ITEX is a business-to-business barter exchange. What the heck is that you say? In this economy it’s a darn good thing! And in any economy really. Why? It’s a way for small businesses to make money without spending cash. Here’s how it works. Let’s say I own a restaurant. I join the ITEX Trading Community and sell meals on trade. I get trade dollars in return. (1 trade dollar is equivalent to 1 US dollar.) These funds go into my trade bank account. I can then use those trade dollars to buy all kinds of things available from other businesses in the trading community. Such as: a trip to Mexico, dental care, advertising for my business, printing, jewelry for my wife, and so on. And when these new customers spend their trade dollars in my restaurant, they also bring with them cash-paying friends and business associates. I get trade dollars and new cash paying business! Pretty cool huh?
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Tony Romano, owner of Marcello’s Pasta Grill in Tempe, AZ says his traffic has increased 10% in the last month. New barter exchange clients also have led to catering jobs. “A lot of small businesses can’t afford to take their employees out for a Christmas party, but they can barter it,” he says. “I’ve booked two lawyers’ offices and three dentists’ holiday parties!” |
You might ask, “Can I trust this trade exchange? Is it substantial?” ITEX has been in business for over 25 years. We process more than 1,000 transactions daily, representing more than $132 million in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) annually. We have over 24,000 member businesses located across the US and Canada. There is also a new ITEX trading community beginning to flourish in Latin America (Panama)! For news and TV stories about ITEX go to: http://www.itex.com/aboutus/news/.
How does SolutionPro help ITEX?
Web Site Access
Even though our company provides a lot of ‘high touch’ service to its clients, we are also a ‘high tech’ company. Hey, that’s nice, “high touch – high tech!” We host 5 websites, 3 of which are located at SolutionPro. ITEX has around 100 franchisees across the US and Canada who service their clients using our customer relations management system (CRM). These franchisees 24,000 clients (member businesses) access their member web sites at www.itex.com and www.supertradeexchange.com. Access to these systems is critical. SolutionPro provides us the 24 x 7 x 365 access we need.
Disaster Recovery
We also host 2 web sites from our corporate headquarters in Bellevue, WA. We back up all our servers at corporate to Boise (SolutionPro) and vice versa. So SolutionPro is a key part of our disaster recovery strategy as well.
| SolutionPro Data Center in Boise, ID | Itex Web & Database Server Rack |
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