Playboy Group, the US-based owner of Honey Birdette, is still looking for a way to deleverage the Australian-born lingerie brand so it can focus capital more solely on its namesake business.
Group CEO Ben Kohn confirmed this in the company’s recent quarterly webcast with financial analysts, saying he sees “massive” growth opportunity for Playboy across licensing and media, so much so that any available cash on hand is being invested in it.
This is despite Kohn also seeing growth potential for Honey Birdette in the future following a global turnaround.
“We've reduced our inventory substantially,” Kohn said of Honey Birdette for the third quarter of 2025.
“We're seeing same-store sales up 22 per cent [in the last quarter], even though we're down seven stores year-over-year. We're seeing full price items up 15 per cent. We've seen 700 bps of margin expansion. There is significant demand for the business.
“[But] our goal is to continue to de-lever the company.”
Kohn said one key point is raising capital at the Honey Birdette level so that it doesn't divert resources away from Playboy and allows the lingerie business to continue to grow separately.
“Let's see where the process goes, and whether or not Honey Birdette, in the long term, should be part of Playboy as 100 per cent or something less than 100 per cent.”
When asked about why he wants to raise capital for Honey Birdette, Kohn said there are opportunities to update stores and e-commerce. In an accompanying letter to investors, the group CEO said that sales growth across Honey Birdette's 10 US stores and flagship stores across the fleet is outpacing the broader store base, carrying four-wall margins in excess of 30 per cent.
Following the closure of seven underperforming stores, Playboy Group COO and CFO Marc Crossman said he and the team are now evaluating the 51 stores currently still operating, particularly the bottom 20 stores in terms of four-wall margin percentage. This doesn’t mean the bottom 20 stores will be closed down, but Crossman did note that the base needs to be “rationalised” a little bit more.
Across the top 20, Crossman said these stores are running close to 40 per cent four-wall margin.
He also pointed out that, pending incoming capital, Playboy Group has spotted potential flagship locations for new Honey Birdette stores. This includes one in the US.
“There are plenty of big cities that we have not hit [in the US],” Crossman said. “We basically hit the southeast, but we've got the entire US to tackle.
“And then there are a lot of other places around the world – Dubai, Vietnam. There are a lot of different places where you would go, like Korea, and have just one big flagship store in that country.
“We want to be in the Middle East, we want to be in APAC, because we have a distribution centre in Australia. We can ship out of Australia, and we don't have to deal with the duties that we're seeing coming into the US.”
Kohn then jumped back into the conversation, spotlighting Honey Birdette’s store in Miami. The Playboy executive team has been spending a lot of time in the Florida capital in recent weeks. Kohn said the Miami store is a high-performing location, and pointed out that the Miami market is huge and growing.
“Miami could easily take two to four more stores down there,” Kohn said. “It's a question of having the right capital to invest in, and it's why we're thinking about it now that the business is on a stable financial footing. There'll still be growth there, but how do we actually accelerate that growth moving forward?”
As for online, Kohn said Honey Birdette’s e-commerce sales as a percentage of total revenue has “basically flipped” four years after taking on the business. The brand’s third-quarter revenue was around US$16 million (~A$25 million). He now plans to expand Honey Birdette online into new markets such as the Middle East and the Asia Pacific.
This follows a recent overhaul of the Honey Birdette website, which has helped lift up the brand’s average order value by 9 per cent. Kohn also confirmed that Honey Birdette will turn on an integrated loyalty program shortly, and will add another two language translations on the website in December, bringing the total to ten.
“Growth doesn't come for free,” Kohn said. “You have to make an investment.
“We're not talking about big dollars. But right now, given that we still have a desire to continue to de-lever this business and invest in Playboy, and based on where Honey Birdette is now, I think there's a good chance we could raise money from third parties to continue to grow that business."