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By A.J. O'CONNELL

aoconnell@wiltonvillager.com


REGION -- As stock exchanges across the globe experience some of their worst-ever sessions, another kind of exchange is continuing to do a booming business.

Trade exchanges -- systems which allow businesses to barter goods and services with each other based on "barter dollars" -- are alive and well.

International Monetary Systems, Ltd., (IMS) a national trade exchange which operates in Connecticut, last Wednesday announced record sales at its annual expos in New York, Wisconsin and Ohio.

"Our membership has seen a 20 percent increase in September and October -- also our Web site traffic has doubled," said Krista Vardabash, director of marketing and public relations for the Wisconsin-based IMS, which has 23,000 members nationwide. "We have an educational video on our Web site home page and that video viewing has increased also by the same amount."

According to Vardabash, the IMS membership completed $114 million in sales in 2007. IMS's 3,000 Connecticut members generated close to $9 million of that figure. However, she cautioned, the IMS reports only one side of each transaction.

IMS, which acquired Bristol-based Barter Business Unlimited in 2005, is one of five barter exchange firms in Connecticut. Exchange Enterprises Ltd. in Stratford, which serves 320 members in Fairfield County and did $2.311 million in sell-side trade in 2007, is also enjoying good business these days.

Sharon Connelly, vice president of Exchange Enterprises, says trade dropped off in the last year but picked up recently.

"In the last six months, trade has been getting busier," she said.

Exchange Enterprises was started in Norwalk in 1983, two years before the IMS was founded in Milwaukee. Both exchanges are based on a system called "barter dollars;" businesses exchange goods and services for the same prices that would be used on the cash market.

Those dollars are accessed by exchange members through a debit card which can be used at any business in their own network.

"A venue for sporting events might come to us wanting to trade off tickets," said Adam Lodynsky, a broker in the IMS's Connecticut office. "We would sell them to our membership using barter dollars. Those dollars would go into the venue's account."

Those dollars would later go back into the system, he said, when the stadium needs other services available through the barter exchange. According to Anthony Wellman, of Fairfield-based Anthony Wellman Productions, a creative services consulting company, advertising is a popular exchange item. Wellman has been involved in barter for more than 20 years.

"It's never intended to replace the cash dollar," said Wellman, who said that businesses don't join exchange networks for big financial benefits -- businesses pay taxes on their trades. Exchange Enterprises sends a 1099-B form to its membership every year.

Many times, he said, businesses do it for marketing reasons. Hotels that want to fill rooms, restaurants that want to fill tables and creative companies who want exposure all use barter networks.

The exchanges do not admit individuals; their members must be businesses, although their membership includes many different kinds of companies.

"We have everyone from the woman down the street who has a bakery to corporations with millions of dollars in their accounts," said Lodynsky.

John Goetjen, of John F. Goetjen & Son, Inc., a Wilton moving company, has been involved in barter for about eight years.

"We use it basically for people who move locally," said Goetjen, who learned about barter by word of mouth.

He said that he's done three small jobs for a dentist's family recently. The family likes it because they don't have to pay for moving services, and the Goetjens like it because the services bartered are small, local jobs.

"It works out okay," he said.

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