Marketing Articles


Barter Companies And Excess Inventory

by Terry Lamb

Barter companies let you expand your market and keep cash-paying customers. This means incremental business - customers who skip competing businesses in order to conduct business with you. Barter makes new customers since buyers are likely to pay with products or services and thus save cash. Many businesses prefer bartering and conserving cash.

Barter customers pay retail prices, so you get the full value of your goods and services. Retailers must keep their inventory moving and our customers shop for the most current merchandise each season. Barter Companies will bring you buyers to move excess inventory, eliminating the advertising costs and heavy discounting otherwise needed to accomplish this.

Companies involved in barter trade help you in the sales of your surplus inventory at either the current market price of the product or the price at which you sell to distributors. Thus you are in a position to maintain your current pricing integrity and also enable you to fetch better return on your investment.

Barter income is treated the same as cash income. There are no tax advantages or disadvantages to bartering. Trade exchange should be considered a marketing tool, not a tax tool. Barter transactions typically involve companies with unsold goods on retail.

Companies big and small are now using barter to sell and purchase goods and services. Bartering is the exchange of goods and services without the use of currency. Although bartering has been used in commercial and private transactions since ancient times, its appeal notably increased in the waning years of the 20th century.

Surprisingly, bartering has proven worldwide not only to complement the sophisticated marketplace economies, but also to be a means of surviving moribund economies. In the U.S., for example, the dollar value of bartered transactions grew at a rate of roughly 16 percent per year in the 11 years after 1987. By contrast, in corrupted economies, bartering has an essential role in almost 76 percent of business dealings that involve major companies.

Every day, both materials and services are traded between small businesses. In a nutshell, this is small business marketing. A business arrangement is considered consummated if one company consents to exchange service or goods with another in return for something of similar value.

Barter transactions typically involve companies with unsold goods on retail. The barter companies coordinate the selling of surplus inventory by negotiating for you to receive either the going price in the marketplace, or your normal selling price to distributors. This allows you to maintain your current pricing integrity and upgrade your return on investment. Barter income is treated the same as cash income. There are no tax advantages or disadvantages to bartering. The trade exchange should be considered a marketing tool, not a tax tool. In a nutshell, this is small business marketing.

Published August 20th, 2008

Filed in Marketing