I think the leadership has done an amazing job. They made something out of nothing. Selling exercise bikes for 100's of percent of markups, and then charging the clowns that buy them a subscription fee.
> they chose to make their own performance bonuses a priority over long-term business survival, by recklessly expanding during Covid
There was never going to be long term survival. Peloton was the latest 'as seen on TV' level of product, and once their 15 minutes of fame burns out, the name will be sold off to license cheap products.
As a peloton owner, I strongly disagree. I have a peloton and went from not working out regularly, despite many attempts and gym memberships, to working out 4x a week (45 min or longer), going on 3 years now. I lost 15 lbs and in the best shape of my life. A $1,500 bike + $49/month subscription fee is a small price to pay for dramatically improved health and well being.
Bluntly, this sounds exactly like a "as seen on tv" testimonial. No one denies the product was compelling / successful. It's just that fitness products are an incredibly fad-ish market. Something else will come along and be the new bright shiny thing.
Your first statement is bizarrely dismissive and a little condescending. The posters experience was their own. The fact it is positive and made for tv commercials pay actors to pretend to have an experience akin to the posters doesn’t impeach the posters experience in any way. I’d note the fact they’ve been engaged with the product and maintained fitness for years makes it not sound fad-ish at all. Their experience maps to what I hear from peloton owners as well. The level of long term engagement in the product seems very high and has a high stickiness, which for fitness products is very rare - and frankly a very good thing for the human beings whose life is positively changed by it. That’s not something to dismiss, that’s something to cheer. Good for the poster. I wish him years of continued fitness.
On is peloton a fad - it’s definitely not going to be what they thought it was. That was a lockdown induced hallucination. But it seems like with a steadier hand in management it’s a long term viable enterprise. But it won’t be replacing Apple or something like they probably thought they would.
You can say what you want but from my vantage point there’s nothing “fad-ish” about the peloton. Do people buy it like the latest kitchen gizmo and then store it away and let it gather dust? Sure. But that’s not at all my experience.
Note, before the peloton I bought a Concept 2 rower. I used it routinely for a few months, then periodically, and then not at all. I still have it and going to try to use it again in conjunction with the peloton rowing classes now that they’re available in the app.
Fad has this very negative connotation but certain types of activities do rise in popularity, stay popular for a bit, and then decline a long way. Inline skating/rollerblading in the US is a great example.
It grew from nothing to be a super-popular recreational activity for a numbber of years, and now you rarely see someone on inline skates.
Right. No one is keeping you from putting on a pair and taking a skate on the bike path. And, once in a great while, you see someone doing just that. But there's probably no skate rental place on the bike path any longer, people don't organize group trips, and there are no mass urban Friday night skates.
I assume while frisbees are still around, they're also seemingly much less ubiquitous than they were.
Never seen it locally--not that I really have much in the way of public parks where I live. I was mostly referring to the fact that it seems you just see fewer people playing frisbee casually than you used to. (I did and I've never played frisbee golf in my life.)
In fairness, I'm not really sure frisbees are a fad. They've gone through peaks and valleys of popularity but they've generally stayed around in some form.
That may be, but I live in SoCal and I seldom come across disc golf parks, too, let alone anyone playing it. And I know someone who plays on a team, though he lives hundreds of miles away, in Santa Cruz, where I understand it's more popular.
The difference is, there was no SV startup unicorn with an insane valuation making roller blades. They were basic consumer products for like $20.
The executives made 100's of millions in profits off of a fad. They did an amazing job. Some of it's just dumb luck with the lockdowns, but either way, they made something out of nothing.
Maybe they would have been if they had been the big thing 20 years later. But I think their heyday probably also predated a lot of the X-sports stuff etc. so it was mostly a recreational activity that was popular with fairly ordinary people. Skates could easily be more like $100+. They're basically hockey skates after all. (Construction details are different but level of support is the same.) Individuals made something out of nothing in the space but they didn't make $100s of millions of dollars.
Was the pandemic a fad? Yes certain segments did grow wildly during the pandemic due to in person restrictions. That growth is certainly unsustainable. If it weren't for the corresponding stock price explosion and then costs explosion to attempt to grow even more, they would have a very profitable company. As far as fitness trends they do manage to hold on to a lot of subscribers.
I'm not sure how to put a natural event as a fad... but masking surely was. It was a way to project how much of a good citizen you are. Yes it had social benefits, but it also was a badge of honor during the fad times.
We bought one back in 2020 and I’d say it’s the single best purchase I have made in the last 10+ years. My wife and I use it or the app to work out almost every day and I’ll log 700+ hours this year which will be about 10% more than last year. 75% of which will be off bike in the other classes which you can pay a lower membership for.
Despite some really bad decisions by the management team on letting expenses get out of control, it’s an absolutely incredible product.
Let me offer a counterpoint: I got one as a gift, used it a few times, realized I like biking outside way more, and it was an easy way to get out of the house, and found that paying a subscription for something I can do, for free, is absolutely silly.
It only makes sense if you're a FinanceBro trapped in your mid-town NYC appt and can't get out, etc. There are bike clubs near me for big group rides -- that cost me $0 -- and my local gym offers spin classes when it rains.
I mean you could say the anti peloton (mirror lol?) shill bots are out hard based on your post. Just because lots of people find a system that works for them you have to tear it down and make fun of it?
The privilege of this is ridiculous. Not everyone has a safe place they can ride around outside for free at. I live in a big city in California and wouldn’t be caught dead riding outside from the terrible air quality to the horrible drivers that could kill me at seconds notice because the bike infrastructure around here is terrible. And if I wanted to get somewhere in the city where it’s better I need to pay for transit or drive, so not free.
I’m a software engineer who loves using it to get a workout in during my day that would otherwise require me as you say travel 15 min each way to closest gym, pay for a gym membership that’s way more than 44 bucks and includes a shitty spin bike that isn’t maintained well unless it’s in a class that I have follow their schedule for. Then head back home 15 min. Yessss so much easer then picking a class to start when I want to and not wasting 30 min driving.
It only makes sense if you're a FinanceBro trapped in your mid-town NYC appt and can't get out
This is a bit of a limited take, I'm an avid mountain biker and hit the trails 2-3 times a week. But I also want to exercise for fitness every day. Doing a ride on a bike is a 2-3 hour process and is fairly weather dependent. Doing a Peloton Ride is 45-60 minutes.
I do the Peloton "Power Zone" workouts they're great, I get slammed burn around 800 calories, maintain 230 Watts for that time and I don't "cheat" because of the power meter. It's a very different thing from an outdoor ride on road or trail. I'm a stronger rider on my bike because of these rides done on the Peloton. Heck most high-level road riders still do indoor rides for this reason - it's why things like the Wahoo Kickr and other trainers and spin setups exist for road bikes.
Finally there also a lot of people who because of their current physical condition or body image or a myriad of other reasons aren’t comfortable getting on a bike or working out in a group. A Peloton at home is a fantastic way for these people to start a fitness regimen.
Everyone's tackles fitness differently and it's odd to see anyone be so dismissive of something that is working for someone else.
I'm a self-admitted cardio addict. But stationary exercise equipment is something I find mind-numbingly boring. What is the peloton doing differently than others? Are the online classes really that motivating? Or is it something about the machine itself?
Two things can be true at the same time: Peloton is a great product that customers love, and the true value of the company is a fraction of what was imagined just a few years ago.
Or maybe because of a decisive amount of extra convenience a good, at-home setup provides to some.
Sure, we could all do fit without any trainers, groups, studios, videos or even any equipment – why maintain a bike when you can just run or walk quickly? – but for mysterious reasons, that's just not how all people and their motivation work.
(Sidenote, from what I gleaned lately, and while I would never use this reasoning to claim a Peloton is remotely cheap, it does not even seem laughably expensive next to bikes in a comparable percentile).
At the beginning of the pandemic (3 years ago) I took up running. I'm now running 3-4 times a week going on 3 years now. I was sold no perfect product but I was still able to pick it up and stick with it. Why? I personally think the pandemic was the perfect time to pick up a new habit and the enforced change in lifestyle lasted long enough that it stuck.
Some places are arguably worse for running due to smog (unless running with an N95). Biking indoors with clean air is a much better option during fire season.
Well, sure, in some areas it might be the case (I've actually been running with a N95 the last week due to forest fire smoke here in Edmonton), but that wasn't really my point and the potential for smog doesn't make Peleton (as opposed to another stationary bike or treadmill) more appealing.
This equates to ~$90/mo gym membership with a one-time registration cost around $100, for scale.
This is the going rate for most climbing/bouldering gyms with full freeweight sets, treadmills, spin bikes, showers, saunas, etc.
I personally value cross-training and weightlifting because those are the ways to see real long-term benefits to your health. Bone density, testosterone, flexibility, good posture, will all pay dividends down the line. You can get cardio any number of ways, including commuting and running groceries by bike.
As mentioned elsewhere, this was basically what I ran into. Total cost of ownership for the bike was on par with a nice gym, and the gym offers spin classes... on top of weights, rowing machines, steam rooms, etc.
Maybe that happened because it was so expensive? If you’d bought a $200 exercise bike that was functionally the same, would you have achieved the same thing?
I've owned the bike for 3 years and IMO Peloton's value is the class content, not the device. I've mentioned it before on HN and having tried many services over the years, I don't think anyone but Apple has even come close to providing the same kind of consistent value for general fitness instruction, and they had Peloton's product to draw from when they created it.
I don't think I'm alone in finding the task of designing workout plans challenging, and often demotivating. Obviously it's not the same as paying for coaching or personal training, but being able to open up the app and just have a workout ready to go is valuable to me. I understand some being miffed that the subscription cost is higher for those who own Peloton hardware, but the price point is still much lower than what I would be paying (and was paying) for local classes.
I don't know if this is valuable enough to sustain the business, but I hope it is.
"from not working out regularly... to working out 4x a week"
I understand where you are from, and there is definitely a segment of people whose access to gym is hindered by other factors (convenience, time spent on transportation etc) and Peloton is a better solution for them, but I doubt that is representative of the general Peloton users. And even for that segment, there are alternatives that work well enough -- just get a bike trainer, and there are so many options to choose from. (I don't see myself ever getting a Peloton when I already have a bike)
Not to mention that Peloton does not replace gym. For working out/losing weight etc sure, but you get a lot more different equipment and programs from a "real" gym.
It the "better integration" worth the premium of $1000+ and a subscription fee? To many people, including rich & athletic people, that is a firm no, which is why the company is failing.
Diet is more effective for losing weight than exercise, but exercise & general activity are going to keep you from having a lot of health issues in late middle age.
That is an infomercial script right there. Great that it worked for you, but most people don’t become health nuts after buying a Ronco or a bow flex. Plus, it’s actively unhelpful advice for the majority of people who could never afford such an expensive way to stay fit when it could be trivially replicated with a free Craigslist exercise bike and a phone playing YouTube.
I don’t think the peloton is at all equivalent to the ronco(?) or bow flex. It’s an integrated experience with hardware, classes/instructors, and an active community.
I've read some of the comments here and it sounds like people are being exceedingly unfair towards the position you presented. I'm not entirely sure why.
Personally, I think the cost of the bike + the subscription is untenable, but I understand how it could benefit people who want that experience.
I think there was no chance to survive at the scale they expanded to.
Not an owner, but I've used one.
Also - yes, the bike is expensive, but a comparable exercise bike is similar cost.
Yes there are cheaper exercise bikes, they are not as well built generally.
They actually lose money on the bikes but make it back on the subscription.
For city people living in HCOL areas, Peloton is a steal compared to gym membership/class rates if you like spinning.
Similar for some of the other workout-from-home services that expanded rapidly during COVID.
The problem is, the TAM for that is not 330M Americans / 1B people worldwide.
It's more like ~20M Americans / 50M worldwide, best case.
I think its one of those NYC/SF bubble creature mind traps that actually - gyms don't cost $350/mo everywhere.
My parents pay $99/year to use a gym and they share a membership, lol.
So for a small subset of people $40/mo from home is a steal. For a lot of people it looks like a luxury.
The COVID bump was always going to be temporary, but the genre in general makes some sense for WFH white collar people who don't want to get a HCOL area gym membership.
Comparing a Peloton to a gym is a bit of apples to oranges from a cost perspective.
A more apt comp is a Peloton compared to a Spinning Studio. Most Spinning studios (Soulcycle seems to be the most popular) charges not by membership but per class. Soulcycle is $30 per class - the biggest competitor (Cyclebar) I think gets down near to $20 per class depending on how many you buy. Compare that to Peloton's monthly fee and the fact that you can get the same workout at home and Peloton's monthly subscription is peanuts.
Some gym memberships also include spinning - Equinox is one but you get a limited line up of classes.
It is a price that would get you a basic home gym, and a gym membership. So not cheap at all. But that said it depends what you value and not needing to go to a gym if you are just cycling is valuable.
The key thing included in the Peloton price is a built in group of workout buddies and cheerleaders who keep you exercising. It's fascinating how many people don't get this - perhaps their marketing could have done a better job of communicating.
This really depends on where you live.
I think its a HCOL coastal city bubble product - if you live in an area where a nice clean gym is like $300/mo, then these home workout service for $40/mo is a steal.
If you can get a good gym membership in your area for ~$50/mo then I can see how the product is not cheap at all.
Many people have a home gym they don't use, in large part because it is boring. Groups and/or classes are often a good way to motivate people and the subscription provides that group. some people need to go to the gym, others find the online classes enough motivation.
Yeah most of the replies here don't know what they're talking about. A gym membership at the YMCA here is $92/month and the spin class my girlfriend takes is about in line with the pilates price. The $50/month Peloton subscription with the purchase of bike hits breakeven after about a year or so
I pay $17/mo for my local gym, they have weights, machines, and cardio equipment. I paid around $900 for my actual bike.
Exercise bikes have been overpriced for a long while, and Peloton moved that price point to the moon when they first came out. Around $2k depending on how early and what model you bought one. That's more than a riding lawn mower. You're trying to tell me that the material costs and complexity and warranty work on a Peloton costs more than a riding lawn mower? Come on.
I didn't say anything about the costs of the materials or anything like that regarding the Peloton and I surely didn't say anything about lawnmowers. $17/month is a steal but that is an outlier and likely doesn't have the same benefits to a person buying the Peloton would be looking for. Does your gym have on demand programs or live classes you can join and compete with friends and others? Probably not.
Pelotons now are about $1500 and the membership is $50 a month. After a calendar year, that's $2100 total spent. At the spin studio here (in a relatively LCOL area), the classes are $22 each with their best deal being unlimited rides at $195/month for a six month contract. Two of those contracts is $2,340 in a calendar year. After the first year, it's more cost effective to have a Peloton and the membership
Value is in the eye of the consumer for sure. It's true that all of this likely overpriced but that's the market
That's a great deal for sure and the only value it seems the Peloton would give you would be that you're able to do it from home vs having to go to the gym. That is quite a premium to pay for that luxury
The subscription is what gives a lot of people issues. The price is in line with other high-end exercise equipment (and, as you say, things like road bikes).
(I use my Concept 2 off and on. I've gotten pretty good value from it over the years but I'm not paying $49/mo for the periods when it's gathering dust.)
I have no doubt many people like their Peleton though and find the subscription a reasonable value. That said, the company was pretty much pre-ordained to crater post-pandemic relative to during unless you believe that a lot of gym going people were going to decide this gym thing is for the birds relative to my Peleton at home.
Yeah, someone else mentioned that. Couldn't see getting a subscription though. Apple does have rowing as part of Fitness+ but I've never tried that either.
Though at that price, a number of workouts are very limited. The step up is $24 which is still cheaper but I can see the company calculating that if someone has spent $1500 for a bike they'll spring for the full on-bike subscription as opposed to sticking an iPad somewhere.
In the case of rowing workouts, you only get like 4 a month with the lower subscription; I looked it up. My old rowing machine monitor wouldn't be compatible anyway; I'd have to upgrade and not really interested.
Yes. It’s an tablet on a bike connected to a VOD workout service. Apple was always just about to eat their lunch. The day they announced Fitness+ was probably the day everyone in the C-Suite started looking for the exit.
I don't know, I think there is a long term market in social exercise at home that they can tap into and keep going. However it isn't nearly as large as their current market. Enough to be profitable by having a few trained staff (people with actual exercise degrees using the latest research to run a good class as opposed to your typical gym personal trainer who doesn't have formal training in that) so that a class is starting every 15 minutes. (and some classes can be re-runs so long as they don't fall into the trap of stale content because it is all reruns).
However the above is enough to support a small company with about a dozen full-time staff who are doing well for themselves, and a few part time staff. That is one CEO who also does basic HR and a few other tasks, 2 IT support people, 6 personal trainers (some who always work nights/weekends), a few other staff because other functions are needed, and part time is seniors at the local college who are getting a relevant degree. Once in a while they will need to outsource design of a new bike as parts on the old model go obsolete, or some new software feature (every two years at most - partially so they still remember how to get this done). Nobody will get rich doing this, but all will have a nice middle class life. And of course all the venture capitalists who funded the wild ride up will be disappointed.
> they chose to make their own performance bonuses a priority over long-term business survival, by recklessly expanding during Covid
There was never going to be long term survival. Peloton was the latest 'as seen on TV' level of product, and once their 15 minutes of fame burns out, the name will be sold off to license cheap products.