Interview by BJ Sullivan, Princeton University

Business Today: What did your parents think of the first issue of Playboy?

Hugh Hefner: Well, I think that’s a very appropriate question. My folks were both Puritan and prohibitionists—they were farm people from Nebraska with very strong Methodist values. I went to my father before I launched the magazine because I was running out of money and I asked him if he might want to invest in company I had just formed or whether he would loan me some money. He was an accountant and a conservative guy, and he just felt it was not a good business investment. And as I was about to leave, my mother took me aside and said that she had some money saved up on her own because she had worked during the war. She gave me a check for a thousand dollars—the largest investment I’ve had to date. They didn’t really believe in the magazine, but they believed in their son.

And my father, soon after the magazine was launched, started doing our books as accountant. And then in time, he came to work for me at the company, and eventually became the treasurer. So they never read the magazine, but they were supportive. And when my father passed away, I learned he left a third of his estate to the Playboy Foundation.

BT: What life experiences brought you to found the magazine?

HH: I think I was in rehearsal my entire life. I created comic books , wrote stories and bound them and passed them along to my friends. I started a penny newspaper when I was nine years old. Our family had a typewriter that I commandeered for my paper. And I founded a number of other publications when I was in high school and then in college.

I reinvented myself at the beginning of my senior year after the rejection of a girlfriend. Started referring to myself as ‘Hef’.

BT: And you’ve never been rejected since, right?

HH: Quite literally I reinvented myself, just as I did later on when I published the magazine. I reinvented myself in high school, and started to become what I considered to be a cool cat. I started printing a comic autobiography of my life and passing it around to friend. When I left school, I joined the army, and when I got homesick, I continued the comic strip. And over time, that evolved into the scrapbook I keep today that covers my entire life of editorial work that now numbers almost two thousand volumes.

And while I had never worked professionally on magazine editorial when I founded Playboy, in some sense I really had been in rehearsal for it my whole life. And I had studied magazines, and knew a great deal about magazines, was involved in magazine promotion both for Esquire and for other magazine. Esquire, a magazine not allowed in my home, in the 1930’s had sexy cartoons and pinups, which were very popular during World War II—and were an inspiration for what became Playmate of the Month. All that changed, and Esquire no longer had the cartoons and the pinups because in 1945, the US Post office had taken the position that they were the censors of American culture. Esquire almost lost second class mailing permits. I felt there was room for a magazine for the young urban guy after WW2, all the most popular men’s magazine were outdoor adventure books.

BT: How did you take Playboy from your living room onto a path to becoming a global brand? Did you incur any major obstacles in this global expansion—culture clashes abroad?

HH: Well, the reality is, to begin with it wasn’t global. Playboy should have been successful—I just didn’t have enough money, and so many businesses fail simply because of a lack of capitalization. I literally started the magazine on my kitchen table with just 8 thousand dollars, and then a distributor came in and. I printed 70,000 copies of the first issue, with Marilyn Monroe in it, and sold about eighty percent of them. The second issue sold better than the first, without Marilyn in it, because there was a concept that caught your attention immediately, particularly on college campuses. The magazine circulation throughout the fifties exploded, and by our by our fifth anniversary we were selling over a million copies a month—surpassing Esquire. And then in the 1960s, the real explosion took place and the circulation continued to grow. And the growth accelerated so fast during the sixties that by the early 70s, we were selling over 7 million copies a month. We used that popularity as momentum for opening the first Playboy club in February of 1960—and then the expansion of other Playboy clubs, and even a Playboy club and casino in London six years ago. It had become something of a global phenomenon.

We got requests from foreign publishers and people were interested in publishing foreign editions of the magazine. I realized I had more than a magazine. And it’s why the magazine expanded not into other magazines, but into other kinds of Playboy products—like the Playboy club. The club was, in its time, more popular than I could possibly describe. In the first two cities, in Chicago and New York, they were immediately the most popular clubs in the city. When we opened the club and casino in London, it was by far and away the most productive casino, in terms of revenue, in the entire city. And this all just naturally lent itself to foreign language editions of the magazine, and there are now 25 of them around the world. When the Iron Curtain collapsed and Russia let its satellite countries go, the first foreign magazine published in almost every one of those satellite countries, including Russia itself, was Playboy. Whatever that magazine was all about represented the personal, political, and economic freedom that had great appeal to the people who were once shrouded by that Iron Curtain.

We have had some censorship problems recently in some Muslim countries, but by and large our major censorship problems are here in America. The magazine continues to be the most popular men’s magazine in the country and in the world, but we do not play on a level playing field. We are not distributed today in half of the newsstands and convenience stores and drug stores around the country—and that was not the case in the fifties, and sixties, and seventies. It became much worse from the 1980s on, when the religious right became very active in censorship areas and in politics.

BT: You recently launched the PlayboyU initiative. What is your main target audience—is it still a men’s magazine or are you branching out to younger audiences now?

HH: The target audience has remained essentially the same: It is the young male in his postgraduates years. It’s a young male audience, but we’ve always had a strong female following. About twenty percent of our readers are female. And of course I think that the television show Girls Next Door has increased the reader interest. We didn’t anticipate it to begin with, but the television show skews dramatically female, and young female. About seventy percent of the viewers of the show are female. And that turn has had a major influence on our Playboy product lines. The majority of our licensing deals are a very popular part of the company and a major source of income for Playboy Inc.—and it skews female also.

BT: How have you and your daughter [Christie Hefner, CEO, Playboy Inc., interviewed in Spring 1992 issue of BT] come up with these new ideas for expanding the brand and diversifying into these new ventures, keeping Playboy innovative not only in terms of magazine content but also as a global media and entertainment enterprise?

HH: The editorial and the promotional part of the company has always been my end. When my daughter came in, after graduating summa cum laude from Brandeis, she got involved in the business and ended up taking over the corporate side of Playboy. She looks after business, I control creative.

BT: So who decides when and where to open Playboy resorts and Playboy stores, and all of the spinoffs of the brand?

HH: We have a licensing division that is in charge of the expansion of the brand, and they opened the store [in VEGASSSS???]. Interestingly, we’ve had boutiques and stores selling Playboy products on the mainland of China, over three hundred of them, for several years now even though the magazine is still prohibited. The brand is hugely popular on the mainland. We will also be opening up a major hotel and casino in Macau in the next year.

BT: As Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, could you reflect briefly on the digital revolution and the ways web content have changed the business. Do you still see a market for the print version, the tactile experience?

HH: I think the reality is, and it’s a painful admission for a person who grew up on print, that the future will be electronic. I think that it’s defined inherently by the costs of the production—the expense of paper, postage. It’s expensive to print a magazine.

Playboy is really in a period of transition, and increasingly will be a combination of print and web. We will be expanding the internet content for the magazine and the company in the very immediate future.

BT: When you eventually do have to step down from Playboy, how is it going to survive without its spokesperson and charismatic leader? And do you see anyone else who could become the next Hugh Hefner?

HH: Well, I have a couple of teenage sons… One of them just reached 18, and there’s a profile of him in the current issue of GQ. He’s going to be going off to college, and he’s not necessarily interested in stepping into his father’s slippers entirely, but he’s definitely interested in getting involved in the business end of the company.

I have another son a year and a half younger named Cooper, and whether he joins the company or not is unsure. But he certainly has the talent for it. He created his own rock band when he was sixteen years old, and they’ve played on the Sunset Strip. He’s very entrepreneurial, so we will see…we’ve got another generation coming up!

BT: Last question—I’m just dying to know: Do you really walk around in pajamas all day?

HH: All day long! I’m sitting in my pajamas right now.

BT: It’s a great life.

HH: I think that on occasion when I’m not wearing my pajamas, the people meeting me are disappointed.