London Fog owner Iconix drops its bid to buy title
By Louisa Ada Seltzer Dec 17, 2009
Looks like Playboy's rumored suitor won't come a-calling after all.
Yesterday came word that London Fog owner Iconix has decided to abandon its bid for the company Hugh Hefner built, apparently because it could not reach a deal to sell Playboy TV, which would have helped finance the purchase.
That means, at least for the time being, that Hef will maintain control of the company, in which he has a 70 percent stake.
Iconix' interest was mostly in the Playboy brand. It had hoped to sell off other parts of the company and leverage the brand by licensing it to retailers and marketers.
It's a measure of just how far the magazine has fallen that it was not the primary driver for the purchase.
The 56-year-old title has seen its circulation and ad pages dry up in recent years, as people turn to the web to look at nude pictures for free.
Year to date, ad pages are off 35.8 percent at the magazine, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, and newsstand sales plummeted nearly 26 percent for the six months ended June 30, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, double the average consumer magazine decline.
There had been speculation that the company, whose print earnings now makes up a much smaller fraction of its overall revenue, was gearing up for a sale when Scott Flanders was appointed CEO earlier this year, taking over for Hef's daughter, Christie Hefner.
Flanders deflected that talk at the time, but then Iconix came along, lending credence to the reports.
Now looms the bigger question: If not Iconix, who?
Wall Street didn't take the failed bid well. Shares of Playboy fell more than 10 percent yesterday while Iconix posted a gain.
Louisa Ada Seltzer is a staff writer for Media Life.
