Peloton got trapped in its trillion-dollar fantasy | Hacker News Reader

Peloton got trapped in its trillion-dollar fantasy

bloomberg.com

44 pointspseudolus35 comments

I bought a Concept 2 BikeErg <https://www.concept2.com/bikeerg/concept2-bikeerg> two years ago, and have really enjoyed it. It's solidly built, it accepts standard cycling components (I replaced the stock pedals for some clipless ones), and the damper-flywheel is smooth and somewhat realistic.

At $1k, it's both very expensive and much cheaper than a Peloton or NordicTrac bike. If you're looking for a home setup, I highly recommend it. It won't help you if you need classes or other social interactivity, but my exercise time is me time.

We bought the Concept2 SkiErg and Rower a while back specifically because they were used in gyms in the area and held up to daily abuse well. The quality is fantastic considering we paid about $800 each. Highly recommend the Concept2 equipment.

How do you like having both the rower and ski erg? I love my rower but on the fence about getting the skierg because not sure if I will use it enough.

My gym has all Concept 2 equipment and I really enjoy them. Simple to use, they feel really great, too.

Same here. And the rower was the right stuff in rowing clubs back in the 90s and still is today.

I guess there's a reason they're being used during World Rowing Indoor Championships: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/2020_Wor...

Concept 2 equipment is like a race car. If it feels great, you aren't going fast enough ;p

If you need classes or social interactivity, the BikeErg transmits your power output on the ANT+ and Bluetooth channels, which means you can connect to a wide range of connected bike training apps:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/03/cycling-indoor-trainer-a...

Peloton is just a walled garden.

I have a Schwinn IC4 (https://www.schwinnfitness.com/ic4/100873.html) which I bought used for around $400. It's a fantastic bike and I have zero complaints.

I have a ErgRower from Concept 2 as well, but I can't help but feel Concept 2 stuff is consistently overpriced.

Well of course, Peloton is an extremely niche product available to a rich few.

Trillion dollar company is a joke.

I am not surprised that it hit a post-COVID wall, but I don't think this is true at all.

If you finance it, it's not significantly more than a gym membership every month. It's crazy to say fitness is a niche product; I think everyone's parents have a treadmill or nordictrack collecting dust in the basement. People have been buying home fitness equipment for decades.

Does your gym membership give you access to only one exercise bike?

Peloton is price competitive with standalone (ie: not tacked onto a big-box gym membership) spin classes.

I don't think Peloton is worth a trillion dollars, but the market is serves is real.

Maybe I'm out of touch with what working-class people do for fitness, but my understanding is that standalone spin classes also mostly fall under the domain of "niche [service] available to a rich few." (Or at the very least, upper-middle class)

My 80,000 sq ft mega non-chain gym includes unlimited spin classes for $50/mo.

Can we stop with the indiscriminate "privilege" thing for anything that costs money?

With around 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, paying for things like spin class absolutely falls under the banner of privilege. Yeah, it's not a private jet, but paying to burn off the excess calories consumed over the month is surely at least a little bougie. Even more so if we're talking about a $1k exercise bike in a spare room.

It's real but limited. The endless need for growth is what's going to sink Peloton which should be a very profitable company with minimal growth. 2,000,000 paying customers with very low churn should be enough. But it's never enough. Grow until you die is the problem.

I agree. just bring profitable is the holy grail. compounding returns from profits is where growth comes from. this side that companies need to grow is evil propaganda spread by evil VCs

Be careful what you ask for. If companies need to be profitable to be considered successful, where will it end?

No, but my gym also doesn't do fun on-demand classes with well-known instructors that I can do with my friends.

Fitness is not a niche product, a smart exercise bike priced extremely highly is.

Unlimited Gym access is £20 a month. Pelaton is £40 a month for the most basic bike they do alone for the first 39 months and then £39 a month for the access to classes, how is this in anyway comparable or affordable for most people? Not taking into account the space needed, it's an extremely niche product and those that believe otherwise are clueless.

£79 versus £20 for the first three years and then after it's still almost double.

Some people even get Gym access at a discount or free with there work benefits, making even less of a worthwhile purchase.

“A rich few” maybe on a global scale. Out of people I know who have one, I think the person with the lowest-paying job is a bartender in the Midwest. It’s comparable to a nice home weightlifting rack. It’s half the price of a budget motorcycle.

I friend of mine just bought a 1600 dollar model, you can get a flagship cell phone for about the same amount.

it's more or less the same price range than e.g. buying a real road or mountainbike and regularly using it. While those are expensive I still wouldn't call them "rich people hobbies" in regions like northern america or western europe. I've been riding bikes for 20 years, and people with all ranges of income are sharing this hobby. Only for some it's a major expense that they are willing to work hard for, whereas for others it might just be a minor one.

https://archive.ph/Ido3K

They were just the next Go Pro. A craze that eventually runs out of steam.

The older Go Pro actually works pretty well if you don't own a phone. People love the pictures I take with mine while I'm out sailing.

They're also a great inexpensive way to get pretty good quality video with a wide lens for video game streaming.

https://youtu.be/WOtaiMCAArU

Being the next Go Pro seems like a good goal for a company. Their stock crashed when it became clear that they weren't going to sustain crazy exponential growth indefinitely, but they didn't overinvest in trying to sustain their growth rate and have spent the last five years operating at a comfortable profit while still growing a bit.

It tapped a newish market and invested in a self-bubble. The market will stick around. Time for commoditization.

Commoditization in this case would mean unbundling of hardware and service and that very much exists already, and is far from stealing Peloton's lunch. There's Zwift (an investment fantasy story for another time, as wild as Peloton's but with slightly less digits) and about half a dozen "baby zwifts" that might even be profitable or at least close but suffer hard from being outside of the brand lock-in of the big players.

I must be one of the few who didn't know what peloton was really, heard it said once in a while but just thought it was nothing but a type of bike. apparently I am not their target demographic

When you can sell all you can make you're supposed to be in an acceptable position.

When you can sell way way more than you can make it's not supposed to become unfavorable.

The Larry Page toothbrush principle seems applicable here.

From https://medium.com/behavior-design/the-toothbrush-trick-used...:

> Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet (the company formerly known as Google), has a quirky way of deciding which companies he likes. It’s called “The Toothbrush Test.” According to the New York Times, when Page looks at a potential company to acquire, he wants to know if the product is, like a toothbrush, “something you will use once or twice a day.”

Drinking the Kool Aid. Very common.

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