Playboy will become a quarterly magazine in 2019

Playboy will become a quarterly magazine in 2019, reducing its current format by six issues a year, the company said.

The adult entertainment company also unveiled plans to open a new Playboy Club in New York.

Reinstatement in the brick and mortar clubs sector was designed by general manager Ben Kohn, who is trying to rethink Hugh Hefner's empire for the 21st century.

To this end, Kohn hired Julie Uhrman as Playboy's media president, a newly created position. Uhrman joins Lions Gate Entertainment's Playboy, where she was executive vice president and general manager of over the top projects.

"Julie brings with her extensive experience in media and digital business that will be an integral part of our efforts to meet the demands of our current subscribers and expand the brand's presence on new platforms," ​​said Kohn. a statement.

On September 12th, the new 14,000 square foot Playboy Club officially opens at 512 W. 42nd St., although it has already hosted a pre-opening of the week of Fashion Week last week.

The club is located on the same block as a building housing a group of emergency intervention in New York.

In recent years, Kohn has pushed the company more aggressively towards licensing, with some success. Playboy's distinctive rabbit ears are now licensed on a wide range of consumer products, from coffee mugs to wallets and clothing, generating approximately $ 1.5 billion in retail sales in 180 countries.

Playboy Enterprises only receives a portion of these sales in the form of license fees. The Wall Street Journal sets the company's annual revenue at $ 90 million, with media still generating about half that amount.

In July, after Hefner's death, Kohn's Rizvi Traverse acquired the remaining third of the company he did not yet own from the Hefner family.

Rizvi Traverse bought about two-thirds of the company in 2011, when he helped Hefner take the company privately.

"We are just coming back to our roots of what Hef has represented and simply modernizing it for today," Kohn told WSJ of the rebranding efforts.

Kohn has never been a fan of the magazine that was once the cornerstone of the empire and has reduced its frequency in 2018 from 10 times a year to six. Despite the reduction in magazine frequency to four times a year in 2019, Kohn does not plan to eliminate the print edition.

Hefner's son, Cooper Hefner, is now Creative Director of the company. When Cooper left the company, he openly criticized the end-of-2015 plan to ban nude photos from the magazine.

However, when Scott Flanders, then CEO of the time, came back and Cooper Hefner was brought back, he quickly overturned the "no-nude" ban.

Actress Elizabeth Elam was on the cover of the March / April 2016 issue that announced the return to nude photography.

Before the ramping up of the Internet and the restrictions imposed by the newsstand of the 1970s, Playboy was selling 5 million copies a month. It currently only sells for a few hundred thousand copies by number – and is no longer followed by the Alliance for Audited Media.

Kohn hopes that switching to a quarterly production schedule will allow Playboy to double the number of ad pages, 220 per issue.