Tradebank, one of the world’s largest trade/barter exchanges, held its International conference June 18 thru 20 in Greenville, S.C. This year’s theme, “Recession Proofing Your Business,” was focused on how barter can benefit businesses across industries. Regional owners (franchisees) of Tradebank attended the conference for advanced training and to share best practices with other Tradebank regional owners. This announcement was made by Todd Gerry, senior vice president of marketing of Tradebank.

“Our conference was very successful,” state Gerry. “We are committed to helping our regional owners grow their businesses. During our three-day event, we provided first-rate training, which included learning more about our newly launched internal software platform allowing the ability to be more efficient, implementation of new initiatives designed to drive cash business to our clients, as well as understanding our role to make our clients’ businesses more profitable during an economic downturn.

“Additionally we highlighted that our regional owners encourage their clients to trade both inside and outside their regions,” expressed Gerry. Within its 70 regional exchanges offices, Tradebank clients in the U.S. can trade among their own region, across state lines or with other clients in the Czech Republic, Canada or Republic of Slovakia. “We’ve been in business since 1987 and have been an international exchange since 1996,” he continued, “and this year we celebrate 10 years of trading within the Czech Republic region.”

It is known that trade does well in a slow economy as businesses find alternate ways to conserve cash. Regional owners were provided recession proofing tips at the conference. One tip is simply to spend, not save, accumulated trade dollars. As experienced in the past, the tendency during a recession is to “tighten the belt” on all spending, even when it comes to trade. However, every trade dollar spent on common cash expenses is a cash dollar saved.

Other interesting facts include:

Tradebank has seen a steady trade volume growth at an average of 9% per year since 1999

Benefits of trade:

§ New business on a continuing basis

§ Lowers overhead costs

§ Conserves cash flow

§ Increases profits

§ Referrals from clients bring new cash customers

Tradebank is a privately held international trade exchange founded in 1987. Headquartered in Lawrenceville, Ga., Tradebank operates in more than 70 regions within the U.S., Canada, Czech Republic and Slovak Republic and has more than 10,000 clients. Tradebank earned the Consumers’ Choice Award for 2007 in the “Barter and Trade Exchange” category and has captured this award six times. For more information, visit www.tradebank.com or call 1-888-568-5680.