The weekly newsletter for everyone interested in barter--the world's most versatile business tool!

• Trade exchanges often like to think of themselves as a "mini-Visa," which is the nation's largest payment system. It's a enviable target as Visa, which held its third annual Visa Government Forum last week, has built an incredible system.
  
  It includes more than 14,000 financial institutions nationwide, which process (through VisaNet) over $810 billion in annual transaction volume. American consumers carry more than 353 million Visa-branded smart, credit, commercial, stored value, and check cards accepted at 22 million locations worldwide.

• Budget hotels proved to be the only segment of the hotel industry where occupancy rose in March from a year earlier. People are opting for minimalist service, with no pampering, cuddling or complimentary gifts, as the economy slows. If the economy enters a "minor recession," limited service should stay popular, as well as the barter availabilities within the travel industry.

• Talk about changing times...years ago attorney's didn't advertise, and few were members of trade exchanges. Today a good trade exchange has numerous fine attorneys.

  The larger law firms (with 400 or more attorneys) are even appointing Chief Marketing Officers to handle a wide array of tasks including public relations, strategic planning, and branding. The CMOs command top-dollar pay, as much as $400,000 a year, and have backgrounds in journalism, advertising, or legal marketing.

• The Business Council, a group of 257 chief executives and officers at large U.S. companies, reports that despite the economic downturn, virtually all of the CEOs said tech spending accelerated in the past few years and improved their productivity. Only ten percent are accelerating their investments and a third have pulled back; yet most said the current pace of productivity growth will be maintained.

• A Seattle law firm, Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong, which represented temporary workers in a lawsuit against Microsoft is entitled to the fees earned from their barter agreement with the workers, according to a U.S. District Judge.

  The law firm agreed to do the work, shouldering the costs, in exchange for 28%of the settlement, if there was one. When Microsoft agreed to pay $96.8 million to settle the case, the firm earned $27 million!

• The Boston Consulting Group's annual study of online retailers indicates the growth slowed significantly in 2000. The study concludes that mail-order catalog companies selling on the Internet are proving to be the only consistently profitable players in the business.

  (Mail-order companies already had the order fulfillment infrastructure as well as cost advantages from previously using private label merchandise.)

  The average mail-order catalog company had an operating profit from its internet-retailing efforts that was 12% of online sales. In contrast, web "pure-play" retailers had an average operating loss of 94% of sales, while online stores of bricks-and-mortar retailers had an average operating loss of 36% of sales.

• The high-class investment bank, Goldman Sachs Group, is bartering with a group of about a dozen regional brokerage firms to distribute its investment research and securities issues to Middle America.

  The regional brokerage firms won't pay Goldman a formal fee for receiving such research or securities offerings, instead they will execute trades through Hull Group and Spear Leeds & Kellogg, two market makers owned by Goldman.

• Cruise operators say they're in the vacation business, not the cruise business, and while there's plenty of room for growth, they're having a difficult time keeping their ships filled with passengers.

  To attract more first-timers the industry is shortening the length of many cruises and expanding the number of ports available for boarding ships. Slashing prices is one way to fill empty cabins...and we're seeing more availabilities on barter as well.