User:BarterTruth/"merchants barter exchange"

COMPANY INFORMATION:
Name: Merchants Barter Exchange

Acronym: MBE

Founded: 2000

Founded by: Steve Bolles

HISTORY:
Originally founded back in 2000 by Steve Bolles, Merchants Barter Exchange, is to date still the only American barter organization of its size that engages in real barter 100% of the time.

Back in the 90s when Bolles owned a mortgage company, he was a member of a 20th Century barter company that allowed inferior, and less efficient methods of bartering, like price gouging (inflating the trade price above the cash amount), barter-blends (combining cash with part of the transaction), and no control to stop the convertion of existing cash-paying customers to ones that bartered. Known for spotting emerging trends in the marketplace, Bolles realised he had stumbled upon a potentially beneficial opportunity. Prior to Bolles bold move to reinvent the organized barter industry, nobody had tried to even attempt 'retail barter' on a 100%-basis.

Bolles summised that if small items like pizzas and haircuts could be traded 100%, larger items could be bartered also, thus enabling businesses to circumvent the usual hinderances of traditional one-on-one bartering, or the bad practices of older barter companies, still using the original retail barter system started in the 1950s. It was a stroke of genius. Industry pundits dubbed Bolles "foolish" to even attempt retail barter at 100%, "It was impossible!"

While most people around the world were worrying about the Y2K rollover, Bolles diligently worked out the blueprint for Merchants Barter Exchange: the first totally viable 100% retail barter company in America. The same year Bolles launched his fledgling company with his wife from their kitchen table in New Jersey, American Express partnered with another business entity to form BigVine.com, a large, internet-based barter company, hoping to piggyback off their existing business customer base, and funding the project with close to $800m.