lost a few million and had to close in the USA- but hey- that story aint over yet . we are not perfect bya loing shot- but we are still number one.
Wayne, thanks for the reply! It’s good to get some feedback about Bartercard. I would love to have a conversation with you about your numbers and/or have you as a guest on the show. In my defense, I don’t have statistics on every barter exchange in the world at my fingertips, so in my world, any exchange that claims to be the biggest and the best needs to disclose some of that pertinent information, in an honest and fair manner, to see if anyone else compete. Surely, Bartercard isn’t opposed to this. I look forward to hearing from you again!
BTW Wayne, what’s your affiliation with Bartercard?