Yandy.com Parent Playboy Going Public

Yandy.com’s parent, Playboy Enterprises, announced today a deal that will return the famous brand to the public market, trading on the Nasdaq.

Playboy signed an agreement to merge with Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition corporation, according to a statement. Already in place are “definitive purchase agreements with institutional and accredited investors for the purchase of $50 million of common stock at $10 per share. Upon closing of the transaction, Mountain Crest will be renamed and is expected to remain listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under ticker PLBY.” and will be led by Ben Kohn, Playboy’s CEO.

Back in February, Playboy confirmed that it had recently acquired Phoenix-based Yandy.com, the online intimates and sexy costume retailer. Unconfirmed reports of the Yandy deal had been circulating for weeks. At the time it said “Yandy has a strong, established, profitable business and an experienced team that is responsible for fulfilling more than 50,000 monthly orders of intimates, sleepwear and accessories to a primarily female, U.S.-based audience.”

Founded in 2007 by Chad Horstman and Evan Horstman, Yandy.com grew to substantial size, probably peaking about seven or eight years later. The privately held firm did not release exact sales numbers back then, but a company press release in April, 2016 claimed it had sold “roughly 2.8 million pieces of intimate apparel totaling over $75 million in the last two years alone.” And a Forbes magazine estimate in October 2015 put annual sales for that year at $50 million.

Today’s press release claimed “Playboy is one of the largest and most recognizable lifestyle brands in the world, with more than $3B in global consumer spend against the brand across 180 countries.”­— NM