Gypsy Swap

Hair Tomorrow, our sustainably-sourced scrunchie company, has found itself in a bit of a bind, no pun intended. Most of our scrunchies are made out of hemp. The course threads have been rough on our looms, which are getting worn out and negatively impacting the quality of the finished products. As a result, scrunchie sales haven’t been what we anticipated, so we don’t have the money to replace the looms. Since our entire business relies on our equipment working the way it should, this is problematic.

We thought about taking out a loan to buy new looms, but since our sales have been so bad, we can’t get approved. Likewise, we can’t do other things businesses do to raise capital, like issue bonds or new public stock offerings. Short of a fairy godmother swooping in with suitcases full of cash, we’re down to our last option: a gypsy swap.

A gypsy swap happens when we convince our shareholders to trade in their unrestricted stock for restricted stock, i.e., stock that comes with conditions. Then we turn around and sell the unrestricted stock, and voila: capital.

This all sounds well and good, but the problem is that, in order to make it work, we not only have to convince Hair Tomorrow's existing shareholders that exchanging their shares is a good idea, but we also have to convince new investors to buy the newly-available unrestricted shares. What this means is that we’re going to have to make those shares attractive, either by dropping the price (for both the unrestricted and restricted shares) or throwing in some other kind of incentive. In other words, we need to spend money to make money, which is why gypsy swaps are often a last resort: they can get pricey. And for companies that are already in a financial pickle (they wouldn’t be gypsy swapping if they could get money another way), this can end up spelling disaster.

Or it could be a company’s saving grace. If we at Hair Tomorrow buy new looms with the capital raised by the gypsy swap, and those new looms produce better scrunchies, and our products just start flying off the shelves, then we’ll have done good by both the company and our investors, old and new.