PLBY Group, Inc. (PLBY) is a pleasure and leisure company.
The company provides consumers around the world with products, content and experiences that help them lead happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives. The company’s flagship consumer brand, Playboy, is one of the most recognizable brands in the world, with Playboy-branded products and content available in approximately 180 countries. The company also owns and operates the brand Honey Birdette, which specializes in luxury lingerie that...
PLBY Group, Inc. (PLBY) is a pleasure and leisure company.
The company provides consumers around the world with products, content and experiences that help them lead happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives. The company’s flagship consumer brand, Playboy, is one of the most recognizable brands in the world, with Playboy-branded products and content available in approximately 180 countries. The company also owns and operates the brand Honey Birdette, which specializes in luxury lingerie that it sells online and at physical stores in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Products & Services
The company’s products and content delivery services connect consumers to a lifestyle of pleasure and leisure. The company’s offerings help consumers around the world look good, feel good and enjoy their lives. The company’s offerings are available to consumers through the company’s two brands, Playboy and Honey Birdette.
Playboy Products & Services
Playboy products and experiences are offered through its licensing and digital operations.
Licensing: The company has primarily licensed the Playboy brand for consumer products, leveraging the company’s Playboy archive and intellectual property assets built over more than 70 years, to allow fans and consumers to experience the Playboy image and lifestyle through (i) apparel and accessories products sold globally, featuring such high profile brand collaborations as PacSun, OVO, PSD, Missguided and Lids, (ii) collaborations with strategic partners in the nightlife, hospitality, digital casino and online gaming industries, and in the metaverse, including Draft Kings and Sandbox, (iii) premium spirits sold under the Rare Hare brand and ready-to-drink cocktails under the Play Hard brand, (iv) beauty and grooming offerings, including skincare, haircare, bath and body, cosmetics and fragrance, and (v) sexual wellness products. Playboy-branded product and experience offerings are primarily delivered by the company’s strategic licensing partners, and some products are offered for resale on shop.playboy.com, the operation of which the company has licensed to third-parties since the third quarter of 2023.
Digital: The company’s digital operations build upon its legacy in visual media and entertainment and include the company’s content creator platform on playboy.com (‘Playboy Club’), which lets customers interact directly with influencers and other creators that generate their own array of content, and Playboy programming distributed through various websites and domestic and international television providers offering on-demand entertainment. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the company entered into a licensing agreement with Byborg Enterprises SA (‘Byborg’) to license intellectual property and certain Playboy digital assets, as well as for the operation of the company’s digital businesses, which will continue to be owned by the company.
Honey Birdette Products
The company’s Honey Birdette business comprises its entire direct-to-consumer segment. Honey Birdette sells its products, including lingerie and certain other apparel, bedroom accessories, intimacy products and other adult products, online and through its 54 physical stores in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
The product categories under the company’s two brands comprise large and growing markets, providing the company with significant opportunities for growth from the increased sales of the company’s current products and content, as well as through the introduction of new products and content within current and previously unexploited product categories and geographies.
Business Segments
The company generates revenue through the sales of its products and content services to consumers around the world. The company employs multiple business models, including direct-to-consumer and third-party retail sales, brand licensing, and digital sales and subscriptions, to help maximize the value of the company’s assets and promote long-term revenue and profitability growth. The company reports on its business operations in three segments:
Direct-to-Consumer, through the company’s owned-and-operated Honey Birdette e-commerce sites and retail stores, which has constituted the entire segment since the third quarter of 2023, as Playboy e-commerce transitioned to a licensing model and the company sold its former Yandy and Lovers businesses in 2023;
Licensing, including licensing the company’s Playboy brand to third parties for products, services, venues, online gaming and events; and
Digital Subscriptions and Content, including revenues generated from the sales of creator content offerings to consumers through the Playboy Club, and the sale of subscriptions to Playboy programming, which is distributed through various channels, including websites and domestic and international television.
Direct-to-Consumer
Since the third quarter of 2023, the company’s Direct-to-Consumer segment has only consisted of the company’s Honey Birdette business, which primarily sells luxury lingerie online and at physical stores in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The company manage the inventory and shipping for such owned digital and retail commerce channels through a combination of the company’s own warehouse and fulfillment centers and through third-party logistics centers, providing a flexible and scalable base from which to continue the expansion of the company’s direct-to-consumer sales platform model. Prior to the third quarter of 2023, the company also owned and operated digital commerce retail stores, including on playboy.com (transitioned to a licensing model effective July 2023), yandy.com (sold in April 2023), and loversstores.com, as well as Lovers retail stores (the entire Lovers business was sold in November 2023).
Licensing
The company licenses the Playboy name, Rabbit Head Design, and other trademarks and related properties to strategic partners around the world. The company’s licensing agreements permit licensees the right to use certain Playboy trademarks for certain categories of products in certain territories for a fee, which is typically a royalty calculated as a percentage of net revenue from wholesale and/or retail sales of such products, subject to an annual, bi-annual or quarterly minimum royalty payment. In addition, the company licenses the sale of certain proprietary products by third parties across major retailers in certain markets. Creative Artists Agency, a brand agency with significant global reach and infrastructure, acts as the company’s exclusive licensing agent for the Playboy brand trademarks and intellectual property for consumer products in a broad range of categories in most of the world.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, the company entered into a licensing agreement with Byborg to license intellectual property and certain Playboy digital assets. As a result, for periods after 2024, the company’s Licensing segment will include revenues from licensing the Playboy Club, Playboy Plus and Playboy TV businesses to Byborg, as described further below.
In the first quarter of 2023, the company entered into a joint venture for Playboy’s China business (the ‘China JV’), with CT Licensing Limited, a brand management unit of Fung Group, representing many global brands in China, to jointly own and operate the Playboy business in China (including Hong Kong and Macau). The China JV is working to reinvigorate the company’s China-market Playboy apparel business, including online and offline retail strategies, product design and assortment, and brand marketing to its multi-generational audience.
As part of the realignment of the company’s China licensing business, in October 2023, the company terminated licensing agreements with certain Chinese licensees due to ongoing, uncured breaches of their licenses.
Digital Subscriptions and Content
Through the end of 2024, the company’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment was consisted of the Playboy Club, the company’s content creator platform on playboy.com, and Playboy’s adult content offerings, including playboyplus.com and playboy.tv. In addition, Playboy TV is offered through leading MSOs (multiple-system operators) around the globe, including the U.S. MSOs DIRECTV, Comcast, Dish, Charter, Cox, Altice, and Mediacom. Pursuant to its agreements with the MSOs, Playboy provides programs for Playboy TV and typically receives a royalty based on the numbers of subscribers to the service. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the company entered into a licensing agreement with Byborg to license intellectual property and certain Playboy digital assets. As a result, Playboy Club, Playboy Plus and Playboy TV operations switched from an owned-and-operated model to a licensing model effective January 1, 2025.
Strategy
In 2024, the company entered into a licensing agreement with Byborg to operate the company’s digital business, including the Playboy Club.
For Playboy, the company is now focused on expanding its licensing business into new geographies and categories by partnering with best-in-class operators and supporting them with brand marketing in the form of content, experiences and editorial works. Given the company’s historical focus on North America and China, largely in the apparel and accessories categories, there is significant white space to grow the business in unexploited product categories and geographies.
For the company’s Honey Birdette business, in 2024, the company was focused on reducing inventory levels and days on sale and improving the profitability of the business. As a part of that focus, the company closed seven underperforming stores in Australia and reduced days on sale by 30%. In 2025, the company is focusing on the U.S. market.
Competition
In the men’s apparel space in China, the company competes with other leading men’s apparel brands such as Semir, Bosideng and Metersbonwe and such global brands as Levi’s, Lacoste and Jack & Jones, which the company has also collaborated with in the China market. As the company has shifted to a more capital-light business model, the company signed new license agreements for e-commerce, lingerie, underwear and costumes. Such licensed Playboy-branded products and the company’s Honey Birdette brand compete with Agent Provocateur, Skims, Fleur du Mal, Victoria’s Secret, Fashion Nova and other brands and retailers. The company’s Playboy-branded collection of toys (under license in the sexual wellness category in North America and Europe), Playboy condoms in Mexico, and Playboy fragrances (pursuant to a global license with broad distribution across Europe, the Americas and southeast Asia) compete with sexual wellness e-commerce platforms and brick and mortar retail chains, such as Lovehoney and Adam & Eve.
Government Regulation
In connection with the products the company provides, the company must comply with various laws and regulations from federal, state, local and foreign regulatory agencies. The company is in material compliance with regulatory requirements applicable to the company’s business. These regulatory requirements include, without limitation:
federal, state, local and foreign laws and regulations involving minimum wage, health care, overtime, sick leave, lunch and rest breaks and other similar wage, benefits and hour requirements and other similar laws;
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act and regulations of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the equivalent state agencies and other similar laws;
alcohol beverage marketing regulations, custom and import matters with respect to products imported to and exported from the United States;
the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the UK Bribery Act and other similar anti-bribery and anti- kickback laws and regulations that generally prohibit companies and their intermediaries from making improper payments for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business; and
federal, state and foreign anticorruption, data protection, privacy, consumer protection, content regulation and other laws and regulations, including without limitation, the General Data Protection Regulation (the ‘GDPR’) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (the ‘CCPA’).
Intellectual Property
The company owns various trademarks, copyrights and software comprising the company’s intellectual property holdings, including, without limitation, the ‘Playboy’ name, the ‘RABBIT HEAD DESIGN’ logo and the ‘Honey Birdette’ name.
The company has active trademark registrations in more than 150 countries for the company’s key trademarks, including variations of the PLAYBOY and the RABBIT HEAD DESIGN logo, which are typically the core intellectual property the company licenses pursuant to its licensing agreements and use on the company’s branded consumer products.
History
The company was formerly known as PLBY Group, Inc. and changed its name to Playboy, Inc. in June 2025.
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