January 4, 2005
Written
by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews
We
Want You To Know...When you sign up to receive the
FREE weekly Tuesday Report announcement your e-mail address
will never be sold, traded, or given to another party.
Google’s
Latest Trade Promises Immense Payoff!
Google pulled
off a strategic trade with some of the top U.S. and foreign universities
and libraries. They will scan the entire library of the University
of Michigan (7 million volumes), and large parts of the libraries
at Stanford and the University of Oxford, as well as books from
Harvard and the New York Public Library.
It’s an
exceptional deal for Google in that it doesn’t cost the company
any cash, but rather they’ll be wearing their “trading”
hat by providing the schools with a copy of the scanned versions
of the books.
Placement of
ads on the billions of pages of contents should generate enormous
additional revenues for the innovative Google. The search engine
company’s ambitious goal is to make all of the world’s
information searchable!
Corporate
Giants Pull Off Unique Trade—Use Of Patents
Yet another
example of major corporations trading on their assets is that of
Sony and Samsung Electronics exchanging the use of each others’
patents. The unique swap will cover all technologies the companies
deem basic...roughly 90% of their vast patent holdings.
In the U.S.
alone, Japan-based Sony holds about 13,000 patents while Samsung,
of South Korea, holds approximately 11,000.
Get
New Money-Making Ideas And Valuable Contacts!
You can obtain
useful, informative ideas and contacts in every available back-issue
of BarterNews.
ITEX
Management Can Sing “It Was A Very Good Year!”
The ITEX organization
(OTCBB:ITEX) has made a most impressive turnaround since the management
changes of June, 2003. Led by CEO Steven White and Alan Zimmelman,
head man in operations, the company’s stock price more than
doubled in 2004.
In December
ITEX finished with the best cycle (a 30-day period) in its entire
22-year history, with cash billings topping the $905,000 mark. And
in August they posted their first full fiscal-year of profits in
the company’s history!
Moving the company
forward has been corporate’s position of transparency and
communication with their 65 area broker offices. White says the
company’s success revolves around a new positive focus and
awareness—an understanding that each day is important. “You
have to train every day to be a winner! Consequently,” he
stressed, “negative people don’t last too long around
here anymore.”
Exchange
Owners: Want More Mega-Traders In Your Exchange?? Then Resolve To
Do Something Different!
You’ve
worked extremely hard. Most likely you’ve put everything you
had on the line to start your exchange...you’re to be congratulated
for your persistence and tenacity. Getting a critical mass of clients
together is tedious work, now it’s time to start reaping
some of the reward for your efforts!
For twenty-five
years I’ve heard it said by many within the trade exchange
industry, “It’s only a matter of time before we get
the recognition due us and the resulting rewards.”
But it requires more than time and talk. Success comes to those
who go out and make things happen by providing extraordinary contributions
in the form of fulfillment.
Equally important
for maximum success, is to get your community to totally understand
and embrace your services, by creating a vision for greater trading!
And that’s accomplished through constant communication and
education within your marketplace as well as your client base...reinforcing
both your value and the benefits derived from your services.
Want to know how well you’ve done in inspiring your client
base? One way is to take this simple test: Determine the percentage
of mega-traders within your trade exchange...clients making sales
of $100,000 or more a year.
If you’re
not satisfied with what you find, then isn’t it time to resolve
to try a new approach this year?
You can take
the all-important first step by subscribing to a powerful and inexpensive
marketing tool—one that’s ready for you to use right
now. It’s called The Competitive Edge, and its use
will enable you to be the very best communicator in your market!
It is a 4-page,
professionally written and designed, monthly newsletter ready to
use...no effort is required whatsoever on your part. And the cost
is the same today as 18 years ago when it was first introduced!
Make the decision
to use The Competitive Edge today, and we’ll rush
you the current issue with an apropos cover story for your clients,
titled “Could You Become A Mega Trader? Absolutely!”
For more information
call Bob Meyer, publisher of The Competitive Edge newsletter,
at (949) 831-0607 or e-mail him at bmeyer@barternews.com.
BJ’s
Restaurants Show Variable Cost Of Food Helps Charitable Giving
When an employee
participated in a walk to raise money for Lou Gehrig’s Disease,
BJ’s Restaurants provided the food for everyone at the walk.
“We have a responsibility to do good (deeds) because we have
the ability to do so,” co-CEO Paul Motenko said. “It’s
a multiplier effect. I’d rather give $1,000 in food that’s
worth $4,000 than give $1,000 in cash.” (This is a 25% variable
cost for food, and indicative of a restaurant’s “barter
cost” when trading inasmuch as their fixed costs are covered
by their cash business.)
Charitable giving
is part of BJ’s Restaurants’ corporate culture. The
company, formerly Chicago Pizza & Brewery with corporate offices
in Huntington Beach (CA), has given $2.5 million to various beneficiaries
such as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Muscular Dystrophy Association,
and the local Saddleback Memorial Medical Center since 2000.
The average
chief executive’s pay at local public companies is $2.2 million,
even if corporate profits shrank or losses widened. However, BJ’s
co-CEOs Paul Motenko and Jerry Hennessy earned $196,000 each...reflecting
their commitment to charitable giving.
BarterNews
issue #63 is now available... get your copy now!
Orders are shipped within two business days. Click on Order Form.
(If you are
not sure if your subscription has lapsed, e-mail your name, address,
and zip code to bmeyer@barternews.com.)
Every barter company in the world is listed on our
web site, click
through to our Global List of Barter Companies.
Here
& There...
- The following
corrections are regarding last issue’s announcement on the
Ethical Marketplace TV series: The Ford Foundation has provided
funding for the pilot effort, not the entire series. And although
it will be carried on many PBS stations, it is not a PBS production.
As an Ethical Marketplace
production, all sponsors and featured companies go through the
editorial board’s social, ethical, and environmental auditing
process. The series was conceived and is co-produced by dynamic
entrepreneur and worldwide syndicated columnist, Hazel Henderson.
-
In the year 2005
Active International, the largest corporate barter company in
the world, will be celebrating its 20th year in the barter business.
To see how much they’ve accomplished read “Active
International—The Global Juggernaut!”
-
Bentley Commerce
(OTCBB:BLYC) has launched an online exchange for Kidsave International
(www.kidsave.org),
a non-profit organization that finds American families for hundreds
of orphans around the globe. Companies with products or services
can list their excess inventory, customer returns, and other
offerings in Kidsave’s Donation Exchange at www.kidsave.vbarter.com.
-
The International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) that is scheduled for January
6 - 9, will have Bill Gates as the major keynote speaker. The
show has increasingly grown in stature as Americans have ratcheted
their spending on consumer electronics to $130 billion annually.
There are always several barter organizations at these functions
looking to drum up business from the hardware and software companies.
-
Have you
signed up to receive a summary via e-mail of the Tuesday
Report every week? If not, go to the top of this issue
(right hand corner) and sign up!
-
Where is the stock
market headed in 2005? Michael Painchaud, director of research
for Seattle-based Market Profile Theorems, sees some rough water
ahead. He says that CEOs are not enthusiastic about company
shares, as November’s insiders sales (executives and directors
at U.S. companies) were the highest since 2000 when shares of
Internet-related companies plunged.
In November, insiders
sold $46 in stock for every $1 purchased. Lon Gerber, director
of insider research for Thomson Financial, notes it’s
a “very bearish” sentiment which may reflect concern
for slowing earnings growth in 2005 as the Federal Reserve raises
interest rates.
-
U.S. tourism industry
slowly growing... The Commerce Department’s Bureau of
Economic Analysis said third-quarter tourism sales rose to $973.3
billion, up from $970.7 billion in the prior quarter.
-
PayPal, which is
now owned by eBay, has 32% of its transactions coming from eBay,
up from 27% in 2003. (EBay’s PalPal transactions amounted
to $4.5 billion.)
-
Robert Samuelson,
columnist for Newsweek, says big business is running
scared. (They’ve been scarred by the tech “bubble,”
the recession, 9/11, and corporate scandals.) But he believes
the economy may benefit from corporate caution, because a slow
rise in business investment-spending sustains recovery without
promoting inflation or speculation.
According to Samuelson,
although after-tax corporate profits have surged by more than
70%, business investment—in new computers, software, machinery
and buildings—has increased only about 18% in the last
four years.
Since 2001,
corporate cash flow (the sum of undistributed profits and depreciation)
is up 42% and is now running at a record rate of $1.3 trillion
annually. Plus there’s surplus capacity in many industries...in
November the Federal Reserve’s capacity utilization index
stood at 77.6 well below the 81.1 average from 1972 to 2003.
We welcome your
comments, questions, and observations.
�
Copyright BarterNews 2006. Redistribution of BarterNews
content expressly prohibited without the prior written permission of BarterNews.
