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Comment by ChildOfChaos | Hacker News Reader

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.

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