Hugh Hefner may be gone. But his Playboy brand may live in his family after all.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Hefner’s youngest son, Cooper, is offering to buy back the Playboy brand for $100 million.
According to the WSJ report, he and a group of investors submitted an offer to Playboy Group that would see the brand once again family-owned more than seven decades after it was founded by his late father.
“It’s a great American company and a great American brand, outside of my personal connection to it,” Hefner, told the WSJ.
Cooper’s mother is former Playmate and Hugh Hefner’s second wife Kimberley Conrad.
As part of the proposed deal, Hefner and his investment firm, Hefner Capital, would buy back the Playboy brand and run the intellectual property while the other parts of the business would continue to operate as a separate entity under a new name.
The newly carved out entity would also get a 10% ownership stake in a Hefner-run Playboy.
Hefner, whose investor group includes a hedge fund and one of Playboy’s former licensing partners, told The Journal that he would assume the role of CEO.
Playboy Group, whose stock was as high as $50 a share in the spring of 2021, was trading at less than $1 a share on Monday. Its market valuation was around $50 million.
In 2021, it went public via a special acquisition company. But the firm has been losing money and is currently holding more than $200 million in debt.
Cooper Hefner told The Journal that the brand has been mismanaged.
“It’s Playboy entering businesses that they’ve never operated before,” he said, adding that the products are “not resonating at all with consumers or customers or fans.”
“And the business’s decline and the brand’s relevance — in terms of being hardly spoken about today — is a direct reflection of that.”
Hugh Hefner founded the magazine and built the brand. In the 1970s, Playboy had a monthly circulation of 7 million.
Hugh Hefner died in 2017 at the age of 91. He left behind four children including Cooper Hefner, all of whom sold their stakes in the company.