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Anastasia Balezdrova

The topic of innovations as well as the fact that they are a unique opportunity for the country to emerge from the crisis has been widely discussed in Greece recently, which was the main subject of the lecture delivered by Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt in Athens.

Today GRReporter presents the confirmation of this statement through the automated barter trading platform tradeNOW, which has operated for less than 11 months but has already reported significant results. However, it is not only that. The successfully implemented idea of its ​​four young founders has been selected among the 200 best start-up companies in the world and will be presented in the "Mecca" of technology companies, the Silicon Valley in California.

"The idea was born when one of us, the present technology and IT manager of the company, decided to replace his old fireplace with an energy-efficient one. He had no money to pay for it and the dealer offered him to take his old fireplace and sell him the new one at a discount. Then we found out that barter trading has very well developed in the U.S. over the past 10-12 years and its results are very good. It creates an economy that complements the real one, especially in times of financial hardships and crisis," Michalis Pitsikalis, commercial manager of the company, told GRReporter.

The platform

Barter trading appears to help in times when people still need goods and services but do not have the financial means to pay for them. The tradeNOW platform allows users to offer items they do not need and to obtain something they need. Within its context, users can exchange products, services and real estate.

Currently, the number of its registered users is over 13,000, including individuals and companies. The exact number of companies is 250 and they cover a wide range of manufacturing of products and provision of services.

How does it work?

After registration, each user profile is divided into the following two categories: "Haves" and "Wants". The first includes products and services offered by the user and the second things that the user needs.

"The next step is the comparison between the "Haves" and "Wants" which is automated in our system. This tool itself is innovative. It automatically finds all the users who offer a specific product and those who need it, on the basis of three different indicators such as price, product and item. So, if someone is looking for a bicycle at the price of 100 euro, the platform will offer all registered bicycles that are available at this price as well as bicycles at other prices and bicycles in general," stated George Karamanoglou, IT manager of tradeNOW. Furthermore, the next time the user logs into the platform he will find all items that he has included in the "Wants" category as the automated system sends them to his account. "This is particularly important for companies because their products are automatically presented to people who want them."

The third stage is the nature of the exchange. "The platform users have the opportunity to jointly agree on the price and the process of exchanging offers and counter offers may be repeated up to three times. When both participants in the transaction confirm that they have reached an agreement by pressing the "Accept" button, the platform issues them a receipt for the transaction.

When there is a difference in the prices of the products or services, the platform automatically transforms it into the so-called trade points. The exchange is finished when both parties enter into the platform the unique transaction codes indicated on the receipts that they have exchanged.

Finally, the platform users fill in an online form to evaluate each other, thus contributing towards increasing their credibility regarding future exchanges with new members of the platform.

Companies-users

tradeNOW’s team argues that they have developed the platform not only with the sole purpose of supporting the economy in times of lack of liquidity in the market but also of filling a big niche. According to Michalis, it provides the companies with the unique opportunity to present their products and services to a very broad audience, which they have not been able to access before. "At the same time, many companies have products that they cannot sell because consumers have no money to buy them rather than because they do not need them. They thus offer their products to consumers and, in return, receive their value in the form of points that they use to purchase materials or services from their suppliers, thereby reducing their outgoing cash flows.

Last but not least the platform members are able to donate Trade Point to selected member NGOs in order to support their work,” Marianthe Stavridou, manager for Corporate Social Responsibility said.

Photo by Sylvia Diamantopoulos for Fortune 500

Silicon Valley

tradeNOW was selected among the 200 best start-up companies in the world which took part in the most prestigious forum of companies in the field of new technologies, Webit Congress. "The vote of the audience ranked us 6th which is giving us even stronger impetus to continue," said Yiannis Deliyiannis, General Manager of the company.