Yahoo Finance Plby Group Opens Its First Owned Playboy Retail Space With More to Follow
Get used to seeing those rabbit ears at stores across the country.
Plby Group is opening its first owned retail outpost on Friday at the tony Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles, California, where one of the main products on sale will be a Playboy Bunny outfit in various colors, just in time for Halloween, along with other apparel and lifestyle products.
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The 2,300-square-foot pop-up space will remain open until probably Valentine’s Day, which will take advantage of the company’s release in early November of its first owned and designed Playboy lingerie line as well as a new collection of company designed and produced denim.
“This is PLBY Group’s first owned store ever,” said Ashley Kechter, who early this year joined the company as president of global consumer goods for Plby Group, the publicly traded entity that encompasses the Playboy, Yandy, Lovers and Honey Birdette brands.
“We really are using this as our prototype to understand how a traditional mall-based location performs. Then we will layer into this concept when we build a more permanent brick-and-mortar presence.”
After taking stock of the new pop-up store, Playboy plans to establish its own network of retail venues with primarily apparel and lifestyle products. Initially outposts will be rolled out in areas where the brand is popular, which includes New York, Los Angeles, Texas and Florida, Kechter said.
Setting up a new chain of stores seems counterintuitive to what has been happening in the retail world in recent years. But Kechter notes that consumers are eager to get out and explore the shopping scene.
“If you go to any mall, particularly a mall like Century City, that’s where the consumer is right now. I think after two years of being inside, people want to experience things and socialize more,” the executive said.
Century City is located in an affluent area of Los Angeles, surrounded by million-dollar homes and a hub of high-rise buildings housing offices for attorneys, accountants, financial consultants and film-related concerns such as Creative Artists Agency; 20th Century Studios and its film lot are located blocks away.
With the new stores will come new Playboy-owned and -designed products. First up is a line of Playboy lingerie, which hits the store on Nov. 1.
Playboy has lots of experience in lingerie with its high-end lingerie label Honey Birdette, which has a permanent outpost in the Century City mall. “We are going to drop new [Playboy] lingerie collections each week through November, with a pretty sizable launch targeted for Valentine’s Day,” Kechter said.
Also on the horizon are lines of Playboy-owned and -designed fleece and denim, which will arrive later this year. Playboy also has licenses with companies that make denim, including PacSun.
Inside the new pop-up store will be lots of other merchandise carrying the Playboy logo with its iconic bunny head with big floppy ears.
Toward the back of the store will be an area where shoppers can take selfies. There will also be a lounge area where various events can be hosted with creators on Centerfold, a social-media platform created by Playboy as part of its technology expansion.
Playboy Enterprises was founded in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017. The Playboy magazine ceased publishing at the beginning of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, through a reverse merge completed with Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., the company reinvented itself and became Plby Group, which is publicly traded on the Nasdaq.
