Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine

It was 1953 when Hugh Hefner founded Playboy magazine and created a brand that would become a symbol of the sexual revolution.He became the first red-light business man.

His story begins in 1953, and is that of an employee like many left without a job. He was then 27 years old and had little financial resources.

After studying in an art institute, where he had directed a student magazine, he had been hired as a copywriter for Esquire magazine. There he realized that there was a market niche still unexplored in men of medium-high target who, like him, had the desire to get rid of the Puritan education received in the family.

Playboy's strength was all there, in the desire to enjoy life and to offer men "aged 18 to 80" what they could not have had during the war.

Within 5 years, Playboy reached the target of 1 million copies per month sold. A spread that in 1972 had risen to over 7 million. The boom owed a lot to the novelty of Hefner's editorial product, it was unique: it combined sexy images with articles ranging from the pacifist Martin Luther King to Fidel Castro from the Beatles to the President of the USA Jimmy Carter.

In the 1960s, the "Hef" adventure was just beginning. The earnings from print media were used as a basis to create a 360 ° business. First of all with the purchase of the Mansion, a fabulous villa where a spicy party with dozens of girls was organized every evening.

The Mansion was an investment with the aim of representing the model of life for the readers of the magazine, a kind of harem in which the publisher lived in silk pajamas, surrounded by "bunnies". The Playboy Club, a book publishing house, a limousine service, a modeling agency, a record label and a film and television production company joined the Mansion. A full-blown empire, which was listed on the Stock Exchange in 1971. With the advent of the internet, it encountered difficulties, but Hefner's empire remained standing. Playbooy is still one of the most popular periodicals, with 3 million copies sold every month.