Written by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews

Bentley's Move To Acquire Crump Barter Portends Fast Growth

Industry's Largest Barter Clearinghouse Acquisition Has 180 Exchanges

Bentley Communications Corporation (OTCBB:BTLY) has reached an agreement in principal to acquire Crump Barter Systems, a North American network of 180 trade exchanges with approximately 50,000 merchant members. Joe Crump, well-known within the barter industry, will manage Bentley's barter operations and become a member of the Board of Directors.

The 180 trade exchange members of Crump Barter Systems constitute around 30% of the independent barter companies in the U.S. and approximately 50% of those in Canada. Joe Crump founded Crump Barter Systems in 1998 with the goal of providing a clearinghouse through which members of different trade exchanges could trade with one another using a common currency.

It's expected that Crump's experience with barter software packages, systems, and procedures will be of great value to Bentley's vision of providing trade exchanges and their merchant members user-friendly online trading capabilities. The Bentley software (expected to be ready by year's end) will enable companies to build their own online stores—for bartering goods and services—using their present computers and popular browsers, eliminating the need for special software.

Bentley CEO Gordon Lee stated, "With the acquisition of Crump Barter we will take the major step that will propel us towards establishing the nation's largest and most efficient online barter marketplace. We see barter as the most extraordinary online business opportunity today, and for the foreseeable future. We want to do for barter what eBay is doing for auctions. We want to be the catalyst that helps raise the domestic trade and barter industry to unlimited heights."

Robert Schumacher New President & COO Of Bentley

Robert Schumacher, an internet and marketing executive, is Bentley's President and Chief Operating Officer. His experience encompasses internet design, hosting and marketing, online software, medical devices design, as well as developing marketing strategies and online presence. Prior to joining Bentley, Schumacher was marketing vice president of a division of a Fortune 500 company and started its franchised stores and accessory merchandising business.

Previous experience included leadership of Centrum Corporation, a Washington (DC) headquartered communications firm he founded with offices in Europe. It served national and international trade associations and public service organizations, providing them with marketing, advertising, design, public relations, documentary film production, and conference organization.

Schumacher will be spearheading Bentley's proprietary barter software with an integrated payment system, and developing the company's online trade exchange called barterdollars.com.

Extraordinary Revealing Report For Business Owners - Click here.

Media Dominance Today Less Than Years Ago

While Congress debates the merits of scaling back the liberalization of ownership rules that the Federal Communications Commission pushed through less than a month ago, it's interesting to look at today's environment, versus what it was a couple of decades ago.

Geoffrey Colvin of Fortune noted that, "twenty-five years ago the three major networks controlled 90% of the audience. So we've gone from each dominant player having 30% of the audience on average to each having 14% today."

And, Colvin also noted that in the old days, if a prime-time show didn't get a rating of 20, it was in danger of cancellation. Now TV's top-rated shows typically get a 12; when the finale of American Idol received a 20 it made national headlines. (That show was on Fox, a network that didn't exist 25 years ago.)

The trend is not fewer choices, but increasingly splintered audiences with the old media universe of TV, radio, and newspapers now facing competition with cable, satellite and the Internet. In short, consumers have more and better choices today...even with the new FCC rules.

Did you know that your classified ad gets one full year exposure in the
Tuesday Report archives?!

For information on The Barter Marketplace click here.

The Barter Marketplace archives click here.

The following message was used to promote one's trade exchange. The exchange owner
sent this flyer/message out to every member....

Trade Is The Competitive Edge—Spread The Word!

We have begun co-publishing a monthly newsletter entitled The Competitive Edge that is a generic overview of barter in today's competitive marketplace.

In addition to providing the newsletter to you (our members) we have also begun a prospecting campaign using the publication. Each month we mail The Competitive Edge to businesses that would be an asset to our exchange, and follow up with phone calls.

Many trade exchanges have successfully used this newsletter, published by BarterNews magazine, to educate potential clients about trade and therefore attract new members. And we hope to have the same results here!

You can help us spread the word by providing some counter space or other conspicuous area to display The Competitive Edge to your clients. Waiting rooms, bookshelves, reception areas...wherever your customers have a chance to pick up a copy of the newsletter, they also will have a chance to find out more about bartering in today's economy.

Each month's issues offers new insights into the advantages of using trade and how it can improve a company's cash position. Every business owner will find the articles interesting and educational.

To learn more about The Competitive Edge newsletter and how it can help build your trade exchange, click here.

Every barter company in the world is listed on our web site, click through to our Global List of Barter Companies.

If you haven't read the current issue of BarterNews, get yourself a copy now! Orders are shipped the same day we receive them. (Click on Order Form)

Get New Money-Making Ideas And Valuable Contacts!

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

• Regarding U.S. ad spending...
  Media-buying firm Universal McCann, and their director of forecasting Robert J. Coen, noted that the first half of 2003 has been more sluggish than expected. The company predicts national advertising expenditures will total around $249 billion for the year, and total worldwide ad expenditures will be nearly $469 billion.
  
• Robert Schiller, a Yale University finance professor and author of the book Irrational Exuberance, says the era of easy profits is probably over. Schiller contends the 20th century was a lucky one, and there's no proof the market will do nearly as well in the 21st century. (Most analysts don't expect more than 7% to 8% annual gains after inflation, and at those rates the S&P would take a decade to return to its March 2000 all-time high.)
  
• 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!
  
• Reinforcing the changing dynamics of the global economy is the report that car-parts maker Delphi, (Mexico's largest private-sector employer, employing more than 70,000 people) will be moving some of its production to China! Delphi says that Mexico must improve incentives for manufacturers. Apart from low wages, China offers generous corporate tax breaks, cheaper energy, and logistics support.
  
• Another company's example of secondary capital:
  Harrah's Casino "total rewards" allows frequent gamblers to accumulate points exchangeable for meals and other in-house amenities, including Macy's shopping certificates and spa treatments. Harrah's has a 35-page catalog loaded with items for big gamblers who earn many bonus points! (The bonus points previously limited to higher-margin slot machines, have been expanded to include table games.)
  
• Nobel laureate (economics) Douglass C. North suggests fellow economists are part of the reason for Africa's high failure rates over the years. Although the continent has been the site of large-scale experiments to reform its economies, most African nations today are poorer than they were in 1980.

  The problem? Economists assumed that economic reforms can create efficient markets. Not so, says North. He contends that without simultaneous reform of the political institutions and a limit on government with a guarantee of property rights and individual liberty, "efficient markets" cannot exist. In short, the successful functioning of markets requires organizational enforcement of contracts and property rights.

• Citadel Broadcasting, a radio-station operator (216 stations) in Las Vegas, went public on August 1, and its first day of trading on the NYSE closed at $20.65, up $1.65. Several barter companies have worked with Citadel, moving their unused media, in the recent past. (The firm was public until a 2001 buyout led by Forstmann Little & Co.)

• Trading one's home to another, for vacation purposes, is a growing endeavor. Two conditions are pushing the growth. The sour economy is one, but another reportedly is the fact that people are seeking a more authentic travel experience than that of a hotel stay.

• Nicholas Lardy, a China specialist at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, says China is now the economic villain that Japan was in the 1980s. China is presently the third-largest supplier of goods to the U.S., displacing Japan last year. Only Canada and Mexico supply the U.S. with more goods and services.

• Last week in Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other members of the Bush cabinet hosted the first-ever ministerial conference devoted to the theme of "earth observation." Thirty countries sent high-level emissaries to move forward in a 10-year process that will launch the building of reliable global environmental data.

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