Dow Jones Newswires-WSJ | Over the past nine months, Playboy has turned its bunny loose, slapping its famous logo on a tanning spray, a disposable lighter, a mattress, a couch and a line of drinks designed to boost the libido.
The new Playboy paraphernalia should be welcome news for Ken Ritchie, who has a wing on his house precisely to hold stuff like this. But Mr. Ritchie turns up his nose at what Playboy is selling now. “These are a lot of silly things that have no connection with Playboy,”
Mr. Ritchie says. “How many guys do you think are going to go out and
buy navel rings because they’ve been licensed by Playboy? It’s not a
must-have item.”
The 57-year-old Memphis resident has spent most of his adult life
collecting and selling Playboy merchandise. For about a decade, he was
spending $3,000 a month on ceramic statuettes, pinup calendars,
Playmate autographs and back issues of the magazine. When another
collector in Dallas got divorced and had to sell his stash, Mr. Ritchie
rented a 16-foot U-Haul truck and carted off half the man’s trove
including a Playboy pinball machine.
Playboy launched more than a magazine when it put Marilyn Monroe on its
inaugural issue in 1953. It created a brand that came to represent the
rebel ethos of its libidinous founder, Hugh Hefner. Over the years the
parent company, Playboy Enterprises Inc., has capitalized on it by
attaching its logo to nightclubs, cuff links and other trinkets.
As advertising has drained from its magazine, Playboy has come to rely
more heavily on its licensing efforts. That’s rankled some core fans,
highlighting the delicate task facing Playboy and other struggling
magazine companies: how to capitalize on their brands without
diminishing their value in the eyes of the people who cherish — and in
some cases profit from — them most.
One of those people is Mike Travis, a 57-year-old retired schoolteacher
in Madisonville, Ky. Mr. Travis says he owns roughly 15,000 Playboy
items. His collection includes small things like glassware and ashtrays
and bigger items like ceramic statuettes and an old typewriter from an
office that Playboy closed.
About 20 years ago, Mr. Travis drove to Chicago and convinced a fellow
collector to part with a set of gold-plated blazer buttons, the likes
of which he says he hadn’t seen before or since.
Mr. Travis and his wife later moved into a larger home so that he could
devote the entire second floor to his collection. His wife doesn’t have
a problem with her husband’s hobby, Mr. Travis says. In fact, she
travels with him to flea markets to help him fill gaps in his
collection. “She got a new house out of it so she ought to be happy,”
he says.
But when Mr. Travis sees some of the newer items like tanning sprays
and the Playboy Passion Enhancer, a bottled cocktail that promises to
“maximize stamina, performance and desire,” his own passion wanes.
“There are some things I do draw a line on,” he says.
Part of the problem, avid collectors say, is the pace at which Playboy
is churning out new products and the tenuous ties some of them have to
the brand. “They just put their logo on everything,” Mr. Travis says.
Playboy has been licensing its brand on an array of seemingly random
products for decades, of course. However, Christie Hefner, the
founder’s daughter who served as CEO until the end of 2008, had sought
to usher the brand up-market during her tenure. Over Ms. Hefner’s
20-year run, she canceled licensing contracts with makers of items such
as fuzzy dice and air fresheners and instead targeted high-end apparel
and accessories for women.
Scott Flanders, who took the top job last year, is shifting gears,
making expansion of licensing a priority. “I think we might have been a
bit more conservative about category expansion previously,” says Mr.
Flanders, a former newspaper industry executive.
The CEO acknowledges that it is difficult to expand the high-margin
licensing business and please hard-core collectors, a small group, at
the same time. The ubiquity that fuels strong sales is precisely what
turns off collectors, he notes.
Still, Mr. Flanders says Playboy takes pains to determine whether new
products will sully its media properties or other products. “So far, we
can’t point to an example of a product we’ve licensed that we regret,”
Mr. Flanders says.
Playboy reported $37 million in licensing revenue last year up from
$9.2 million in 2000. Licensees typically pay Playboy a percentage of
sales to use the name and logo on their products. The U.S. print
edition of the magazine generated $55 million in sales last year.
In February, Playboy reached a deal to outsource its licensing business
in Asia, where Playboy-branded apparel has become especially popular
among young women.
That doesn’t sit well with John Camacho, a 38-year-old collector in
Michigan. He has an iron-on image of the cover of the September 1976
issue of the magazine but he says he’s reluctant to put it on a shirt
given the growing popularity of Playboy apparel among women. “Now it’s
almost too feminine to wear something like that,” he says.
Mr. Ritchie, now in his fourth decade as a collector of all things
Playboy, says he is having a difficult time mustering much enthusiasm
for the brand that helps pay his bills.
The Chicago native started out in the late 1970s collecting back issues
of the magazine and later, autographs from Playboy Playmates. As his
collection grew, he stored it in a large, double closet in his home.
Every six to eight months he emptied the closet, spread out everything
on the floor, took out his video camera and got it all on tape. Each
time, he made 200 copies and sent them out to his best customers. “Then
I’d sit back and wait for the phone to ring,” he said. “And it did.”
Within three days, he said, everything would be gone.
But the past few years have been a slog for Mr. Ritchie, a former
post-office truck loader. Playboy’s licensees now make so much of
everything that it doesn’t make sense to buy anything, he says.
“You reach a point where guys just look and say, ‘Why do I need these?’ ” Mr. Ritchie says.
