An online bartering Web site launched by three Rhode Island entrepreneurs aims to bring an ancient form of business transaction into the 21st century.
Barterthing.com offers a twist on popular e-commerce Web sites like eBay and Craig’s List, enabling consumers to exchange goods and services in lieu of cash payments, said Michael Howson, who co-founded MBM Investment Group Corp. last year with partners Robert Johnson and Michael Lambert.
Members who sign up to barter through the Web site pay $2.99 when they are ready to exchange goods or services.
“It doesn’t have to be a plumber and a carpenter swapping, it can be anything,” Howson said, describing the bartered transactions that MBM Investment Group’s Web site facilitates. “It can be, ‘I do wedding cakes and you do plumbing.’ It’s a perfect opportunity to save money, because you don’t have to go write that check for $300, $500, $1,000.”
The Web-based business was conceived to keep the cost to members as low as possible, Howson said.
As the economy stalls and the prospect of a prolonged recession looms, Howson said he and his partners believe bartering will become more popular as people look to spend less.
“One of the differentiators between us and an eBay or a Craig’s List is those all involve cash at some point,” he said. “If there’s something you want to buy, you’re going to have to put out the cash. With this type of a site, it’s always going to be $2.99.”
Barterthing.com has more than 700 available categories, or “bartergories,” ranging from furniture and antiques to equestrian and tennis lessons to timeshares.
Visitors to the Web site don’t have to be a member to search the categories, but membership is necessary to actually barter with someone. Membership is free and takes a couple of minutes to register.
After finding an item or service of interest at Barterthing.com, members pay $2.99 to receive contact information for the person with whom they want to barter. All bartering is conducted offline, and those involved in the agreed exchange of goods or services are required to pay taxes on the fair value of services rendered, Howson said.
Johnson, an expert in IT networking management who formerly worked for CVS Caremark, got the idea for Barterthing.com several years ago while trading odd jobs with friends and family, Howson said.
“He’s always done bartering with friends and family,” he said, speaking of Johnson. “You know – I’ll come build you a deck if you can do this for me.”
Johnson researched online bartering and learned there were many business-to-business bartering Web sites, but very few aimed at the general public. He pitched the idea to form the business to Howson, an IT applications expert who formerly worked with Johnson at CVS, and Lambert, an old friend, who owns a construction firm.
Barterthing.com currently receives about 7,000 new visitors a month, but the Web site is generating substantially fewer bartered transactions, Howson said.
“Right now everybody’s more interested in fishing, meaning that everyone’s signing up with stuff that they want, but we’re not getting as much activity on the transactions,” he said.
Howson, Lambert and Johnson, who is president of MBM Investment Group, plan to beef up the Web site with features that will make it easier for members to barter, he said, including an auto-match feature that searches for goods and services that members indicate they are looking for, rather than requiring them to conduct their own search of the site.
Eventually, they would like to include a feature similar to Southwest Airlines’ Web site’s low-fare finder, which automatically informs members when a match is found, he said.
“We want to have it that the system will actively search for those matches and notify you when it finds one,” Howson said. •
