LOS ANGELES — PLBY Group’s CEO Ben Kohn announced on Thursday the ongoing relaunch of the Playboy brand, including reviving its iconic magazine in early 2025.
The flagship website Playboy.com — themed as a digital version of the Playboy Club — debuted this week, as part of the relaunch.
Kohn made the announcements through a statement disclosing PLBY Group’s financial and operational results for the Q2 2024, which ended on June 30.
“We have taken significant steps to position Playboy for future success, aimed at strengthening our balance sheet and enhancing our operations,” Kohn said. “Our senior lenders have agreed to give us an exclusive period of time to repay all of the debt at a significant discount, which would meaningfully reduce total company leverage. To accomplish this, we have engaged a leading investment bank to help secure new financing.”
In recent months, Kohn added, PLBY made “substantial progress” to bring its Playboy brand into the digital age.
“Playboy is the quintessential lifestyle brand,” he explained, “with a rich heritage, reaching not only across generations, but across content categories as well. We are confident that by rebuilding key content verticals such as men’s lifestyle, automotive, sports and travel, we can vastly expand the ways in which consumers interact with our brand – through social media, events and experiences, and content on a newly redesigned Playboy.com, which debuted earlier this week. The power of the creator economy is the key to building a successful and relevant content business in today’s rapidly changing media ecosystem, and we plan to partner with creators of all types to produce dynamic, fresh content across all of our distribution channels. We are creating exciting opportunities for advertising and sponsorship partners to reach new consumers by re-establishing Playboy as the premier aspirational lifestyle brand. This new strategy is already delivering results, including a multi-million dollar pipeline of sponsorship deals. A key part of this strategy was revamping our social media accounts, driving nearly 30 million Instagram video views in the past three months alone, according to Emplifi, our social media insights provider.”
Kohn then announced the print Playboy magazine is scheduled to return in early 2025, serving “as a powerful promotional tool for our relaunch.”
The new magazine will feature Playmate and celebrity collaborations, and historic sections such as the Playboy Interview, 20 Questions and the Playboy Advisor.
Kohn also announced a global search for the magazine’s newest Playmate, kicking off with an eight-city casting tour starting next month in New York City and culminating in the reveal of the 2024 Playmate of the Year in the new magazine.
Kohn also heralded the rebuilding of PLBY’s lucrative licensing business.
“In the past few months, we’ve signed multiple new deals, including with a new apparel and accessories licensing partner in China, a global condoms and gel lubricants partner, a new e-commerce shop partner, and multiple other deals, amounting to a total of over $45 million in minimum guarantees over the coming years,” he said. “Our pipeline continues to grow and we are optimistic about what lies ahead for our licensing business.”
For the complete statement on PLBY Group’s Q2 report, click here.