“Nobody on this planet, over the last seven years, has spent more time with Bruce Kamm than I have.”

Larry Sashin, Itex

Larry Sashin is the general manager of the Itex-New York office, now that Kamm has moved out and is spending all of his time on TradeBanc. Sashin, normally a skeptic with a totally opposite personality from Kamm’s, said that when Kamm decided to develop TradeBanc, “I saw this project as a nightmare. It’s so complex, and such a gigantic undertaking.”

“But,” he added, “I was behind him. And there’s no doubt in my mind that he can pull this off, because his first love is computers. He’s really thought this effort through, and that coupled with his years of barter experience, makes it a natural for him.

“Kamm relishes challenges, and this is a challenge. Plus,” contends Sashin, “his knowledge of computers has always given Itex-New York an advantage. It’s the major reason we’re number one in the entire Itex organization.”

Sashin also shared this insight on Kamm. “I was very sick two years ago with cancer. And used to drag myself, with the assistance of a cane, into the office—all 160 pounds at the time.

“I’d often be resting,” he related, “in my office after chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Bruce would come down and find me sprawled out on the floor. Stepping over me,” Sashin revealed in a tight voice, “he’d ask, with his deadpan humor, ‘are you dead?’ And then he would go about his business.

“Yet all during that time I had a paycheck—every month, without fail.” Sashin declared the two of them have never signed a formal contract. “And that’s unusual today, especially for me, because anyone who knows me, knows that I don’t trust anybody. But now, there’s one exception!”

Barter News Magazine