Upmarket online hotel guide and booking service Mr and Mrs Smith is taking a different approach to raising growth capital - a bond scheme for users and retail investors.
The Smith Bond launches today and ends roughly in around two months, giving applicants the chance to purchase a four-year, fixed-term bond which pays out at 7.5% in cash twice a year.
Alternatively, users will be able to obtain what the company is calling Smith Loyalty Money - essentially a "pound-for-pound equivalent currency" which can be used towards booking at any of its properties on the system around the world.
Smith has grown (and evolved) considerably in its nine years of operation, starting out as a glossy guidebook to high-end properties to a fully fledged online booking and guide service to over 900 properties globally, with offices in home town London, New York and Melbourne.
The idea behind the investment programme is to mirror some of the successful retail bonds which have launched in other sectors in recent years, such as Ecotricity, Hotel Chocolat and John Lewis.
Investors in the Smith Bond will have to pay a minimum of £1,000 to get involved. The company claims it is the first time a retail bond scheme has been created which allows participants to earn their interest in either hard cash or loyalty points.
Food retail (Pizza Express) entrepreneur and former chairman of UK broadcaster Channel 4, Luke Johnson, has been drafted in to lend his support for the initiative. He says:
"As economic conditions have deteriorated, owners of small businesses feel less confident about raising equity or borrowing money and it also certain that bank credit has got harder to obtain, and is more expensive than it was.
"It is not surprising therefore that the entrepreneurial minds behind many SMEs are seeking more enterprising methods of raising debt capital without the help of the banks."