Hugh Hefner's iconic Playboy bunny is gearing up for a major hop into the China market, but instead of adult media the focus will be on marketing Playboy 'with Chinese characteristics' as an apparel brand.
"In America, Playboy makes people think about sex and Playboy Bunnies," said Alex Wang Chengjin, a Wenzhou businessman whose company Glory Rabbit International Investment recently acquired the rights to manufacture and sell Playboy-branded apparel and household goods across the mainland.
"While Chinese people recognise Playboy as an international brand, they don't really understand what it is all about," Wang said. "So we have a lot of space to work with in terms of how ... we introduce the culture of the brand in China," he said.
Faced with declining publishing revenues in the United States, Playboy Enterprises is banking on non-media licensing ventures in China for future growth. A small litter of recent brand licensing deals - for China apparel with Glory Rabbit, for a pair of casino nightclubs in Macau with Sands China, and for a retail outlet in Taipei - are part of a broad repositioning of Playboy's business beyond the original men's magazine founded by Hefner in 1953.
Asia, led by the China market, accounted for a third of Playboy's licensing revenue last year and that figure is expected to exceed 40 per cent this year, Playboy Enterprises chief executive Scott Flanders said.
"We think there's still a lot of growth left, not only in China but in the rest of the countries in the region,' Flanders said. 'Our brand has a lot of resonance here."
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Playboy has opened its first casino nightclub outside the US, a 12,000-square-foot space on the top floor of the hotel tower at the Sands Macao that is "couples friendly" and offers "sophisticated fun adult entertainment", Flanders said. A larger Playboy Mansion facility is scheduled to open in the fall of 2012 inside a US$4 billion Sheraton/Shangri-La casino resort complex that Sands China is building on the Cotai Strip across from its Venetian Macao.
Playboy's deal with Wang's Glory Rabbit represents a minimum US$50 million in licensing revenue over five years starting from January 1, according to Flanders.
Glory Rabbit plans to open 2,000 to 3,000 Playboy-branded retail outlets in coming years, starting with major hubs like Shanghai and Hangzhou and branching out to second- and third-tier cities, Wang said.
Acquiring the China rights to the bunny logo and related trademarks from Playboy are part of the apparel firm's plan to 'move up the value chain' from manufacturing to branded retailing, he said.
Flanders said Playboy currently has "hundreds" of licensing agreements in place around Asia. "I would argue the brand is stronger in Asia than in the US," he said.
"People know what the bunny ears are even where we have never published a single magazine. I think we have a cleaner image in the mind of the consumer in Asia as a result."
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