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News
Trading and saving on the net
Tuesday, 06 June 2006
Paul Meachen
For years, trades people have supported each other by swapping services in their immediate industry.
The old, “I’ll build your deck if you do me some wiring” type of exchange.
Now Browns Bay man, Paul Meachen, has gone live with the website he created, Trade to Save, where all businesses or private individuals can swap skills and services – for any other skills and services, not primarily for money.
He describes it as a hybrid of a barter and trading site, with added unique functions.
“I have not managed to find another site on the Internet providing this type of combination,” Meachen says.
One unique function is that no barter dollars are used - trade is done with any combination of real product, services and money as agreed between the parties.
Members get the option of using standard trading practices and barter, or a combination of the two. The parties agree the value (the site offers help) and when it’s difficult to exactly tally that up, a cash difference is payable if they so decide.
Agreements are made off-line, by phone or email, with contact details swapped confidentially initially through the site (like dating sites).
Meachen developed Trade to Save to help people and businesses assist each other.
“Most of us have a skill we use in our daily work in return for money, but there is little opportunity to apply this skill elsewhere, for extra gain when the money gets tight.”
And if users gain paying customers as a result, good for them.
“There are many scenarios where people or business could utilise this capability using a bit of creative thinking, and some of these are listed on the site.”
For example, a young family might be over committed to an investment property with rising interest rates and overheads. They are unable to sustain major maintenance repairs (electrical, structural or plumbing), which could mean further borrowing or even selling.
They may be able to be managed through by bartering their resources, such as providing a web design service for a plumbing service.
In a second scenario, an elderly couple unable to tidy their property for sale may have a pool table they could trade in exchange for having trees trimmed and section cleared. This removes unwanted household items and saves cash flow in one action.
It’s free to list a service or product on Trade to Save, and to access the response levels before deciding to join as a full member. There is no annual joining fee, percentage of settlement fee or pricing per trade or transaction. The only charge is $8.75 for each month of open trading.
Meachen is still tweaking the site, and hopes to add a rating function by former traders for evaluation by future traders, as auction partners are rated on TradeMe.
In forming the site, Meachen saw a tax specialist to review the tax implications, and these are listed on the site. As with most on-line trade or sites the informal exchange of similar product or services on a non commercial basis will not usually incur tax. But companies or GST registered businesses need to follow the barter tax requirements where appropriate.
Meachen hopes to carve out a niche business and never return to the corporate world.
In addition, he likes the thought of helping people in tough economic times.
His background is sales and marketing in computer solutions for corporates. He started Telstra in Auckland in 1994 as a branch of Telstra Corporation, which then entered the New Zealand market as a fully-fledged carrier in 1996. At that point, they appointed a managing director from Australia and Meachen was appointed national wholesale manager for Telstra New Zealand. After a couple of mergers this became TelstraClear in 2001.
Meachen left Telstra in 1998 to take the position as general manager of business development with New Call Communications.
Since then his work has been a mixture of corporate management and entrepreneurial start up developments in the information technology and telecommunications environments.
