Jack Schacht started his barter business in October of 1983 and left his management position to go ”full time” in March of 1984. Trade volume for 2006, when he sold his company, was $45 million on one side.


BarterNews: What were you doing prior to the opening of your exchange? (Some of your “job experience.”)

I have been in my own business for most of my adult life. I started Career Counselors, which became one of Chicago’s largest female employment agencies, when I was 23 years old.

When I sold it fifteen years later, I started the National Backgammon League, a network of 18 clubs operating throughout the Chicago area. Two years later, backgammon lost the popular appeal it had when I started my clubs and I began my first job as a manager of small company in downtown Chicago.


BarterNews: What inspired you to get into the barter business?

I ran into the barter business quite by accident when I was waiting to meet a friend at a train station in Joliet, Illinois. As fate would have it, the train was late. In the interior of the train station there was a business fair going on and, having nothing to do for over an hour, I wandered around the fair.

That’s when I met Sid Friedman of Commercial Barter of Illinois. Sid was exited about his new business and I must admit it rubbed off on me. A week later I took off work and spent three full days in the Chicago Public Library reading every press release I could find on the barter business.

After that I called several retail barter exchange owners around the country who were all very helpful and also quite exited about the business. Their enthusiasm got me hooked and I decided to go into the business.

BarterNews: Did you have any preconceived ideas or notions about the business? Were they realistic or way off base?

As I mentioned earlier, I did have a preconceived idea about the trade volume I could expect from the average member. Perhaps some of the confusion came from the tendency of people in the business to inflate their numbers.

Actually, the practice of double counting volume by adding sales and purchases still exists today! The other problem is that a lot of the projections I got from other people in the business was more the result of their own wishful thinking than from hard numbers.

I also thought the business would be a lot easier to build. It turned out to be one of the toughest of my three business ventures. There were many 60 hour work weeks and many sleepless nights before I started making a decent salary.

It took me about eight years to reach the point where I was able to draw a respectable six figure income and put aside money for my retirement. And you know, I loved every minute of it!

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