Peloton is adding a line of rowing machines to its lineup as the company works through a restructuring to expand its customer base and return to a profit.
The fitness machine maker said on Tuesday it’s launching Peloton Row, which starts at $3,195 and is now available for pre-order on its website. Deliveries are expected to begin in December.
The rowing machine, which also requires a $44-a-month membership to Peloton’s exercise classes and programs, joins the lineup of Peloton Bike, Peloton Bike+, Peloton Guide and Peloton Tread.
Peloton Row, which had reportedly been in the works for some time, comes as the company has been working through a restructuring in recent months.
Last month, the company reported widening losses and declining sales for its fiscal fourth quarter, marking its sixth consecutive quarter of losses. Peloton had said it aims to reach break-even cash flow on a quarterly basis in the second half of fiscal 2023.
The company had also announced it partnered up with Amazon to begin selling its products on the behemoth ecommerce retailer, a move that could help Peloton broaden its customer base. The partnership is Peloton’s first foray outside of its core direct-to-consumer business.
Peloton has also been shaking up its leadership. A week ago, the company announced co-founder and former CEO John Foley, co-founder and Chief Legal Officer Hisao Kushi, and Chief Commercial Officer Kevin Cornils, would be leaving the company as part of its transformation.
Foley had served as Peloton’s CEO for about 10 years before he stepped down in February.
Physical activity is important for health, and you’re probably sick of hearing that we should all be doing at least 150 minutes per week of “moderate” exercise like walking, or 75 minutes of “vigorous” exercise like running. But there are more ways to stay active than just these, and you may be doing some of them already.
The physical activity guidelines for Americans define moderate intensity activity as anything that registers between 3.0 and just under 6.0 METs, or metabolic equivalents. A single MET is defined as the amount of energy you burn just by existing, somewhere in the range of a calorie per minute. (This will, of course, vary from person to person based on your body size, age, and more.) So if a brisk walk gets you burning four times as much energy as you expend while lying in bed, we would say that counts as 4 METs and is solidly in the “moderate” category.
Here’s the cool thing: Lots of things register between 3 and 6 METs. Teams of scientists have tested the energy burn of different activities in the lab, and produced charts of their MET measurements. These include household tasks like some types of cleaning, as well as activities that you may not think of as exercise, like playing golf or working a job that has you on your feet all day. Here are some of the things that register in the “moderate” range:
Activities between 3 and 4 METs:
Slower tempo ballroom dances, like waltz, foxtrot, slow dancing, samba, tango, 19th century dance, mambo, and cha cha.
Fishing
Walking and carrying a small child who weighs 15 lbs. or more
Hammering nails
Plumbing tasks
Playing guitar in a rock and roll band (standing up)
Working as a bartender, store clerk, librarian, or other jobs that have you standing or walking
Bowling
Playing frisbee
Sailing, including windsurfing and ice sailing
Making beds
Working on a car
Caribbean dances, including Abakua, Beguine, Bellair, Bongo, Brukin’s, Caribbean Quadrills, Dinki Mini, Gere, Gumbay, Ibo, Jonkonnu, Kumina, Oreisha, and Jambu
Washing cars, washing windows, or cleaning the garage
In general, most jobs or tasks that have you on your feet clock around 3 METs. Want a step up? The following are 4 METs or more:
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Doing laundry where you’re washing clothes by hand and hanging them up
Elder care, including bathing, dressing, or moving the person into and out of bed
Housekeeping work, like cleaning bathrooms and pushing a cart of cleaning supplies around
Coaching football, soccer, basketball, baseball, swimming, etc.
Pushing or pulling a stroller or walking with children
Planting things in the garden
Taking care of horses by feeding and watering them, and cleaning stalls
Dances like Greek and Middle Eastern folk dances, hula, salsa, merengue, bamba y plena, flamenco, belly, and swing
Mowing the lawn with a power mower
Doubles tennis
Recreational swimming, like a leisurely backstroke
Farm and yard tasks show up a lot in this range, alongside exercises like power yoga and using a rowing machine on one of the lighter settings. Next up, things that register 5 METs or more:
Ballet, modern, or jazz dance
Cleaning gutters
Painting the outside of your house
Skateboarding
Using crutches
Spiritual dancing in church
Shoveling snow at a “moderate effort” (“shoveling snow, general” is in a higher category)
Hiking or walking through fields and hillsides
Fast ballroom dancing
Hitting a punching bag
Ice skating at 9 mph or less
Rodeo sports
Moving furniture and carrying boxes
The 5-and-up category also includes boot camp classes, Army-style obstacle courses, heavy squatting, and lap swimming. Anything that’s harder work than what’s listed here is likely to be in the 6 METs-and-up category, which starts with basketball, cheerleading, and driving a drag race car, and goes up from there.
John Foley, co-founder and chief executive officer of Peloton Interactive Inc., stands for a photograph during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) in front of the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Roughly two months after Peloton’s IPO, founder John Foley appeared on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” where he touted the “predictability of the revenue” of the connected fitness company.
“We know how to grow and stick the landings on what we tell the Street, what we tell our board and our investors [about] how we’re going to grow,” Foley said in that Nov. 5, 2019 interview.
That’s a very different tone from what Foley said on the company’s second-quarter fiscal 2022 conference call on Feb. 8, where he acknowledged that the company had “made missteps along the way,” that it was “holding ourselves accountable,” and he was going to “own” that — which included his departure as CEO, several executive and board changes, and a wide range of cost-saving measures, including cutting roughly 20% of its corporate workforce.
Peloton, a two-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company, had been led by Foley since it was founded in 2012, and his fellow founders Tom Cortese, Yony Feng, and Hisao Kushi have remained as senior executives. The other co-founder, Graham Stanton, left in March 2020 but has stayed on as an advisor, per his LinkedIn.
Peloton’s bumpy road that has seen its stock price drop more than 73% over the last year has raised the question of how long a founder-CEO like Foley should hang on post-IPO, especially if that journey starts to look more like a HIIT and hills ride than an easy one.
The track record is very varied. On one side, you have a founder like Jeff Bezos who stayed on as CEO for more than 20 years after Amazon’s IPO with massive growth along the way. Of course, there’s Steve Jobs, who ended up leaving Apple amid board tensions after he hired “professional CEO” John Sculley, only to ultimately return to oversee one of the most remarkable business turnarounds in market history. On the other side, you have Groupon founder Andrew Mason, who was fired as CEO in 2013, roughly 18 months after the company went public, following a series of Wall Street misses, a declining stock price and very-public mishaps.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at Yale School of Management, said that 20 to 30 years ago, the trend from many venture capitalists would be to push out founding management at a critical change in the life stage of a company, “then the quote-unquote ‘professional management’ came in,” he said.
That’s happening less now, and Sonnenfeld said that some of that is for good reasons, like having a more experienced leadership group in place that has experience leading companies through various lifecycles. Foley did, with Barnes & Noble and other start-ups. But there are bad reasons, such as “founder shares that secure your leader-for-life status in the empire,” he said. In the case of Peloton, where Foley will remain chairman, he and other company insiders still control about 60% of the company’s voting stock.
Peloton did respond to a request for comment by press time.
When is it time for a founder to step aside?
More founders, especially in tech, are replacing themselves. Manish Sood, who founded cloud data management company Reltio, wrote in a 2020 CNBC op-ed that the reason he replaced himself as CEO after nearly a decade in charge is that he “recognized that to sustain predictable hyper-growth requires a special set of skills, and Reltio would require a CEO with experience leading public companies.”
“Preparing for growth takes courage at all phases,” Sood wrote. “In the beginning, entrepreneurs often risk everything to start companies because they believe in a new or different vision. They often face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. It takes a great deal of insight to recognize when an emerging growth company needs to pivot or change direction as it grows.”
Jack Dorsey shared a similar sentiment when he suddenly stepped down as Twitter CEO in November.
“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led.’ Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure…I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction,” Dorsey wrote in a memo to Twitter employees.
There have been some efforts to try to figure out exactly what that founder-CEO shelf life is. A recent Harvard Business Review study of the financial performance of more than 2,000 publicly traded companies found that on average, founder-led companies outperform those with non-founder CEOs.
However, that difference essentially drops to zero three years after the company’s IPO, and at that point, the founder-CEOs “actually start detracting from firm value.”
“Our data shows that the presence of a founder-CEO increases firm value before and during IPO, suggesting that a founder-friendly approach actually makes a lot of sense for VCs, who typically invest while companies are still in their earlier stages and cash out shortly after they IPO,” the authors wrote. “However, given our finding that on average, post-IPO performance is lower for firms with founder-CEOs, investors looking to get in after a company has already gone public would be wise to take a less founder-friendly approach — and investors, board members, and executive teams alike will benefit from proactively encouraging founder-CEOs to move on before they reach their expiration dates.”
It’s unclear what the future holds for Peloton and if it can regain the momentum that saw it disrupt the fitness industry.
The company’s new CEO, Barry McCarthy, cited his experience working with two “visionary founders” in Reed Hastings and Daniel Ek at Netflix and Spotify, respectively, in his first email to Peloton staff, which was obtained by CNBC, saying that he is “now partnering with John [Foley] to create the same kind of magic.”
“Finding product/market fit is incredibly hard to do. It’s extremely rare. And I believe we have it,” McCarthy wrote. “The challenge for us now is to figure out the rest of the business model so that we can win in the marketplace and on Wall Street.”
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Peloton plans to replace CEO John Foley and cut 2,800 jobs as it hopes to restructure its business amid waning demand, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Barry McCarthy, the former chief financial officer of Spotify and Netflix, will become CEO and president and join Peloton’s board, the report said.
The job cuts are expected to impact about 20% of Peloton’s corporate positions, but won’t affect Peloton’s instructor roster or content, according to the Journal. The company employed 6,743 people in the United States as of June 30, more than double the roughly 3,281 employees it counted a year earlier, according to annual filings.
A Peloton spokesperson did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Peloton shares were falling more than 4% in premarket trading on Tuesday, having closed Monday up nearly 21%. As of Monday, the stock is down about 31% year to date.
The news of Foley stepping down comes ahead of Peloton’s fiscal second-quarter results, which are scheduled to be reported after the market closes on Tuesday. In January, Peloton reported preliminary quarterly revenue and subscriber figures, but it has yet to address its full-year outlook, which analysts and investors expect will be lowered.
Peloton told the Journal it expects to cut roughly $800 million in annual costs and reduce capital expenditures by roughly $150 million this year.
The company also said in the report that it plans to wind down the development of its Peloton Output Park, the $400 million factory that it was building in Ohio. It said it will reduce its delivery teams and the amount of warehouse space it owns and operates.
William Lynch, Peloton’s president, is also expected to step down from his executive role but remain on the board, Foley said in an interview with the Journal.
Erik Blachford, a director since 2015, is expected to leave the board. And two new directors will be added, the Journal said: Angel Mendez, who runs a private artificial intelligence company focused on supply chain management, and Jonathan Mildenhall, former chief marketing officer of Airbnb.
Roughly a week ago, activist Blackwells Capital — which has a less than 5% stake in the company — sent a letter to Peloton’s board urging Foley to quit his role as CEO, and asking the company to consider selling itself.
Reports have since circulated that potential suitors could include Amazon or Nike. However, Foley along with other Peloton insiders had a combined voting control of roughly 80% as of Sept. 30, which would make it practically impossible for any deal to go through without their approval.
Foley, 51, founded Peloton in 2012. He previously served as the president at Barnes & Noble.
Lynch, a former Barnes & Noble CEO, was brought on by Foley in 2017 to help drive growth.
The duo helped lead Peloton through its highs during the Covid pandemic, when the company saw consumer demand massively pulled forward. Consumers were looking to exercise without going to the gym. But to meet the surge in demand, Foley over invested and Peloton was left with a bloated cost structure that must now restructure in order for the business to survive.
Peloton’s market value had surged to roughly $50 billion about a year ago, but was recently hovering around just $8 billion, before news over takeover talks started circulating.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
Peloton Interactive Inc. stationary bicycles sit on display at the company’s showroom on Madison Avenue in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019.
Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Warning: This article includes some spoilers for the Season 6 premiere of “Billions.”
The hits just keep coming for Peloton.
Capping off a turbulent week for the connected fitness company, which entailed shares plummeting as Peloton said it is considering layoffs and planning to “right-size” production levels as demand for its equipment wanes, another television character appeared in a popular TV show having a heart attack after riding a Peloton Bike.
This comes about a month after a main character on HBO’s “Sex and the City” sequel series died from a heart attack after taking a Peloton cycling class.
In the Season 6 premiere of the Showtime drama “Billions,” main character Mike Wagner suffers a heart attack while riding a Peloton Bike. He recovers shortly thereafter, however, and says later in the episode, “I’m not going out like Mr. Big,” referring to the “Sex and the City” Peloton appearance. (This episode had an early release on Friday, ahead of its scheduled on-air premiere Sunday evening.)
According to The New York Times, the scene in “Billions” was written and shot months before Mr. Big’s “And Just Like That…” scene. The line referencing Mr. Big was added recently in post-production, the report said.
A spokesperson for the show did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Peloton said in a statement on its Twitter account that it did not give “Billions” permission to use its brand on the show.
Peloton’s head of global marketing and communications, Dara Treseder, also said on Twitter: “We did not provide Billions with any equipment. As referenced by the show itself, there are strong benefits of cardio-vascular exercise. Exercise helps millions of real people lead long, happy lives.”
After Peloton’s cameo in “Sex and the City” started going viral online, shares of the company tumbled. Peloton quickly fired back with its own parody ad, starring Mr. Big actor Chris Noth, in which he ended up living and touted the benefits of cardio exercise.
But the rebuttal backfired when sexual assault allegations against Noth surfaced, and Peloton pulled its video from all social media accounts. (Noth denied that he assaulted the two women, saying the “encounters were consensual.”)
Earlier in the week, Peloton pre-announced its fiscal second-quarter financial results after CNBC reported the company planned to temporarily halt production levels of its bikes and treadmill machines, on a staggered timeline, in order to reset inventory levels. CEO John Foley later said in a memo to workers that it wasn’t true that Peloton would be “halting all production.”
The company said revenue for the three-month period ended Dec. 31 will be within its previously forecast range but that it added fewer subscribers than it had expected.
“As we discussed last quarter, we are taking significant corrective actions to improve our profitability outlook and optimize our costs across the company,” Foley said in a statement. “This includes gross margin improvements, moving to a more variable cost structure, and identifying reductions in our operating expenses as we build a more focused Peloton moving forward.”
After rallying more than 440% in 2020, Peloton shares tumbled 76% in 2021.
Last week, the stock fell back below its IPO price of $29. It closed Friday at $27.06, giving the company a market cap of $8.8 billion.
To exercise with Covid or not—that’s the question some fitness buffs are asking. The American College of Sports Medicine has suggested people under 50 who experience mild or no symptoms to rest for at least seven to 10 days after testing positive. Their recommendation appears to be motivated by the concern that even a mild Covid-19 infection may damage the heart and potentially cause sudden death during physical exertion.
There’s little evidence to support this recommendation. Because exercise boosts the immune system, it may even help people bounce back faster from Covid.
Viral infections, including those that cause the flu and the common cold, are a major cause of myocarditis, the inflammation of the heart muscle. The condition can cause chest pain and irregular heartbeat, though it is often asymptomatic. This makes its prevalence hard to measure. According to some estimates, 1% to 5% of all people with acute viral infections may develop myocarditis.
Yet sudden death from myocarditis during physical activity appears to be rare. A study from 1980 to 2006 documented 41 sudden deaths in young athletes (under 40) linked to myocarditis—one-tenth as many as from blunt trauma.
Some experts feared Covid-19 would increase cardiac risk in otherwise young and healthy people. A study early in the pandemic from Germany reported signs of myocarditis in 60% of Covid-19 patients, including some with relatively mild illness. But criticisms of the study’s design and data errors prompted more investigation, and recent studies have been mostly reassuring.
In one study, cardiac tests were performed on 789 professional athletes (soccer, baseball, basketball, football and hockey) with prior infections, most of whom had mild or no Covid symptoms. Only five (0.6%) had inflammation on cardiac imaging—in line with estimates for other viral infections—and all of them had symptoms that the researchers said “exceeded empirical definitions of mild COVID-19 illness” such as cough, fatigue or loss of taste.
In another study, only 0.7% of 3,018 college athletes who tested positive for Covid had abnormal cardiac test results that researchers believed were definitely, probably or possibly linked to the virus. (Extremely fit athletes are known to have “remodeled” hearts that can cause abnormal findings on cardiac tests. That makes it hard for cardiologists to tell if the abnormalities result from the virus.)
A third study, involving 3,597 college athletes who had tested positive with symptoms ranging from none to chest pain and shortness of breadth, found that only 1.2% experienced symptoms that persisted for more than three weeks. Only 4% experienced heart- or lung-related symptoms when they returned to exercise. Yet the vast majority of those who underwent more testing didn’t show evidence of cardiac damage from Covid-19, and it’s normal to experience fatigue or shortness of breath when returning to exercise after a flulike illness.
Studies on young competitive athletes are easier to perform than on the general population, and they may not be 100% applicable to recreational athletes. Still, they show that otherwise healthy and fit people who catch Covid are unlikely to suffer cardiac complications.
A recent study of U.K. healthcare workers found those who had mild or no Covid symptoms were no more likely to have cardiac abnormalities on tests six months after infection than those who hadn’t been infected. “This study demonstrates that in healthy people, measured cardiovascular abnormalities are common, but no more common in those who had had mild SARS-CoV-2 6 months previously compared with those who had not,” the researchers found.
The seven- to 10-day rest recommendation appears to be as arbitrary as the six-foot social distancing from early in the pandemic. Most people who don’t know they have Covid won’t follow it anyway.
“There is very little good quality data on exercise resumption post-Covid,”
Gabriel Vorobiof,
a cardiologist at UCLA, says in an email. “At one point there was a big controversy when a few cardiac MRI papers showed some potentially concerning cardiac findings post-Covid.” But since the studies didn’t include a control group for comparison—such as athletes or young people without Covid who get an MRI—he says the “findings were later dismissed as associations, not necessarily causative links.”
He adds: “I’ve seen quite a few young athletes requiring ‘cardiac clearance’ by their sporting club after having uncomplicated Covid prior to re-engaging in their respective sports, many of which were noncompetitive. The need to clear a young person following an asymptomatic viral illness, like many things during this pandemic, seems to be an overreaction based on little if any science.”
Doctors generally advise people with head colds that they may exercise, but should listen to their bodies. This seems like sensible advice for otherwise healthy people with mild Covid. “However, if symptoms of chest pain or discomfort, lightheadedness or palpitations arise, one should stop and seek medical attention,” Dr. Vorobiof says.
Exercise has been found to protect people from other viral infections, including flu, herpes, Epstein-Barr and the common cold, and improve the immune response to vaccinations. Each workout mobilizes billions of immune cells, especially the T-cells that circulate, identify and kill virus-infected cells. Exercise also reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which impairs white blood cells and increases inflammation.
As people learn to live with Covid, there’s no reason they shouldn’t work out with it too.
Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
Wonder Land: The weaponization of ‘science’ began with climate policy and accelerated with Covid-19. Now many think it’s all misinformation. Images: AFP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly
Peloton is temporarily halting production of its connected fitness products as consumer demand wanes and the company looks to control costs, according to internal documents obtained by CNBC.
Peloton plans to pause Bike production for two months, from February to March, the documents show. It already halted production of its more expensive Bike+ in December and will do so until June. It won’t manufacture its Tread treadmill machine for six weeks, beginning next month. And it doesn’t anticipate producing any Tread+ machines in fiscal 2022, according to the documents. Peloton had previously halted Tread+ production after a safety recall last year.
The company said in a confidential presentation dated Jan. 10 that demand for its connected fitness equipment has faced a “significant reduction” around the world due to shoppers’ price sensitivity and amplified competitor activity.
Peloton has essentially guessed wrong about how many people would be buying its products, after so much demand was pulled forward during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s now left with thousands of cycles and treadmills sitting in warehouses or on cargo ships, and it needs to reset its inventory levels.
The planned production halt comes as close to $40 billion has been shaved off of Peloton’s market cap over the past year. Its market value hit a high of nearly $50 billion last January. But on Tuesday its shares tumbled to a 52-week low of $29.11 — nearly falling below the $29 mark, where it priced its initial public offering in September 2019.
Peloton’s shares fell more than 20% on the news, bringing the stock’s market value below $8 billion and hitting a 52-week low of $24.02, before trading was halted.
The company’s presentation shows Peloton had initially set expectations on Oct. 31 for demand and deliveries in its fiscal third quarter and fourth quarter that ended up being far too high. It reevaluated those forecasts on Dec. 14, according to the presentation, and Peloton’s expectations dropped significantly for its Bike, Bike+ and Tread.
However, Peloton said, the latest forecast doesn’t take into account any impact to demand the company might see when it begins to charge customers an extra $250 in delivery and setup fees for its Bike, and another $350 for its Tread, beginning at the end of this month.
Peloton also said it has seen low email capture rates for the upcoming debut of its $495 strength training product, Peloton Guide, which is codenamed “Project Tiger” in internal documents viewed by CNBC. Email capture rates keep track of the number of people who enter their email addresses on Peloton’s website to receive information on the product. The company said this is a signal of “a more challenging post-Covid demand environment.”
The official launch of Guide in the U.S. was pushed from last October to next month and now could come as late as April, the presentation dated earlier this month said. The company also said it initially planned to charge $595 for the bundle that includes one of Peloton’s heart rate arm bands and later dropped the price by $100.
A Peloton spokesperson declined to comment.
The company is scheduled to report its fiscal second-quarter results on Feb. 8 after the market closes.
Too much supply as spending flatlines
A little more than a year ago, Peloton was facing the exact opposite issue. It had too much demand and not nearly enough supply. In December 2020, it announced a $420 million acquisition of the exercise equipment manufacturer Precor, giving it more than 625,000 square feet of production space. That deal closed early last year.
Then, last May, Peloton said it would be spending another $400 million to build its first factory in the United States to speed up production of its cycles and treadmills. That facility in Ohio isn’t expected to be up and running until 2023.
In recent months, though, gyms have reopened and consumers don’t appear to be throwing as much money into at-home fitness equipment. At the end of its latest quarter, Peloton counted 2.49 million connected fitness subscribers. It only added about 161,000 net new members in the period ended Sept. 30, its lowest growth in two years.
The reversal is seen in its stock price. Pelton shares rallied more than 440% in 2020, but dropped 76% in 2021.
In a separate internal Peloton presentation dated October 2021, which was obtained by CNBC, Peloton said that it was expecting overall fitness spending would continue to grow year over year, but instead overall spending was flat following the summer months.
Analysts in recent weeks have been trimming their expectations for Peloton’s second quarter as well as their price targets for the stock, projecting that Peloton had a weak holiday.
Peloton’s market share could be falling
One bright spot the presentation noted was that Peloton’s share of the total connected fitness market had been increasing.
But a report from research firm M Science shows that Peloton’s overall market share might be on the decline. In November, Peloton’s share of all connected fitness products priced at a minimum of $1,400 was tracking slightly below levels observed in 2019 and 2020, M Science said. That’s despite the lift Peloton saw on key holiday shopping days including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it said.
M Science pegs Peloton’s share of the market for products priced at more than $1,400 at a little more than 65%, making it the leading player. Other at-home fitness products that M Science tracks include Echelon, Hydrow, Lululemon’s Mirror, NordicTrack and Tonal.
M Science also said that it didn’t yet see “any evidence of another wave of at-home fitness demand as a result of recent Covid-19 developments.”
CNBC reported on Tuesday that Peloton is working with consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to look for ways to slash costs, which could entail job cuts and store closures. A person familiar with the matter said Peloton has already started layoffs in its sales division. The person requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak for the company.
Peloton Interactive Inc. stationary bicycles sit on display at the company’s showroom on Madison Avenue in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019.
Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Peloton is about to begin effectively charging customers more for its original Bike and Tread products, citing rising inflation and heightened supply chain costs.
Beginning Jan. 31, the company will be asking customers to pay an additional $250 for delivery and setup for its Bike, and an additional $350 for its Tread, according to a banner on its website. That will bring the costs for those products up to $1,745 and $2,845, respectively.
Previously, Peloton said that the $250 and $350 fees for delivery and assembly were included in the total price of the Bike and Tread.
The price of Peloton’s newer Bike+ product, at $2,495, is not going to change, according to its website.
In the U.K., Germany and Australia, Peloton has similar messaging on its website that costs will be going up starting Jan. 31.
During a recent meeting among company management, Peloton’s chief marketing and communications officer, Dara Treseder, said the changes were due to growing inflation and higher supply chain expenses.
“Right now, people are raising prices. Ikea just raised prices. We want to go in the middle of the pack,” said Treseder, according to a recording of the meeting that was obtained by CNBC.
She added that the company didn’t want to be seen as doing a “switch and bait” on customers.
A Peloton spokeswoman told CNBC in an emailed statement, “Like many other businesses, Peloton is being impacted by global economic and supply chain challenges that are affecting the majority, if not all, businesses worldwide.”
“Even with these increases, we believe we still offer the best value in connected fitness, and offer consumers various financing options that make Peloton accessible to a wide audience,” the spokeswoman said.
The $39.99 monthly subscription fee that its connected fitness users pay for on-demand content will remain the same.
In August, Peloton had cut the price of its less expensive Bike product by about 20% to $1,495, as it hoped to appeal to more consumers with a cheaper option.
After witnessing surging demand from consumers looking for at-home workout equipment in 2020, Peloton’s momentum has stalled considerably in recent months. Its stock has taken a hit, too. Shares fell about 76% in 2021, after rising more than 440% the prior year.
In November, Peloton slashed its full-year outlook due to ongoing supply chain constraints and softening demand. Analysts have said they anticipate the company to have had a weaker holiday, too, which could prompt another cut to its annual guidance.
Last Thursday, Nasdaq said Peloton’s stock would be replaced by Old Dominion Freight in the Nasdaq 100 index, effective Jan. 24.
Testing positive for Covid-19 means putting workouts on hold, even if you have zero or mild symptoms.
Given research suggesting that the Omicron variant currently surging world-wide causes milder symptoms, some people set on keeping their New Year’s fitness resolutions may feel tempted to keep going to the gym.
But sports-medicine professionals say you should put exercise on pause, even if you are asymptomatic. The American College of Sports Medicine, for example, suggests low-risk patients should rest for at least 10 days after being diagnosed with Covid-19. If asymptomatic, the rest should last seven days.
“This doesn’t give you a free pass to sit on the couch all day and watch
Netflix,
” says
David Soma,
a sports physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Covid-19 sufferers can avoid being completely sedentary by getting up to do light chores and moving throughout the day, so long as they don’t feel chest pain or fatigue.
And after you’ve recovered, restraint is key when resuming workouts. Jumping right back into a vigorous exercise routine could prolong the time it takes to regain fitness levels, or worse, lead to injury or relapse.
The typical rule of thumb when returning to sports after being sick is that if symptoms are below the neck, like chest congestion or an upset stomach, avoid exercise, says Dr. Soma. If the symptoms are above the neck, such as a runny nose or light headache, it’s fine to resume exercise, says Dr. Soma. But start slow with low-intensity activities, like a walk rather than a run, he says.
He suggests people who have mild Covid-19 symptoms follow the same guidelines after the recommended rest period.
The right cadence for resuming workouts differs based on your age, prior health and fitness level and Covid-19 experience. Those who are young, active and have very mild to no symptoms after the rest period can gradually get back to their routine in a manner that ramps up progression over the next few weeks, says
Julie Silver,
an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Those with hospitalizations or underlying health issues such as diabetes or high blood pressure should work with their primary-care doctor and possibly medical specialists, such as a cardiologist, to plot the return to exercise, she says.
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People with the lingering symptoms of long Covid must manage workouts carefully. Symptoms of long Covid can include an elevated resting heart rate, extreme fatigue and coughing. These issues can last for weeks to months after infection, making a return to exercise risky without guidance.
“If you can’t progress and feel exhausted every time you go for a walk, you should see a doctor,” says Dr. Silver, adding that you may need pulmonary or cardiac tests.
Take three to four weeks to ease back to your previous activity levels, even if you’re in terrific shape and felt only mild symptoms, says
Michael Fredericson,
a sports-medicine physician at Stanford Health Care.
He suggests adopting low-intensity activities such as walking, cycling, swimming, stretching and yoga. Avoid lifting heavy weights and start with body-weight activities. Working out with a mask on will make it harder to breathe, so you may want to avoid gyms, he says.
Start at 40% to 50% exertion the first week. That might mean a 15-minute walk every other day. If you feel good, slowly ramp up time, frequency and intensity. Take note of how you feel while exercising and if you experience shortness of breath, elevated heart rate, chest pain or fatigue, back off. If symptoms persist, call your doctor, he says.
As with any illness, sleep, good nutrition, and hydration are important for recovery, says
Marie Schaefer,
a sports-medicine physician at the Cleveland Clinic.
“You body is working in overdrive; you need to care for it more than ever after being sick,” she says.
Nike on Wednesday filed a lawsuit accusing Lululemon of patent infringement over the apparel maker’s at-home Mirror fitness device and related mobile applications.
Nike claims that in 1983, it invented and filed a patent application on a device for determining a runner’s speed, distance traversed, elapsed time and calories expended. It has also since launched a range of popular mobile apps such as Nike Run Club and Nike Training Club.
The company said it holds a number of other fitness equipment patents that Lululemon is infringing on by selling Mirror, a wall-mounted device that guides users through a variety of high-intensity cardio classes and other exercises.
Lululemon bought Mirror for $500 million in 2020 amid a rush among consumers to workout at home during the Covid pandemic. The device puts Lululemon incompetition with rivals such as Peloton, Hydrow and Tonal.
Prior to filing the lawsuit, Nike said, it notified Lululemon on Nov. 3 of the alleged infringement and that the leggings maker dismissed Nike’s claims. The suit was filed in Manhattan federal court.
A spokesperson for Lululemon said in an emailed statement, “The patents in question are overly broad and invalid. We are confident in our position and look forward to defending it in court.”
Lululemon shares were more than 4% Wednesday afternoon. Nike shares were last down around 2% amid a broader market sell-off.
Lululemon is currently embroiled in another legal battle, with Peloton. In late November, it filed a patent lawsuit against the connected fitness company in a feud over the designs of its sports bras and leggings.
Peloton had earlier sought a court’s declaration that it has not infringed on any of Lululemon’s patents. The company has maintained that its own athletic apparel merchandise is easy to decipher from Lululemon’s. Lululemon, though, is asking for damages and other monetary relief.