Bartering website is enjoying new-found popularity
Published Friday March 27th, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, Ont. - John Moore's schedule is more in keeping with a movie star than a guy who works in his basement.
"Thursday morning is Canada AM," says the busy entrepreneur. "We just did CBC North, then I'm doing CBC Ontario Thursday too."
Everyone is clamouring to talk to Moore and his partner, Barb Di Renzo, about the latest trend, which is as old as human consciousness: bartering.
Bartering is the exchange of goods or services for other goods or services instead of for money.
You might think bartering became passe with the Lydians' invention of standardized coins 2,650 years ago. But with the economy floundering and people short of money, Moore and Di Renzo's bartering website, U-Exchange.com, is enjoying new-found popularity. About 54,000 people around the world have signed up to trade on U-Exchange, up from just over 30,000 one year ago.
Many of the new users are tradespeople like plumbers and electricians who are having a hard time finding cash-paying customers.
The website (www.u-exchange.com) is as simple as its premise. People with something to trade enter their name, location, what they have and what they want. The site allows for visitors to privately contact people making offers to arrange a trade.
For example, Steve in Toronto is offering two Maple Leafs tickets for a bicycle. Paul in Guelph, Ont., wants home audio equipment for golf clubs. Michelle in Tennessee will design a website in exchange for a gelding.
If they tried selling those items on a regular classified ad website, they likely would have received very low offers, Moore says.
Swappers also use U-Exchange to do home exchanges. Kristina Friesen hopes to find someone who wants to trade a residence in Great Britain or Australia for her Waterloo, Ont., home for two months this summer.
"We were looking to do some travelling on a limited budget, and we own our home, so it just seemed to make sense," says Friesen, 24.
Moore and Di Renzo launched U-Exchange in 2005 after Di Renzo left her job with a telemarketing company in Cornwall, Ont., to move in with Moore. (Fittingly, they met on the Internet.)
Both entrepreneurs were already familiar with bartering. Moore, who owns a carpet-cleaning business, sometimes works in exchange for services or items, as did Di Renzo's father, a woodworker. When they couldn't find a bartering website they liked on the Internet, they hired a web developer, did all of the paperwork and waited for U-Exchange to attract thousands of users.
It didn't.
"You think if you build it, they will come, but it doesn't work that way on the Internet," Moore says.
A bartering site needs a critical mass of users to succeed; otherwise, it is doubtful people will find someone who has something they want and wants just what they have. For about a year, that failed to develop.
Then Moore and Di Renzo took a gamble by eliminating the site's $15 registration fee and trying to rely on advertising for revenue. The site started to take off.
But things didn't really snowball until the recession began and journalists started noticing more people were eschewing the money economy for trading.
The Wall Street Journal mentioned U-Exchange in an article about bartering in March 2008.
The New York Times followed in November, The Globe and Mail in January and USA Today last month.
A recent mention on the Today show on NBC wound up overloading the site with traffic.
The site is relatively low-maintenance. There are few rogue traders or inappropriate postings, Moore and Di Renzo say.
Di Renzo monitors the website during the day and handles inquiries from users. Moore handles search-engine optimization when he's not cleaning carpets. The pair are also raising four children between them.
All of the attention is exciting but nerve-racking as well - especially the TV interviews, Moore says. "We're not professional spokespeople. I don't want to end up as a YouTube video."
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