Wildomar businessman sets his sights on barter and trade

A few hundred years ago, Steve Halen’s business card might have said “Have Cows, Will Trade.”

Today, Halen and his wife, Rhonda, employ a tidier form of the age-old commerce system known as bartering, or trading. For the past year, the Wildomar couple has been signing up clients for their fledgling online barter service called My Trade America.

“Barter has seen tremendous growth in the last couple of years because businesses are trying to survive and they’re looking for every possible avenue they can find to do that,” said Halen, 49. “This gives them another source of revenue and clientele.”

An estimated $60 billion a year industry throughout the United States and Canada, bartering is as old as business itself.

“We’ve just taken it a little further with an online system,” Halen continued.

Think of the online barter network as a separate country with its own special currency.

“Let’s say I want to buy a cup of coffee at a restaurant that belongs to the network and the coffee costs $2.95,” Halen explained. “The restaurant debits my barter account $2.95 and gets $2.95 credited to their account. They now have $2.95 in barter currency to buy anything they want from any other barter member.”

There are presently 50,000 barter members in Halen’s network and more than 5,000 in California alone.

“These are all people who will look through the barter network before they spend their cash,” he said.

Members include everyone from limousine drivers, doctors and dentists to a plastic surgeon, chiropractors, janitors, auto mechanics and restaurateurs. And the list just keeps growing.

It costs $295 to join. The fee gets you set up in the system along with an e-mail advertising campaign to notify other members of your services and products. Other than that, the cost is 5 percent of each transaction amount.

“If it’s $100 in barter, we’ll charge you $5 in cash,” Halen said.  ”The up side is that you get a client that you wouldn’t have otherwise had.”

As an example, Halen pointed to a woman who sells Arbonne makeup. Since joining My Trade America, he said, her commissions have doubled.

At the same time, Halen acknowledged that barter is not a viable economic system by itself. Cash is still king, he said.

A native of Southern California, Halen joined the Navy in 1979 and spent 20 years in Washington State before returning to Southern California.

“I was actually in pest control for almost 30 years,” he said. “We were part of another barter organization and that’s what got me interested in it.”

Halen said $30,000 to $40,000 of annual sales typically came from barter trade.

“I couldn’t do the pest control work anymore, physically,” he said. “When we sold that business, my wife and I started figuring out what we wanted to do and we ended up starting the barter company a year ago.”

Halen has been knocking on doors ever since.

“I go out to shopping centers and ask business people if they’ve ever heard of barter and trade,” he said. “I tell them that barter is another way to get more business and get more clients and another way to get a national presence without having to spend a lot of money.

“We do all of the promoting and it actually costs very little to be part of a barter group,” Halen continued. “It’s really a no-brainer.”

For additional information, contact Steve and Rhonda Halen at (951) 678-5522 or visit My Trade America Inc. online at http://www.mytradeamerica.com.

Reach Steve Fetbrandt at sfetbrandt@gmail.com or (951) 764-8449.

SWRNN would like to hear your suggestions for future profiles of business leaders and/or businesses in Southwest Riverside County. Please contact Steve Fetbrandt at sfetbrandt@gmail.com with a brief description of your idea, your name, area code and telephone number and e-mail address.

Tags: barter and trade, Business, My Trade America, Rhonda Halen, Steve Fetbrandt, Steve Halen, SWRNN, wildomar

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