Trading is on the up

9:51am Tuesday 13th May 2008

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MONEY may be tight, but more than £35,000 worth of business was achieved at a small three-hour trade show in York - with an emphasis on "trade".

The volume of business was announced today by Bartercard, the organiser of the get-together of 130 of its members at the Next Generation gym, in York.

They may have sealed deals but not a penny changed hands.

The York branch of Bartercard, which has 250 members using "trade pounds" - their equivalent of one pound sterling - has been signing up three new recruits a week and organisers say that is set to accelerate.

"We are bracing ourselves for huge expansion," said Chris Bradley, who owns the York franchise of Bartercard, which started in Australia 17 years ago and now has a worldwide network of 55,000 bartering companies.

He said: "The more the credit crunch bites and the economy slows, the greater the chances for Bartercard to prove its effectiveness at allowing small and medium-sized businesses to maintain vital liquidity."

Members in York range from accountants, restaurants and printers to hotels, tradespeople and garage services.

They are given the opportunity to buy necessary products and services needed in the running of their ventures using their own products and services, with the York office of Bartercard, in Heworth, being the broker.

So how does it work?

A restaurant, for example, opens a Bartercard trade account. The idea is that Bartercard will fill their empty tables with other Bartercard users during slack periods.

The cost to the restaurateur is the expense of putting the meal on the table, while the full menu price is credited in trade pounds to their Bartercard account.

Should the restaurateur need printing, for example, he can use his trade pounds to pay for it, thereby retaining the cash in his bank account he might otherwise have spent.

Bartercard recommends that the optimum use of the system should be up to 20 per cent of annual turnover to ensure liquidity in cash as well.

A real restaurateur, Stephen Cummings, proprietor of Bobo Lobo Latina Restaurant, in Little Stonegate, had a particularly good trading session at the get-together. He paid £550 for membership.

He bought about £1,500 worth of building products to revamp his bar area and immediately part paid for it when 20 Bartercard holders turned up at his restaurant that evening.

He said: "They spent £400, which immediately partly offset my earlier costs."