Barter’s Used In Various Creative
Ways In Competitive Marketplace
•
Star Wars
creator George Lucas’ company Lucasfilm is quietly negotiating a
huge barter deal that will see one company having the toy
manufacturing rights to a new series of his upcoming films. Offers
reportedly approaching $1 billion are on the table with Lucas
getting a sizable equity (ownership) stake in the toy company with
which he eventually barters.
• Millions of “in-kind” computer
equipment and other technology donations will be made by Intel
Corp., to universities nationwide, over the next three years. (The
donations, valued at retail prices, help popularize machines that
use Intel chips.)
This type of trade is a typical win-win situation. Intel gets tax
deductions as well as very positive publicity, in exchange for
assisting the universities with needed equipment.
• Vanity Fair is fighting the
growing competition of magazine advertisers by constantly searching
for ways of luring advertisers to their corner. Their latest barter
twist involves a sister publication, a nationwide chain of weekly
business tabloids which is going to publish a special magazine
called Businesses to Watch that will feature top-line
investment information on publicly traded companies.
The barter deal is this — each participating company, placing a
minimum of two national ads in Vanity Fair, gets a bartered
article about the company and its investment opportunities in the
new business magazine.
• Hopeful business startups are
increasingly looking toward “angels,” rather than venture capital
companies, for money. These angels are millionaires—many of them
young, former technology executives.
Energetic, experienced and cash rich, they help finance and guide
the next generation of Microsofts and Netscapes. In addition to
supplying money, angels will often trade their expertise by
consulting (for fees of $3,000 a day) and always will collect their
payment in the form of company stock.
• Two major auto suppliers, Eaton Corp.
and Dana Corp., traded entire businesses recently. Dana got Eaton’s
axle and brake business in exchange for Dana’s clutch business.
Experts say it’s a sign of how globalization is reshaping suppliers,
forcing them to become more specialized to meet various automotive
standards in different countries.
