But the big attraction of barter firms is price.
Reliable services are so hard to come by that firms barter contacts: we'll let you share the electricity from our generator if you can help us find spare parts for it.Firms wanting to set up in Nigeria are faced with a problem known locally as "BYOI" (Bring Your Own Infrastructure).
He managed to obtain credit vouchers that Soviet firms used in barter transactions, converted them into roubles, and then the roubles into hard currency.
Media firms that negotiate barter deals directly don't always do well: they tend to lack the expertise to invest in start-ups, and the deals may not be transparent.
In general, though, the risks of using barter exchanges are greater for firms that sell physical goods, which cost money to produce, than they are for service providers, whose surplus "stock" has a low marginal cost.A British barter exchange, Miroma, does without a quasi-currency and instead seeks to line up all sides of each deal before it goes ahead.
Barter quickly takes over any Russian firm where management is weak or where money is being siphoned off.
I tend to be very firm and probably a bit mean when I barter, but that definitely hurt my chances with some products here.
Chris Keogh, who runs his own construction firm, Jade Stone Construction, in Pearl River, N.Y., just completed his first barter transaction through International Monetary Systems (imsbarter.com).
Although Americans who barter are still in the minority, Britt Beemer, chief executive of the survey firm America's Research Group, said his polls had found that up to 26 percent of respondents said they were bartering products and skills, more than double the percentage in 2000, when the question was first posed.
The Boston Consulting Group cites the case of a car firm which is settling nine-tenths of its bills this year by bartering finished vehicles.
