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July 25, 2006

Written by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews

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From the desk of Bob Meyer...       07/25/2006

China?s Ambitious Thinking Involves Barter On Highest Level

China, the world?s largest oil consumer after the United States, sees increasingly expensive oil threatening the cash flow of Chinese oil importers, and they?re taking action.

The Yangpu Barter Exchange, formally registered in the Yangpu Economic Development Zone, is setting up an electronic trading system which will use trade credits (instead of cash) to access various goods and services...but with an objective of acquiring oil.

Recruiting members is now under way, which will include the governments of oil-producing nations. So far the exchange has 20 registered members, half of which are based outside of China.

Lei Zhende, general manager of the exchange which is located in the southern island province of Hainan, explained, ?The focus is on putting together trades of infrastructure for oil. Some oil-producing countries, especially those in Africa, badly need to build up their infrastructure and engineering sector, but they lack the funds to do so.

?Meanwhile, oil-consuming countries like China are struggling with sky-high oil prices, yet they have a strong service sector with a large pool of engineers with technical know-how. Our barter exchange will enable the two sides to efficiently communicate to each other what they need, and then reach deals.?

The Yangpu Barter Exchange plans to build a port complex to house a storage facility, the offices of the exchange, and other complementary facilities with a total investment of 11 billion yuan (approximately $1.375 billion).

Other Barter Deals For World?s Oil Resources

The Korea National Oil Corporation has also put together an oil barter transaction. This one is with Nigeria, under which Korean conglomerate Daewoo will build a shipyard and railway link in Nigeria.

Additionally, the Oil and National Gas Corporation of India has teamed up with steel group Mittal to offer a range of services to Kazakhstan in return for oil rights.

Tapping Into Chinese Mainland Market Through BusyTrade

With some 600,000 registered users, Hong Kong based BusyTrade.com is one avenue to explore for trade leads, such as tapping into the Chinese mainland market as well as other Asian countries. Of particular interest is the site?s virtual money system, called busy dollars, which enable manufacturers and traders to do business online with minimal costs. (One US dollar = 80 busy dollars.)

New Phenomenon Emerging In Our Fluctuating World

One of the biggest stories of this new century is the rise of China and the opening of India. We?re now seeing an emerging Asian Union with China at the core as the production platform, and the peripheral nations in East Asia supplying both the capital and know-how.

This economic ?Union? is about the size of the European Union (EU), but without the bureaucracy and all of the stultifying regulations...and its growth is much faster than Europe?s.

So in short, and as author Thomas L. Friedman points out in his exceptional book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century,

due to great achievements in technology which have enabled inter-connectiveness on many levels, the global economic playing field is being leveled in ways that we haven?t begun to fully appreciate.

Another Advertising Venue...

PassoutMarketing.com, a company from Australia, provides marketers with an opportunity to advertise on the hand of a bar patron by stamping...thus actually ?branding? a consumer with an ink stamp.

It allows for easy tracking of patrons that would normally be done in another manner, i.e. another stamp shape or color, or a wristband.

It also allows the person to show off the ad venue or product they were stamped with further than the night of the event, assuming they don?t wash it off.

Ads On Air Sickness Bags...

US Airways is now placing ads on something that was heretofore unmentionable! Passengers will have new, commercialized sickness bags in their seat pockets come September. The ads are the latest initiative the company is using to achieve a bigger profit. Will the first advertiser be Dramamine?

Touma Reports On BBX Property Fund

The BBX Property fund, to be listed on the Australian Newcastle Stock Exchange and underwritten by Martin Place Securities, closes July 28. Managing Director Michael Touma of Hornsby (NSW) reports ?our target was to raise a minimum of $500,000 in cash, and so far we have raised $2 million. Funding will consist of 33% barter currency, 33% cash, and 33% in debt funding.?

The fund was established to offer tax effective investment opportunities for new and existing BBX members in both cash and trade dollars.

Ah, The Beauty Of The Web!

It is now possible to make reservations at 170,000 restaurants nationwide at RestaurantRow.com.

Current U.S. Listing Information...

BarterFirst International
274 Wilshire Blvd., #249
Casselberry, FL 32707
Ph: (407) 478-3156
Fax: (407) 532-5480
E-mail: fcx1@earthlink.net
Web site: www.barterfirst.net

All back issues of "From the Desk...? can be accessed by clicking here.

(Please feel free to forward our newsletter to your friends and colleagues. We have a ?box? at the end of the newsletter for your convenience. See you next week. . .)


Trade Exchange Owners...
Build Rapport & Empathy With Your Client Base!!

The most powerful marketing tool in the barter industry, The Competitive Edge newsletter, is a monthly, ready to use, professional 4-page publication...no work is needed! (Click here.)


Outdoor Ad Industry Moving Closer To eBusiness

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) has concluded a deal with Chicago-based Spot Buy Spot that will bring the outdoor ad industry one step closer to conducting eBusiness transactions.

Spot Buy Spot will build the web scheme for the outdoor component of the American Advertising Agencies? e-business for media initiative. It will allow media buyers and sellers to exchange information electronically, including invoicing and proof of performance.

The chief marketing officer for the OAAA, Stephen Freitas, says that decreasing the manual work and errors that result from paper transactions between media companies and media buying and advertising agencies is the goal everyone is striving for.

According to the OAAA, the growth of outdoor industry advertising spending, year-to-date is 8 percent.


Hotel General Managers

Here?s The Easiest $100,000 You?ll Ever
Bring To The Bottomline!

Collect cash, as usual, from the guest accounts staying at your facility that require the use of professional AV services. And rather than shouldering your ongoing employee costs, or your current vendor?s cash agreement for AV services, here?s a much better alternative:

Work with a proven national vendor (a sterling 25-year track record) who will provide all of the AV services for your hotel on a 100% TRADE BASIS! (Payment to be in the form of hotel rooms and/or trade dollars.)

Your hotel?s annual AV billings must be a minimum of $200,000, and this offer is available only in the continental United States.

For a confidential introduction contact Bob Meyer via e-mail: bmeyer@barternews.com. (Please type in AV Services On Trade in the subject line of your e-mail.)

Attention Trade Exchange Owners:

If your member hotel(s) have a minimum of 10,000 sq. feet of meeting space and annual billings of at least $200,000 for AV services this is a great opportunity to earn substantial cash service fees on the hundreds of thousands of trade dollars your hotel member will be paying the vendor. Contact Bob Meyer at the above e-mail.

Flattening World Impacts Hoteliers

The July meeting in Minneapolis of the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference focused its attention on using technology to add value to the guest experience and increasing revenue while cutting costs for owners.

A wider view, less obvious but equally vital, was the acknowledgment of two global trends and forces of change:

  • The rise of China and the opening of India
     

  • The ?flattening? of the world through the Internet and increased globalization

Two recent books underscore the message. Tom Friedman?s The World Is Flat is a publication which deals with the rise of China and the opening of India, as well as the implications for America of ever-expanding globalization.

The other, authored by Clyde Prestowitz, is Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power To The East. The bottomline message of his book is anything that can be done digitally can be done anywhere. And, he points out that medical tourism is booming, because a plane ticket to Bangalore and most surgical procedures cost a fraction of what they do in the United States.

John Burns, President of Hospitality Technology Consulting, says the world will continue to be flattened by new generations of travelers. ?Gen-X?ers and Millennials are making the boutique brands like Kimpton and Starwood?s W very successful.

?Among the Millennials,? Burns continued, ?everyone carries a cell phone, but they rarely make phone calls. They use it for text messaging and they are communicating with a different circle of friends than we have. In many cases, these are people they have never met, people who are far, far away.?

The implication is that these future hotel guests will be the next generation of video conferencers; they do not need face-to-face meetings. This will be a massive challenge for the hotel industry and providers of traditional meeting services. Look for fewer and fewer business travelers and more leisure guests as the world continues to flatten.

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Karen Hoffman Expresses Thanks For Industry Experience

Is there life after barter for barter addicts? Karen S. Hoffman, a former Executive Director for IRTA,  says yes, although it surprised her! This self confessed barter addict was in the barter industry from 1981 to 2001.

She was employed by a Barter Systems International franchise, then worked for Richard & Bruce Harris at National Commercial Exchange before starting her own exchange, Trade Resource International, in 1987. She became part of ITEX in 1992, and was their St. Louis manager from 1995 to 1999 after selling the office back to ITEX.

After 20 years of passionately living in the barter world, she has reinvented herself by focusing on being a dream champion to entrepreneurs. ?That was what I loved about barter,? said Hoffman. ?It was helping business owners leverage their products and services so they could build both the company and the personal life they wanted.?

Now Hoffman has been dubbed ?The IDEA Coach? and consults with companies on leveraging their passions to expand, with a special focus on positiveness and the activation of ideas. ?The Gallup Organization rocked my business opinions with their books, First Break All the Rules and Now Discover Your Strengths, so I extensively use material like theirs as well as work by psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman on positivity.? 

Besides coaching, she has a partnership that created an online business called City of Experts at http://www.cityofexperts.com to help make business connections for experts who want to speak, coach, facilitate or consult. City of Experts is moving into two other markets beyond St. Louis, and plans on covering at least 18 markets by 2009.

?Making business connections is another passion,? confessed Hoffman, ?and I learned that being a connector is a great service to offer.? She noted that Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point helped her see that not everyone is a connector, and that it could be helpful to the business community.

She is also the small business blogger for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the daily metro area newspaper.

Hoffman shared that not only was her time with IRTA very valuable in her life experiences, but it created another area where she has been able to have an impact...the world of non-profits. 

"Before my time with IRTA, I had never been interested in non-profits as I thought that non-profits meant not-profitable,? Hoffman laughed.  ?However after my tenure at IRTA, I saw that by focusing we had increased membership by 40%, increased convention attendance by 28%, and increased cash sponsorships by 580%. Being in a position of having excess of money at the end of a year, taught me that running a non-profit could be profitable. 

?So, when a friend wanted help in starting a professional women's organization in our community, I volunteered to help and immediately started recruiting cash sponsorships from banks and others in our city. We created a low membership fee, but because of sponsorships we have made money every year. By its second year we could afford a full time executive director, which was not me!?

For the organization?s first year anniversary with over 200 in attendance, Hoffman brought in Catherine Ryan-Hyde, author of Pay It Forward that was adapted into a movie. Hoffman also helped pull 4,800 6th graders to an arena to hear Ryan-Hyde speak on how they could change the world by ?Paying it Forward.? Each year Hoffman helps work on the anniversary speaker and, typically, they are authors of books.

The group, ESPW-Encouraging Supporting Promoting Women, has had over 600 women join, and after adding more markets it plans to go national. Hoffman was recognized in December 2005 as one of the ?50 over Fifty? community shapers, primarily for her work as co-founder of ESPW, http://www.espw.org. She also volunteers and consults with other non-profits.

Hoffman concluded by saying ?Without that time I spent at IRTA, I know I would not have been able to help create ESPW as this profitable and fast growing organization, or have the impact I have had in helping other non-profits. It was a wonderful opportunity, and I am truly thankful for that time as IRTA's Executive Director.


Our Web Site Has Added A Search Tool For You

Ever wondered if a certain topic, person, or organization has been written about on the Barternews.com web site? Now you can easily find out, as we?ve added a search tool. It will quickly give you the answer to your questions, in 3 easy steps that take about 12 seconds!

At the top right of the page, just under where you sign up for the Tuesday Report you will see a little Google box. It is where you can (1) type in the name of a subject, company or person. Then (2) click the button for www.barternews.com to search the site, followed by (3) hitting the search button.


The Growth and Use of Secondary Capital (New Money) Creates Unprecedented Wealth In Today?s New Age Of Possibility

There are many forms of secondary capital?which can be defined as any financial instrument that measures and communicates value in a common language. Would you like to see and learn more about the many forms of secondary capital?

 We have 70 free, informative and inspiring, articles for you in our ?Secondary Capital Section.? Check it out... www.barternews.com/secondary_capital.htm.


Get New Money-Making Ideas And Valuable Contacts!

You can obtain useful, informative ideas and contacts in every available back-issue of BarterNews.


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We welcome your comments, questions, and observations.
? Copyright BarterNews 2006. Redistribution of BarterNews content expressly prohibited without the prior written permission of BarterNews.
 

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