The use of barter is ubiquitous—it’s nearly everywhere!! Here’s just a small glimpse at what we’ve come across over the years. In every case these companies are following a proven formula to success. We hope these examples will stimulate your thinking into taking action…


CNN Barters To Increase Its India Reach

Until a barter deal was signed, CNN cable-TV has been limited to India’s five-star hotels, where reception was poor.

But CNN’s trade—an exchange of assets such as programming or transmission facilities—with India’s state-owned broadcaster enables CNN to beam its signal throughout India and reach all 16 million cable-TV households.

Consultant Paid In Stock

Albert Dunlap, former chairman and CEO of once-struggling Scott Paper Company, “fixed” another industrial giant— Kimberly-Clark.

Dubbed as “Rambo in Pin Stripes” the turnaround expert was paid in the company’s stock and stock options for his expertise in restructuring, and emerged $100 million richer.

Kentucky Lures Business By Trading Land

States find barter is an excellent tool to use for bringing in new business. Kentucky, for instance, traded hundreds of acres in Covington to Fidelity Investments (largest mutual fund company which manages $405 billion in assets), in exchange for Fidelity’s promise to create 500 new jobs in 17 years.

Within five years Fidelity was employing 2,000 people in their 256,000 square-foot warehouse, that operates 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week, where they print and mail 140 million brochures a year!

New York City Entices Entertainment Industry

Some $3 billion-a-year in business comes to “The Big Apple” for location shoots. As part of the package to attract film and TV producers its police department provides cops at no cost to keep order for location work done there. The police work in exchange for bringing filming to New York City. In Los Angeles, by contrast, producers have to pay for their own cops.

Tea Manufacturer Trades With B&Bs

Stash Tea Company, manufacturer and cataloger of more than 80 blends of tea, is successfully bartering with more than 1,000 bed-and-breakfast inns. They do so through a program where the inns are included in a 78-page B&B guide that Stash publishes annually.

Participating B&Bs receive a sampler box of tea as a “thank you” for joining the promotion. Innkeepers can order additional product from the Stash Tea catalog at a discount.

In exchange, the inns provide a free night’s lodging to Stash catalog and retail customers who pay for a two-night stay.

Mix and match these examples, as well as other posts we’ve added, to take your company to the next level!

Read the back issues of BarterNews to finds hundreds of stories on how & where barter is used:
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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 5:31 am and is filed under From the Desk of Bob Meyer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.