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Peloton, a US company founded in 2012 and listed on the stock exchange since 2019, does two things together. The first is to produce and sell stationary bikes and treadmills that cost thousands of dollars. The second is to offer remote fitness courses via subscription, to be streamed: with – but also without – its exercise bikes and treadmills. After having had great success during the pandemic, Peloton (which is not yet present in Italy) could continue to grow, and according to some become a so-called media company. A company that produces and makes available content, and which in the intentions of its founder John Foley could become “similar to Netflix”. In some ways, however, it already is.
Born in 1971, Foley founded Peloton in his early forties, after studying engineering and then business administration. After having been CEO of Evite (known for a site through which to send and manage various types of invitations) and after having led the section dedicated to online sales of Barnes & Noble, a large US chain of bookstores. “Peloton” is a word of French origin, used in cycling jargon, not just French, to indicate the more or less compact group of runners in a road race, pedaling close together for aerodynamic comfort.
In his early years he devoted himself to equipment: first to exercise bikes and then to treadmills, always with top-of-the-range products and very sophisticated design, with large screens and a lot of effective technology.
Yeah in 2018, Foley said he was inspired by Apple and Tesla and “other software and hardware platforms that are vertically integrated, reach the consumer directly and are revolutionizing their respective markets.” According to him, before Peloton, exercise bikes and treadmills were part of 'a category that was very sleepy, and didn't know how to evolve. Sometimes it still happens to see in front of you screens with dots that fill up as you approach the end. It is an interface that has existed since 1979. ”
Already in the early years of Peloton, Foley spoke of his company with considerable ambition. For example, he said that Peloton did not sell bicycles, but happiness. Or that in his plans the treadmills had to be «portals of experiences».
Someone made fun of Foley for his statements, actually quite common among companies of this type and of these years. In the meantime, however, the company was growing: in a few years it increased its range of products and above all it dedicated itself to the paid app to take courses, both with its machinery and free body. Within a few years, Peloton has made its way to the UK, Canada, Germany and now Australia.
In September 2019 Peloton went public, just months before a pandemic began. it has made sales, subscriptions and shares grow rapidly and rapidly. A few months ago, analyst Michelle Segar told the Financial Times: “Even before the pandemic Peloton was doing pretty well, but after the pandemic it just exploded.” The reason is clear: the company offered the possibility to keep fit from home and, at the same time, to have contact and comparison with other people: the instructors of the courses but also the other Peloton users. “It is difficult,” wrote the Financial Times, “to write a more favorable script for the success of a company like Peloton.”
In recent years, especially during the pandemic, many Peloton instructors (often almost unknown until recently) have become very famous and some of them – such as Robin Arzón, Alex Toussaint or Cody Rigsby – are today influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers, and in their own way celebrities.
In recent months Peloton has had problems related to the recall of some of its products (with significant costs and consequent loss of value of its shares), but plans for its expansion continue. Peloton is completing a series of acquisitions of companies and startups of various types, from those that produce gym equipment to those that deal with technological devices to wear, passing through others that deal with artificial intelligence or algorithms to customize training. and fitness.
On the one hand, it is obvious and logical that Peloton wants to develop the technology of its products and services and improve what can already be done with the HD screens of its equipment, which exceed 20 inches (in some cases even 30) and offer various possibilities for interaction with other Peloton users.
On the other – the most important – Peloton is trying to become an increasingly influential media company: a content and entertainment company, a company that according to the Hollywood Reporter is increasingly becoming Hollywood. In the words of Jennifer Cotter, content director of Peloton, a kind of “Netflix of wellness”, as the set of practices to get better, both physical and mental, is called in a somewhat pretentious way.
Through its subscriptions, the simplest of which costs $ 12.99 per month, Peloton aims to offer more and more courses, in increasingly varied activities and in increasingly disparate ways. To create what a former employee interviewed by the Hollywood Reporter called “mini shows increasingly linked to the image of the instructor who makes them.”
Already now, the Hollywood Reporter wrote , Peloton is “a global content brand”, which pays great attention to the “script of its courses”, the “astute promotion of its instructors” and many and increasingly important deals with entertainment companies. “In many ways, Peloton acts like an old film studio, because it transforms its instructors into stars, but not before having tied them to itself with multi-year contracts, and because it produces all its contents by itself, also controlling its distribution”.
Already now Peloton produces and makes available dozens of new lessons every day, with a care that is difficult to find in other similar services. These lectures, the Hollywood Reporter wrote, “are rigidly produced by a group that, according to the company, is made up of people who have won 19 Emmys in all. “. When Arzón, one of the instructors, became pregnant, the announcement was studied in detail, to let those in charge know when and how she would communicate it during one of her lessons, some of which were followed simultaneously by over 20 thousand people.
And already now Peloton produces contents for Instagram or YouTube that are not lessons and that have little to do with fitness and wellness, with pedaling, running, walking, doing yoga, stretching, aerobics or meditating. Arzón, for example, dedicated one to the story of her pregnancy.
Peloton's courses are also becoming more and more sought after. For example, there are some with a musical theme, in which you train by listening to music by a certain artist: which assumes that Peloton makes specific agreements, as he did with Beyoncé, or that he secures the rights, as he did with the Beatles. .
Peloton's future growth will certainly shift from better tools and better apps with more services and features (for example one that, along the lines of Strava, allows you to track your sports activities and performance to 'open, comparing them with those of other users).
But also and above all from the creation of an increasingly felt sense of community to what a few months ago an article by Elle called the “Peloverse” , the digital universe of Peloton, of which he wrote: «it is an integral part of the company's identity, a lifeline for many, the secret ingredient that separates Peloton from the competition». Jenna Jacobson, professor of retail management said: “Peloton has really entered into certain individual lifestyles.” However, they become collective thanks to technology: “you'll never ride alone” was Peloton's motto back in 2013.
To support this sequel – that a some, in some cases, almost resembles a cult – Peloton is also thinking of organizing (now that it can, and after users had already organized them themselves in the past) events, festivals and non-digital moments of aggregation.
Meanwhile, Peloton has grown to have about 3 thousand employees, almost 100 “showrooms” in the countries where it is present (they are used to try out its products, rather than sell them directly) and in 2020 it had revenue of about 1.8 billion dollars, and for most of the year problems related to too many orders that he could not keep up with (now he talks about shipments usually within two weeks).
Peloton currently has a capitalization of over $ 30 billion and over three million subscribers. Among them are Justin Bieber, Beyoncé, Shonda Rhimes and even Joe Biden, owner of a stationary bike of the company. In explaining to its readers what that exercise bike was before Biden moved to the White House, the New York Times wrote: “for the uninitiated, it's partly an exercise bike and partly a social media”.
