Australian-born lingerie brand Honey Birdette has hired 12 new staff and moved its Sydney headquarters over the last six months as part of a year-long rightsizing across the global business.
Chief executive officer Kim Kidd confirmed that seven of the new hires cover the brand’s digital space. The digital space is headed up by Emma Caldicott, who was recently promoted to chief brand and digital officer following a four-year stint as the brand’s digital and marketing director.
“Digital makes up 60 per cent of our business,” Kidd says. “So when you look at how many stores we’ve got - 55 stores globally - the thought that 60 per cent is just run from a tiny team just didn't make any sense.
“This is where all our priorities are. It's where our expansion lies.”
Other key hires for the digital area include Lian Turtle who is leading Honey Birdette’s public relations strategy, alongside five new retail level staff, such as client concierge. Kidd says the client concierge role was initially trialled in the United States, where the brand manages 11 stores.
Meanwhile, the head office location has been moved next door to its original HQ on York Street in Sydney, with Kidd confirming that the new space is double the size of the last one to accommodate the recent lift in staffing, as well as the launch of an in-house studio and a much larger design space.
All these new changes are part of the overarching plan to rightsize the lingerie business towards profitable growth after being heavy-handed on the sales lever for the last two years, which impacted sales.
According to Honey Birdette’s parent company PLBY Group, the brand’s sales were down 21 per cent (or US$3.8 million) in the second quarter of 2024. This was largely due to an approximately 50 per cent reduction in the number of days on sale, “as the company focuses on brand health and gross margin.”
Kidd believes the market is still shifting post-COVID, driving the brand to rethink its promotional strategy.
“For a long time post-COVID, people were waiting for sales, because everyone was in a very high inventory position,” she says. “They knew that we were going to go on sale. Everyone was going on sale.
“But how I shop as a consumer now is very different. I see it, I want it, I get it. And I think a lot of people are now moving back into that train of thought.”
Alongside pulling back on discounting, Kidd says the brand has been focusing on a scarcity tactic to drive full-price sales. This has led to a lot of product and range sellouts this year, including its Viper range and its glow-in-the-dark Valeria capsule - which was a first-to-market for the brand.
“We're seeing the consumer has been waiting for sales, but now she's switching on. She's like, ‘Oh, if I wait until sale, I might not get my size. I might not get this latest style.’ And that's what Honey Birdette was always about,” Kidd says. “It was about limited edition scarcity.
“If you don't get it today, you're not going to get it in the future. So we do weekly drops, and that's the whole thing.”
The final piece of Honey Birdette’s revamp has been implementing task forces in the United States and in Europe/United Kingdom. Honey Birdette’s US market makes up around 45 per cent of total revenue, followed by Australia at 43 per cent and Europe/UK at 12 per cent.
Kidd says the new task forces are an ongoing initiative.
“In Europe/UK, they were just not reaching their potential because there wasn't enough inventory - the complete opposite of most companies' problems,” she says. “We were just not servicing them up to their potential.
“So we've got a whole workforce for the EU. We're bringing in new influencers, new brand support over there. We're really giving them a lot more ranges in terms of sizes, what we can offer them, the weekly drops.”
As for the US market, Kidd says the future vision there is for a minimum of 20 stores, which could potentially rise to 40. This is being overseen by Laura Medina, a key hire Kidd made late last year to head up the national retail portfolio across America.
Medina is a former district manager for American Eagle and Victoria’s Secret.
Over the last year, the new US head of retail has been busy setting up a team under her in a bid to capitalise on a 25 per cent like-for-like sales boom across the US portfolio.
Kidd says all the conversations to secure new store locations are starting now, mostly because it takes so long to build and open a store in the US market compared to Australia.
“We could do a store build here [in Australia] in four weeks,” Kidd says. “For the US, it's anywhere between 12 weeks and 12 months, because of the permits, because of different licenses… our joinery is also handmade. It's very luxurious. There's just so many things that factor in.”
And then there is Australia. Kidd says the retail portfolio in the local market is at a good level after closing a single-digit amount of stores in the country over the last year.
She says the local team culture has also been shifted through new women’s initiatives such as offering free annual breast cancer checks for all staff as well as a 14-week paid parental leave package, plus four weeks of bonding leave.
“I think one of the big things that comes up with Honey Birdette time and time again is this toxic culture,” Kidd says. “I would say we've gone from this historic legacy of having a toxic culture, to actually being a really great place to work - the benefits, the way we put women first, it's just second to none.”
The culmination of these changes came after Kidd returned to Honey Birdette as CEO in May 2023 following a year-long hiatus. Kidd was originally CEO from November 2019 to July 2022.
“The whole thing about Honey Birdette is that we're customer-first,” Kidd says. “We lost so much of that when I was gone.
“It just became about the margins, about the numbers, and not about the heart of the business - which is always our customer.
“Honey Birdette for me was not a job. Honey Birdette has always been a passion, and that's why I came back.”
According to Kidd, she initially reached out to Ben Kohn, the CEO of PLBY Group, and told him that she helped sell Honey Birdette before and that it made sense for her to come back to help reframe the brand for a future sale.
At the time, the group was looking at strategic objectives for the lingerie brand amid divestments from its other retail assets throughout 2023.
In April 2023, the group sold its lingerie retail business Yandy for $3 million. In October of the same year, PLBY then offloaded its sexual wellness brand retailer Lovers.
According to Kidd, PLBY told her at the time that they didn’t need her to help sell Honey Birdette, but that she should come back to run the business.
“My focus is on redefining our company. Why does Honey Birdette exist? And what we've come down to is that it's all about being unapologetic.
“It's about owning who you are. It's about inclusivity. It's about making sure that people can be who they want to be in whatever setting, and that's what Honey Birdette stands for.
“We're a little bit naughty, but we completely own what we do, who we are.”
In early 2024, Kohn made clear that PLBY Group is intent on selling the Honey Birdette brand when the time is right.
The brand was recently listed as a “discontinued operation” in the third quarter of 2024, which means PLBY will exclude the brand’s financial and operational metrics in future trading updates as the group prepares to divest from the brand and focus on its sole Playboy business.