A lot of people use zwift training plans religiously and have no idea they are terrible.
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They are ok.
They workouts are similar to TR.
where TR shines (IMO) is putting a comprehensive plan you can execute. Its like having a coach (online, minimum interaction).
I am extremely happy with how TR works. There are things that can be better (they could polish the tri plans a bit more) but overall, I think i made the best choice with TR over Zwift or Peloton.
On the other hand, a lot of Zwifters are pretty sophisticated in their training. They use Zwift strategically to fit into a plan or, use actual plans purchased through TrainingPeaks or plans from personal coaches fed to Zwift through TrainingPeaks. If you factor in the TrainingPeaks link, Zwift has already left TR far behind in training plan choice and given the wide range of options and quality of some to the coaches selling their services via TrainingPeaks, left TR behind in quality too. But the cost is greater when you factor in the Zwift subscription and then buying a separate set of plans.
There is plenty of room for both Zwift and TR but myopic TR users should not just blindly dismiss Zwift without understanding its full ecosystem.
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Technically, a zwift race is already battle royal. They need to add blood and weapons tho. I would pay for that. Like Twisted Metal (play station game), but with bikes!
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I think most TR users wouldn’t dismiss Zwift. BUT, out of the box, just paying ONE thing TR >>> than zwift on prepackage training plans.
Once you add TP to the mix, its a whole different thing.
You can also argue, TP can send WO to TR and a coach could either use existing plans with modifications/adding custom workouts.
Reminds me of pump and dump threads for oil shares I used to get involved in.
No, I dont see anything significant in Peloton offerings for TR users.
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Peloton announced their Q4’20 and full year 2020 results yesterday and conducted their earnings call after the market closed. The results were off-the-charts phenomenal on all metrics. Most relevant to TR is that their subscriber #s have grown to over 3 million with the AVERAGE # workouts per month per subscriber of 24.7. During the past quarter, more workouts were done by Peloton users (76 million) than by all TR users in aggregate over the 10 years since TR was founded (2 years prior to Peloton). With just one example of a cycling friend who trains exclusively on his Peloton for centuries, at 4 WpKg (better than over 50% of TR users), the view that there is no overlap between between TR users and Peloton users has little credibility. Let’s hope that TR management takes the Peloton threat seriously otherwise TR will be in serious trouble long term.
https://investor.onepeloton.com/static-files/0160c736-f0d2-400a-8a20-6f6fc3f85659
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I find it really had to believe that the average of 3m subscribers is working out 6 days a week solely on a peloton bike. There has to be something off in their figures there.
Your intuition is correct (but incorrect interpretation of 6days/wk). They offer strength, yoga, meditation, etc. As every TR cyclist knows, strength is critical to cycling performance and overall fitness. The same is true as with many Peloton users. Peloton’s strength app is growing exponentially such that many Peloton cardio users (bike and tread) are also doing strength, and often on the same day. This is one of the reasons why there is so little credibility in the lack of overlap in target customer (lower end of TR vs upper end of Peloton). BTW: For reference (pre-strength app), one year ago the average Peloton usage was 12 workouts/month.
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This! And it’s actually even more. I see people on Strava who rather than take one 45 minute class take a 5 minute warmup, three 15 minute classes, a 5 minute cool down, and then maybe a 15 minute yoga class. Thats 6 classes in 75 minutes. It’s not apples to apples.
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We own a Peloton and I think people who don’t have one have a hard time understanding just how “sticky” Peloton is In the mind of the user. I don’t use it any more, but my wife rides 4-5 times a week, I have a lot of friends that I met through Peloton that I chat with daily. Many of them now ride bicycles and I’ve gotten several to use TR and Zwift and many have even bought trainers for this, but here’s the thing…they all STILL ride the Peloton. I’m the exception to the rule…and I think that’s only because the majority of the music is hip hop/pop and I’m a metal head. They get addicted to the Coaches, to the leaderboard (racing based on total output), to the community. They get together in NYC to take classes together and have homecoming weeks, They belong to MANY different Peloton Facebook groups. Groups for fans of coaches. For dads. For women. For weight loss. For cyclists. For regions. Etc. I’ve traveled to do a weekend Gran Fondo house party with them; and been to Moab to mtb together …and most of my friends have done many more of these events than I have. People put Peloton stickers on everything, wear their gear as loungewear, etc. They are extremely proud to be part of the community. It’s a LIFESTYLE brand, and it’s sticky as hell.
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One of the strongest guys on our regular group rides trains in the winter on a Peloton.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
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That’s quite a leap! Peloton to MTB 
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Nah, Peloton’s a pos.
If TR management is doing its job, they would have this data - it is attainable on customer signup, subscriber non-renewals, trial users, surveys, etc.
The important point is that, with or without large amounts of data, the overlap is clear and significant and will get much larger with Peloton’s continued off-the-charts growth of its customer base and usage, particularly the dual cardio/strength users. FWIW: I think the low end of TR’s market is in trouble, but the upper end represents a defensible and major opportunity for the company.
I’m not certain how you can possibly say the overlap is either clear or significant when:
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you don’t have any data supporting it, and
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they are vastly different customer bases.
I would argue that the direction Peloton going appears, in fact, away from a typical TR user. They are expanding into more general fitness areas (treadmills, and now weights, yoga, etc) while TR targets a dedicated cyclists.
The customer base in the general fitness arena is MUCH larger than the TR subscriber base…exponentially so.
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I accept this statement based on your item 1 statement (i.e. I don’t have the data, but TR management should be collecting this data).
My assessment of the Peloton/TR situation is obviously very different than yours. And that’s OK; we all have the right to our own observations, analysis and viewpoints.
I don’t think that “typical” is the appropriate way for TR management to assess the situation. It is “target” customer (i.e. what characteristics of the user that the product or service is targeting). The importance of the distinction is that it it the customer who decides what to purchase not the company. And why this has such significance is that the Peloton user base is expanding in many dimensions - size, skill sets, goals, etc. FWIW: To characterize 3 million users (and growing very fast) as monolithic and non-overlapping with TR doesn’t pass my credibility test based on 30 years in the tech industry.
What I think would be fascinating to see would be TR stats per quarter each of the past 4 quarters and for the past 3 years:
- '# of users
- '# of workouts/user
- 'churn rate
I think if you combined this info with what I suggested earlier, you’d get a pretty deep understanding of the issues we have raised.
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The challenge is that while they may have different core user bases, they DO often have overlap in funding within a household for the purchase of a indoor bike.
Meaning, I’ve got multiple friends where one of the partners wants to buy a Peloton bike, and the other wants to buy a higher end trainer or indoor smart bike. They’re only going to spend on one of them. So in this specific sense, there is overlap. Does that overlap cut TR out of the picture? Probably not. But does it cut potentially a new higher end trainer/smartbike purchase? Absolutely. In most cases, Peloton bike request wins there (based on my limited sample size anyway).
That said, it wouldn’t take much for Peloton to shift more to become a meaningful threat to TR’s more casual base. They already have power zone structured workouts, they just do very little (if anything) to market around that or the serious side of things. Inversely, TR has done very little to market to the more casual side (in fact, almost all of it is doubling down on the even more serious/higher performance side). And that’s OK to an extent, TR’s focus is performance athletics. The challenge with that (aside from ultimately being semi-niche), is how to balance that against the larger players (Zwift/Peloton) that eventually come along and add just enough performance features to pull people way and start eroding your base. Zwift is obviously a bigger threat here, but overlooking some of the more sticky features of Peloton would be a mistake.
As usual with Peloton - people that have never ridden one like to crap on it. People that have ridden one tend to keep on riding one. It’s a way to mix things up. Like anything else, it’s not for everyone. Just like Zwift isn’t for some TR users, and TR isn’t for some Zwift users.
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Absolutely!!!
Imagine a partnership between Peloton and Zwift (complimentary) where Peloton bike users (with power-based pedals) or Peloton app users (on power-based trainers) could in-app subscribe/race on Zwift. With Peloton’s $24B market cap, I wouldn’t put an acquisition out of the question. At that point, IMO, TR would be in serious trouble.
Let me clarify one thing…I am not crapping on Peloton. I ave ridden one many times at hotels when traveling. I think it is a great unit and a great business model.
Nor am I saying that there are not learnings for other companies from the success of Peloton. But as you well note, Zwift is a far bigger and more immediate threat to TR than Peloton.
The only point I am making is that they are targeting a significantly larger demographic than TR. Any effort to target a TR-demographic would do their shareholders a disservice, as it detracts from its larger, and more lucrative, objectives.
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