August 31,
2004
Written
by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews
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Barter
Institute Aims To Educate Individuals & Businesses About Trade
Exchange Management
Bentley Commerce
Corp. (OTCBB:BLYC) has formed a “Barter Institute” to
teach businesses and individuals how to start, manage, market, and
operate a profitable trade exchange.
A team of five
successful barter professionals, reportedly with a combined experience
of 60 years in various facets of barter, will tour the country and
provide a 4-day training event in ten cities over the next year.
Once trained, the newcomers will use Bentley Commerce’s tools
and technologies to build their own barter company.
Bruce Kamm,
CEO of Bentley Commerce, elaborated, “Now that we have built
the largest online trade marketplace with our VirtualBarter software,
we are ready to teach...companies how easy it is to trade with one
another over the Internet. The Barter Institute will enable these
trading partners to rapidly begin trading with businesses from 76
independent trade exchanges that manage transactions for about 16,000
companies.”
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
Frequent-Flier
Miles for Starbucks Cards
The largest
non-cash currency in the world, frequent-flier miles, now has another
spendable conduit—Starbucks Cards in increments of $25 up
to $250.
This is good
news, because for the jet-lagged traveler nothing beats a strong
cup of coffee. Travelers with lots of frequent-flier miles can use
them to get that cup of coffee at Starbucks by exchanging their
miles (or other points earned through various loyalty programs like
restaurant meals or gifts) at Points.com.
Like most other
points-exchange programs, customers will pay dearly when they trade
their points, so it’s generally worthwhile to do a trade if
you are leaving a program or have points you don’t expect
to use. (But as we pointed out two weeks ago, 75% of frequent-flier
miles are never used!)
Points.com has
a big backer: InterActiveCorp, Barry Diller’s travel and e-commerce
conglomerate. They bought about 20% of the company’s parent,
Points International Ltd., in March 2003, and have an option to
buy the rest of the company within three years.
Get
New Money-Making Ideas And Valuable Contacts!
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useful, informative ideas and contacts in every available back-issue
of BarterNews.
Two
Of Hollywood's Most successful & Richest, Spielberg & Cruise,
Are Bartering Services In New Epic
Steven Spielberg
and Tom Cruise are set to team up for what is anticipated to become
the most expensive film every made. Paramount pictures has announced
that the two Hollywood heavyweights will work together on an updated
take on H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic The War of
the Worlds.
The 1898 novel
was adapted in a 1953 film, a TV series, and as an infamous 1938
radio broadcast by Orson Welles that convinced thousands of listeners
that aliens had indeed invaded.
The budget for
the film is set to exceed $201 million, which was spent on making
Titanic. Both of the stars are bartering their time in
exchange for 20% (each) of the film’s income.
Every
barter company in the world is listed on our web site,
click through to our Global List
of Barter Companies.
UCLA's
Anderson Forecast Concerned About Higher Rates
UCLA researchers
are worried about the Federal Reserve’s raising interest rates
(for the first time in four years). They believe as the monthly
cost of everything from car loans to equity lines-of-credit rises,
consumers will pull back on some purchases and postpone others.
The Anderson
Forecast sees two big risks:
- Higher interest
rates forcing indebted consumers to pull back on purchases, that
in turn could easily trigger a wider downturn.
- A national
rate-caused “housing collapse and an attendant recession,”
perhaps in 2005 or 2006.
Just
published, 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.)
China
The New Magnet For Foreign Direct Investment
A report by
the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) determined that China eclipsed the U.S. in 2003, for the
first time, as the biggest recipient of foreign direct investment.
The 30-member
nations of the OECD, which include the world’s most highly
industrialized, showed that net foreign direct investment (FDI)
to emerging economies rose almost six-fold in 2003 to a record $192
billion, up from $31.7 billion in 2002.
Of that, China
attracted $53 billion, slightly less than the year before, and $40
billion went to the United States. (FDI to the U.S. was down from
$72 billion in 2002, and $167 billion in 2001.)
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Here
& There...
- While online
business travel continues to expand, an on-going battle between
the hotels and third party internet sites will only get fiercer.
(We first reported on how hoteliers were hurting themselves by
creating the potential for deep discounting in our December 16,
2003, Tuesday Report.)
In mid-August InterContinental
Hotels Group (3,500 hotels which include Holiday Inn, Crowne
Plaza and InterContinental) announced they are yanking their
hotels from the Expedia and Hotels.com sites.
-
The 78 million
Americans who were 50 or older as of 2001 controlled 67% of
the country’s wealth, or $28 trillion, according to data
collected by the U.S. Census and Federal Reserve. What’s
more, households headed by someone in the 55-to-64 age group
had a median net worth of $112,048 in 2000. (Within five years,
about a third of the U.S. population will be at least 50-years-old.)
-
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!
-
Craig Barrett,
CEO of Intel in which 90% of employees receive stock options
and less than 2% of options go to the top five executives, is
concerned about FASB’s (Financial Accounting Standards
Board) push to require the expensing of options...ultimately
limiting their use.
“Meanwhile,”
Barrett revealed, “our competitors overseas continue to
use options to attract the best and the brightest talent. Options
are already drawing scientists from the U.S. to Asia. Even China
is getting into the act, officially encouraging the use of stock
options as part of its five-year economic plan...just as FASB
is preparing to impede their use in the U.S.”
-
In March
we reported how Accenture was helping major corporations sell
large volumes of merchandise through eBay. Accenture has now
decided, after a two-year effort, to shut down the venture because
they couldn’t find enough major corporations willing to
commit to using eBay for moving significant amounts of merchandise.
EBay’s
CEO Meg Whitman noted, “Unless we can deliver sales of
$20 million to $30 million a year, it’s probably not worth
their time from an investment point of view.”
-
Talk about
a growth industry! In 1976 there were three channels devoted
to the national distribution of sports: ABC, CBS and NBC. Today,
add in Fox, ESPN, and other channels like Outdoor Life, the
Golf Channel, TNT, USA, plus various digital channels and regionals.
Sports programming in the last three decades has gone from a
total of approximately 1,000 hours to well over 60,000 hours!
-
The Russian
government expects direct foreign investment to double this
year to $8 billion—its best performance since the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union. Andrew Somers, president of the
American Chamber of Commerce in Russia says, “The number
of CEOs from U.S. companies coming here this year is ten times
what it was over the last decade.”
At President
Putin’s re-election in March his stated goals for the
country included doubling the country’s GDP in the next
ten years and the creation of a competitive market economy.
-
China’s
$87-billion travel and tourism market is forecast to grow to
$300 billion by 2014, which is why Barry Stenlicht, Starwood
Hotels & Resorts Worldwide CEO says, “We can’t
move fast enough in China.” Starwood is building two designer,
W hotels. One in Shanghai the other in Hong Kong. (Marriott
International has similar designs on that market. In January
1997 they had no hotels in mainland China; today they have 33.)
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