History of TradeOne

Great companies are born from a need. Two such companies were created to solve problems in a little known, but increasingly important market niche - co-op advertising services and Trade Promotion Management (TPM).

In the summer of 1960, New York advertising agency executive Arnold Ferber was asked by several of his clients to address a growing problem of dealing with requests for reimbursement of co-op advertising funds. Ferber’s little company, which he named "Pinpoint Marketing" soon grew and was the first service firm to computerize the workflow of audit, settlement, and accounting of co-op advertising.

Meanwhile, in Austin Texas four executives from Texas Instruments formed a startup company called MEDIANET. Rob Hand, Tim Moore, Mike Gibbs and Judy Ritz left their positions at TI and decided to take advantage of the high tech climate and huge base of well-educated "knowledge workers" in Austin. MEDIANET soon grew to the industry’s most technologically advanced and highest quality provider of trade promotion management services. It’s innovative program development and technical achievements are now legendary with powerful programs like Intel Inside® and Pharmacia’s radical new deduction management system. MEDIANET concentrated its technical resources to ensure 100% precision and trust in its accounting systems, superior security, disaster protection, and overall system performance assurance.

In 1995, MEDIANET was acquired by Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) of Dallas, Texas. One year later it acquired Pinpoint Marketing of New York. After a year of determining the most effective way to integrate the two companies, it was decided that Austin would be the new corporate headquarters and the name was soon changed to TradeOne Marketing.

In 2000, The Harbour Group, a Dallas, Texas I/T integrator that completed a number of projects for TradeOne acquired the company. They immediately provided needed I/T support, upgraded systems technology, and introduced Dan Hickox, a highly regarded industry I/T consulting veteran as the CIO. This effort continues to enable TradeOne to meet its heritage of being the industry best practice TPM leader. Since their acquisition of TradeOne, THG continues to provide close overall communication, executive leadership and client management support for TradeOne.

Today, TradeOne is taking its rightful place as a thought leader in what is now recognized as the most important budget line item for companies all over the world. The combined innovation of Pinpoint Marketing and the quality, financial integrity and performance of MEDIANET has forged a service company that is poised to be the world’s leader in trade promotion management.

For more information about the history of TradeOne, The Harbour Group or trade promotion in general, contact TradeOne at 866-4TRADE1