The Barter Hall of Fame is the highest honor the Modern Trade and Barter Industry can bestow. The honor recognizes individuals of the highest professional character and ethical conduct who are regarded as indisputable leaders of the Modern Trade and Barter Industry. An inductee must have a minimum of ten years of continuous Industry service and have made recognizable and specific contributions to the Industry as a whole.

Current members of the Barter Hall of Fame

IRTA WELCOMES PERRY CONSTANTINIDES TO THE HALL OF FAME - 2011


 

After six successful years with the Xerox Corporation, Perry began his barter adventure in 1977 by buying a franchise from a group in Salt Lake City.  By the early 1980s the franchiser group began to falter so Perry took Barter Systems, Inc. of DC and went independent.  At that time there were few trade exchanges and most were located on the West Coast.  The East Coast had one exchange in the Washington, DC area that was selling franchises.  Six months after Perry started up his exchange this local competitor went out of business creating bad press for the barter concept on the Washington Post’s front page.  Nevertheless, Perry managed to grow his business through the adversity.

In 1979 he was the first trade exchange owner to become an organizer of the International Association of Trade Exchanges which later became the International Reciprocal Trade Association.  He was elected to the original Board of Directors and became Finance Chairman.  It was his duty to raise $75,000 in cash and $75,000 in trade to challenge the Internal Revenue Service’s “Barter Project” in court and take the industry’s case to the United States Congress.  In those days the barter industry was besieged by tax authorities whose plans called for auditing every business who bartered.  The use of barter to evade taxes though the “underground economy” was given wide publicity; there were no known tax rules and trade exchanges had no clear status in commercial law.  As a result, government regulators could use “John Doe” summonses to obtain the names of every barterer and investigate them for tax evasion.

Thus a handful of exchanges, most of them only a couple of years old, had to confront the Federal government with its immense legal resources behind it.  The barter industry might well have been extinguished but Perry was an energetic leader in rallying resistance by the exchanges.  He raised the cash that supported appeals to the Federal appellate courts in Philadelphia and Cincinnati.  In addition, Perry’s company, Barter Systems of Washington, DC paid off entirely the trade debt owed to the Washington law firm which represented the industry in its legal appeals. Being located in Washington where the Board of Directors had to come frequently to lobby Congress and enter into negotiations with IRS, someone had to provide accommodations, meeting rooms, and meals on trade for numerous meetings spanning two tumultuous years, and that duty fell to Barter Systems of Washington, DC.  It was a duty that Perry performed without complaint and without asking for recognition or thanks, but it resulted in the friendly tax rules the barter industry enjoys today, and in the crowning achievement of passage by Congress of the “Barter Bill of Rights”, formal recognition of trade exchanges in law, third-party record keeper status, and granting exchanges the same rights and safeguards over their records as banks and credit card companies.  In 1984 he was awarded IRTA’s Distinguished Service Award for outstanding contribution to the commercial barter industry.

During those early days Perry was also an IRTA Board member and Chairman of the Ethics Committee.  During the last ten years Perry has served two additional terms on the Board, worked with the committee responsible for rewriting the CTB exam, he also has served on and led numerous panels at IRTA conventions.  He is currently serving on IRTA’s New Membership Committee, the Ethics Committee and is IRTA’s Vice President.  He has also been serving for many years on the UC Committee.    

Perry is a clear thinker and a straight talker, a friend to everyone in barter, a man who keeps his word and gets things done.  His exchange has been the barter industry’s flagship in the U.S. capital for three decades and his achievements in the founding of our industry should not be forgotten.