American Trade Group, 13085 Fairlane St, Livonia, MI 48150, US

In the current economic climate, barter is essential to good business. It helps you to make every product, every sale, count. Metro Trading Association is here to help you reach your full potential, and fulfill your dreams for your business. MTA is dedicated to the advancement of barter. Barter, unlike cash, has a genius characteristic in that every purchase a business makes through barter seeds a future new sale. Overhead and personal expenses that drain a business can now be harnessed to advance its growth and help assure the success of one's own business. Only with barter do purchases result in new sales and these new sales produce cash profits. The fact is that just a 5% increase in gross sales for a typical retailer will result in a 20% increase in cash profits after transaction fees. So, use trade and stop reaching for your cash. Find out more on what MTA can do for your business. MTA is here to help you make this genius system work. The oldest trade organization in the Great Lakes Region, Metro Trading Association has been in business since 1978. MTA is a strong network of more than 2, 000 businesses and some 5, 000 participants. Also, through our affiliations, we have barter relationships with tens of thousands of businesses worldwide. Michael Mercier established Metro Trading Association in 1978. Mercier had been a partner in a successful stock brokerage firm in the mid-1970's, when he ran across the concept of using barter as a profit-enhancing tool and was immediately struck by its potential for businesses. A strong believer in free enterprise, Mercier had always been disturbed by how many small businesses fail in their first few years of business. His idea was to give businesses the opportunity to lower costs, increase cash profits and obtain new clients through organized barter. Mercier decided to see how this concept worked in practice. He logged more than 15, 000 miles visiting trade exchanges that existed at the time. He also did other research into the financial feasibility of this concept. After all this research, Mercier took his ideas to Dr. Bernard Landuyt, a sought-after business consultant and Chairman Emeritus of the Business School at the University of Detroit. Dr. Landuyt agreed that barter had the potential to be very beneficial to participants and encouraged Mercier's desire to see this concept implemented in Metro-Detroit. To implement this concept, Mercier determined that he needed at least 100 businesses in various categories to make the barter economy viable. He began by knocking on doors with an offer for business owners: they could become a member of his trading group, with a money-back guarantee if they were not satisfied with the quality of businesses joining. Mercier assembled 150 businesses Metro Trading Association was born. Even to this day Metro Trading Association guarantees new profits. We don't sell anything to anyone, Mercier says, we just ask for an opportunity to perform. Mercier quickly hired a full-time staff to maintain his rapidly growing barter exchange. He also established trading relationships with trade exchanges across the country, giving his members the ability to trade outside southeastern Michigan. During that time, Mercier became highly respected nationally and is a past president of the National Association of Trade Exchanges. Currently he serves on the Global Board of International Reciprocal Trade Association where he serves as an officer and member of the executive committee. Metro Trading Association is very proud to have helped many businesses succeed over the years. A substantial number of businesses have told us that they would not have made it through the tough times wihtout us. Many more have expressed how they credit their expansion and enhanced lifestyles to their membership in MTA. We ask for an opportunity to perform our service for you, risk free and guaranteed.