Playboy clubs to close

Press, 7 May 1986, Page 30

Playboy clubs to close

NZPA-Reuter Chicago Playboy has reported quarterly losses of SUS 3.2 million ($5,504 million) and says it will close its bunny clubs in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago on July 1.

The move will leave Playboy without an owned and operated club for the first time since it pioneered the private men’s club concept in 1960 in Chicago. The company said, however, that it will continue to franchise clubs under the Playboy name. Such operations exist in Lansing. Michigan, Des Moines and Omaha, as well as four in Japan. The company attributed the most of its third quarter financial losses to sagging revenues at the three clubs.

It singled out the Playboy Empire Club in New

York, opened in November, 1985, at a glitzy new location complete with male waiters called “Rabbits,” as a big disappointment.

The company president, Christine Hefner, daughter of Playboy’s founder, Hugh Hefner, also reported a "small decline” in sales of “Playboy Magazine,” the men’s publication. Miss Hefner said the recent decision by Southland Corporation to stop selling "Playboy” at its 4500 United States supermarkets contributed to the decline, but added that it was not a major setback.

Magazine sellers have been under pressure from conservative religious groups to stop selling publications which such groups consider pornographic.