here today to talk about it. Ben Cohen Ceo of playboy. Ben, welcome to the show.
You're also our first in house guest since the pandemic here in the studio.
So we're so excited to have you
were you pleased with these results? They seemed pretty impressive so far.
First of all, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be the first guest in two years.
Yeah, very pleased with the results. It was a great quarter.
Could have been better.
Obviously supply chain and the workforce and
obviously Omni Crown in the fourth quarter
cost us millions of dollars of revenue. But overall,
Great year $247 million $70 million 130 employees.
Where 1100 employees today, 80% of them are women,
wow! So playboy is such an iconic company.
You guys returned to the stock market last year
about after about a decade of being private.
Can you talk about the decision to go public for a second time with playboy?
Yeah, the decision was really,
we needed capital to continue the transformation of the company
and so this is one of the greatest brands in the world.
This is a brand that you could spend billions of dollars today trying to replicate
and you would not be able to replicate what we have on a global basis.
This is a brand that drives billions of dollars of consumer spent.
And so going back to the public market enabled a few things
that gave us the capital we needed to complete the acquisitions,
it also made it easier for us to hire key talent that we have brought in since then,
largely because we have other forms of
consideration to offer talent besides just cash.
And so it's been great for us and you know,
this year we don't plan on doing acquisitions, but in the future,
Once we have our infrastructure in place,
we will continue to be opportunistic for our shareholders.
Going back to something you said, I think you're right.
A lot of companies have tried to replicate playboy for the last few decades,
none of them have come even close.
There was a milestone in your company,
the magazine stopped production of print in 2021
after 66 years citing pandemic and supply issues.
You guys of course are not alone. How was that decision impacted business so far?
Business has actually thrived since we've shut down the magazine.
More importantly, the magazine, I think really had handcuffs on us internally.
And so everyone always focused about producing the
magazine versus what the core business was,
which was consumer products.
And so by shutting it down, we've actually been able to reimagine
what the next generation of a digital product is and that's our centerfold product,
that's our creator led platform,
that Cardi B Mia Khalifa and a whole host of others have just signed on to
our traffic in january at centerfold has already
surpassed our high traffic playboy dot com.
And so when we think about that is the core of the business
or the center of the universe moving forward in this playboy ecosystem,
the ability to leverage that traffic across our consumer products.
It gives us a truly competitive advantage,
especially when you think of this world we live
in today with the changes to IOS last year,
What you saw happen with facebook, the lack of performance marketing,
we now have an organic audience
with in partnership with our creators that we can
market other products and services to as well.
Playboy is trying to pivot away from media and
licensing towards the consumer products and digital focused business.
What inspired this transformation and how do you hope to accomplish these goals?
This is a plan I set out three years ago to accomplish.
And the first thing we focused on was the
low hanging fruit which was their consumer products,
consumer products.
Whereas the licensing business historically,
licensing is still critical to us in key markets,
but it's really about the pivot to D two C owning that
relationship with the consumer and what we've proven over the last 12 months
since we launched this really in december of 2020
was that we can drive a ov and the lifetime value of the customer up and we expect
that to accelerate moving forward and then you couple
that with these digital products that we're offering,
you know, the N.
F. T. S.
That we launched last year,
the the testing that we had done in
the metaverse with some holiday parties etcetera,
when I think to the future of the company and this playboy ecosystem,
having in real life events coupled with events in the metaverse,
being able to dress your avatars and playboy clothing
or your physical body and playboy clothing as well.
This is a brand that I think truly has a unique advantage
moving forward despite all of its growth and changes over time,
the playboy brand still largely associated with the iconic Q.
Heffner, the company's late founder,
who had a number of disturbing allegations against him.
How can you further distance the brand from Hugh Hefner,
who of course started at all.
Look, I think what we've leaned into is the core DNA of the brand.
These libertarian points of view,
these personal freedoms that we continue to fight for and
the company has fought for for the past 70 years.
Um you know, we stand by the statement we made,
we support the women that have come forward
With their stories and today we are a company that's 1100 people,
80% of them are women And so we will continue to evolve the brand moving forward.
What else are you focusing on on for 2022
when it comes to growth and transformation for playboy?
So we have two very clear goals.
One is to continue the acceleration of our DDC business
and the second is to continue to build out of centerfolds
and if we do those, we will be wildly successful moving forward
Ben Cohen Ceo of playboy, Thank you so much for your time. Ben again.
First guest in cheddar studios in two years. We really appreciate your time.
Thank you so much.