Wilglory Tanjong wanted a custom wig installation. The cost for the service was steep, so Tanjong, 30, the founder and chief executive of a luxury handbag and manufacturing company called Anima Iris, had an idea. She proposed a trade to her hairstylist, Aja Marian Smith, who owns the Miss Fringe salon in the NoMad section of Manhattan: a $1,600 handbag for Smith’s services.
Smith, who had purchased Tanjong’s bags before, was open to the idea. Tanjong, who lives in Brooklyn, took the finished bag to her appointment, and Smith installed the wig. There was no exchange of cash nor card swipes, just two people enjoying the results of their respective crafts.
“We were both so happy,” Tanjong said. “I feel like we both got what we really wanted, and we didn’t have to spend capital to get it.”
In an economy where inflation is pricing out many freelancers and small-business owners, some have gotten creative and proposed exchanging their skills, services and goods in place of cash.
Bartering is recognized as the oldest form of commerce — people have been doing it for thousands of years, across communities, as a way to take care of one another. But new apps, online marketplaces and social media platforms — like Craigslist, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok — are emerging to make those connections easier and extend the reach. Barterloo, a platform currently in beta, describes itself as a network for trading goods, skills, services, knowledge and creativity. Barter Black focuses on intra-communal exchanges among Black entrepreneurs, while platforms like BizX and ITEX focus on business-to business trading through a system of credits. Not every resource-sharing community is a barter network, though: Facebook’s Buy Nothing groups and the app for The Buy Nothing Project, for instance, are built around giving and receiving freely, without an exchange in return.
Seth Russell, 25, a tattoo artist who owns Russ Tats Ur Mom, a Boston-based business, has traded his tattoo art for things like handmade clothing, studio décor and elaborate homemade cakes.
One online connection took him as far as Copenhagen, where he swapped tattoos with another artist. Russell is now posting weekly vlogs of his bartering adventures on YouTube.
“You’ve got to pay the bills,” Russell said. “But I feel like the whole experience of trading for things that people really care about means so much more.”
Setting Boundaries
Candy Fowler, known to many as Coach CeeJae, of Fort Mitchell, Ala., runs Operation Echo Horsemanship Program, a community outreach nonprofit that uses horses to instill confidence in girls grappling with anxiety and other challenges. “I’ve lived my entire life bartering,” Fowler said.
For over a decade, Fowler, 48, offered the free program to girls from single-parent and military families. After she closed it, she posted a TikTok proposing trades: time with her horses in exchange for hair color and styling, maintenance work and other services. While the post garnered thousands of views and hundreds of comments, it was a challenge to find bartering connections who lived near enough to make them happen. And even when the right people found one another, a trade still required trust and boundaries.
For example, Fowler gave four years of free horseback-riding lessons to a tattoo artist who was supposed to reciprocate by giving her a tattoo sleeve, but never followed through.
“That was a ‘me’ issue, though,” said Fowler, referring to the fact that she hadn’t set a timeline. “Where do you draw the line?”
The trades that work best, she learned, tend to be the most straightforward and have a quick turnaround, as when someone arrives for time with a horse and hands her a loaf of homemade sourdough bread.
Even with its challenges, Fowler believes bartering a service allows for a type of human connection that money cannot. “That barter system — like, a grandmother at a nursing home receiving a visitor who wants to learn how to knit — that is going to provide millions of dollars’ worth of joy that would never, ever come from just buying an e-book about knitting,” she said.
The Value of Work
Like Fowler, Imani Ellis, 34, has traded services with people in her community. Ellis is the founder and chief executive of CultureCon, an annual conference celebrating the next generation of ambitious creators, entrepreneurs and change makers.
“CultureCon was really built and scaled through community and bartering,” she said. “In the early days, we didn’t have budgets or access to many resources, but we had people who believed in the vision and who were willing to bring what they had to help us build something bigger than ourselves.”
One friend had a space. Another was a designer. Still another knew a photographer.
As CultureCon grew, Ellis recognized that “community shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to pay creatives.”
“Bartering works when there is true reciprocity and everyone understands the value of the exchange,” she said, “but there will always be financial realities, and those must be considered.”
Morgen Hooper, 43, who owns Designed In Love Photography in Temecula Valley, Calif., learned this the hard way. Hooper bartered intermittently for several years, including through Bartering Babes, an online community of small-business owners who trade goods and services in her area.
But when Hooper provided a family photography session for another photographer and later reached out to schedule her side of the trade, she said, she was told that too much time had passed. She also noticed changes in customer service when she was trading rather than paying.
“Sometimes you’re de-prioritized because there’s no monetary exchange, so you might get put on the back burner,” Hooper said.
Ultimately, Hooper decided that the best way for her to support other small businesses was to do so as a paying client.
“I do think it’s really important to define those terms — naming deliverables, timelines, who goes first, those kinds of things,” she said.
Even Russell has learned that a trade can go sideways.
He once traded a tattoo for a custom cake. When it arrived, something seemed off: The generic cake looked as if it came from Whole Foods.
Russell went to the store to investigate. There on the shelf was a row of chocolate cakes that appeared to be identical to the “custom” cake a client had presented as homemade.
The cake incident underscored a reality of bartering: Even with clear communication and honest intentions, there’s no guarantee a trade will turn out as planned.
Starting the Conversation
Perhaps the most intimidating part of bartering comes from the asking.
Fowler said she had approached construction companies about exchanging horseback-riding lessons for work — and had a successful experience.
“If you are willing to barter, then you’ve got to put yourself out there as well,” she said. You just have to be specific about what you’re offering, what you want, when each side will deliver and what happens if plans change.
Fowler also recommends starting close to home, where people may find others willing to exchange what they have.
Ellis has seen firsthand how pooling resources can turn individual contributions into something bigger.
“When you’re building something, especially in the beginning, there are so many people who are willing to say, ‘I have this. You have that. Let’s figure out how we can help each other,’” Ellis said. “And I think that’s the beauty of community — shared resources.”
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