Merchants' founder, Steve Bolles, says membership in his eight-year-old exchange, which has offices in 30 states, has tripled this year. As the financial situation remains bleak, Merchants continues to ramp up clients. "Just 18 months ago, when we would go and talk to business owners about signing up, they would say, 'We don't need to talk to you.' Now everybody gives us an appointment." A strong inducement: "Everyone we sign up gets a line of credit right away," Bolles says.
"Most people are looking to conserve cash," says Ralph Sigler, who owns Carolina Packaging & Supply in Raleigh, N.C., and belongs to two different exchanges. "We started bartering about 12 years ago. The way we were growing, it made sense to substitute barter dollars for cash dollars." Sigler says he bartered to obtain everything from security system installations to letterhead and envelopes. "I've saved anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000 a year by bartering, and I've also taken on a lot of new accounts."
Bartering serves as another avenue to help keep businesses afloat. "I would say my bartering has gone up 20% in the past six months," says Mike Cody, owner of Chip & Crack Windshield Repair in Garner, N.C. "At first I used it for hotel stays and gifts to employees." Now he says he has begun to barter to obtain equipment for his business instead of having to spend cash. "If I were to make a guess, I'd say that I've saved over $1,000 this year."
"Eventually we will see a shift in thinking," says NATE's McDowell. "What will happen is that people who were reluctant to use the credit line, or used it sparingly, will see the tremendous credit crunch and will look for new resources. They will find that they can use trade exchanges."
---Stacy Perman Business Week
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Agency Says Small Businesses Get Close to a Quarter of U.S. Contracts
WASHINGTON — The Small Business Administration, assessing the government’s success in awarding contracts to small businesses, said Wednesday that $83.2 billion went to those companies in the last fiscal year, a record amount. And it said that the government was close to complying with a law requiring that nearly a quarter of federal contracts go to small businesses.
But critics quickly responded that the figures failed to reflect the full picture of federal contracting.
They argued that small businesses were still not getting their fair share of government contracts. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, was among the critics.
“As small businesses represent 99 percent of all firms nationwide and will be vital in leading economic recovery effort,” she said, “it is crucial that these enterprises receive every job-creating and capital-generating opportunity in the federal contracting marketplace.”
The S.B.A.’s lack of effective oversight, she said, has been “indefensible.” Only three of the 24 government agencies met all their contracting goals for five categories of small businesses, including service-disabled veterans and women.
Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, the New York Democrat who heads the House Small Business Committee, questioned the accuracy of the contracting figures and said, “Small firms lost out in nearly $4 billion in opportunities.”
The agency’s acting administrator, Santanu K. Baruah, who began the job in August, emphasized that the S.B.A. relied mostly on information provided by the agencies like the Defense Department, which actually award the contracts and track them.
Mr. Baruah noted that the S.B.A. had made an effort to “scrub the data” of flawed coding and other problems that have led to large companies being listed as small businesses. The agency adopted new rules, as of July 1, 2007, that require more frequent certification to keep corporate subsidiaries from masquerading as small firms.
Mr. Baruah conceded that some $5 billion in contracts had been miscoded as having been awarded to small businesses, a figure reported Wednesday in The Washington Post.
Even so, he noted that “$5 billion represents a 6 percent error rate,” a figure which he defended as “within the realm of reasonable, although that does not mean we should excuse errors.”
The S.B.A.’s statistical scorecard was started last year to measure governmentwide compliance with the Small Business Reauthorization Act. The 1997 law requires the government to award 23 percent of federal contracts to small businesses, which are defined in several ways, including employing fewer than 500 workers. The S.B.A.’s scorecard said 22 percent had been awarded.
---New York Times
But critics quickly responded that the figures failed to reflect the full picture of federal contracting.
They argued that small businesses were still not getting their fair share of government contracts. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, was among the critics.
“As small businesses represent 99 percent of all firms nationwide and will be vital in leading economic recovery effort,” she said, “it is crucial that these enterprises receive every job-creating and capital-generating opportunity in the federal contracting marketplace.”
The S.B.A.’s lack of effective oversight, she said, has been “indefensible.” Only three of the 24 government agencies met all their contracting goals for five categories of small businesses, including service-disabled veterans and women.
Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, the New York Democrat who heads the House Small Business Committee, questioned the accuracy of the contracting figures and said, “Small firms lost out in nearly $4 billion in opportunities.”
The agency’s acting administrator, Santanu K. Baruah, who began the job in August, emphasized that the S.B.A. relied mostly on information provided by the agencies like the Defense Department, which actually award the contracts and track them.
Mr. Baruah noted that the S.B.A. had made an effort to “scrub the data” of flawed coding and other problems that have led to large companies being listed as small businesses. The agency adopted new rules, as of July 1, 2007, that require more frequent certification to keep corporate subsidiaries from masquerading as small firms.
Mr. Baruah conceded that some $5 billion in contracts had been miscoded as having been awarded to small businesses, a figure reported Wednesday in The Washington Post.
Even so, he noted that “$5 billion represents a 6 percent error rate,” a figure which he defended as “within the realm of reasonable, although that does not mean we should excuse errors.”
The S.B.A.’s statistical scorecard was started last year to measure governmentwide compliance with the Small Business Reauthorization Act. The 1997 law requires the government to award 23 percent of federal contracts to small businesses, which are defined in several ways, including employing fewer than 500 workers. The S.B.A.’s scorecard said 22 percent had been awarded.
---New York Times
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