…with completely different target demographics.
if there is one thing you learn in business, amongst 100s of lessons, is that it is the customer that makes that decision, not the supplier.
I think you can get a good sense of that on Strava.
For example, as of this moment (just checked), I have 179 followers, virtually all serious cyclists, ranging from endurance to former pro, and would guestimate that perhaps 8-10 (5%) use Peloton as their primary INDOOR training tool (of course, all are outdoor cyclists). I think part of the reason is that, beyond its cycling class offerings, Peloton is strong in the strength category (as well others) where TR is not a player. So for someone (e.g. a friend who is in the 4WpKg category) looking for more complete indoor training, Peloton has a strong offering.
Just an anecdote - my wife recently bought a peloton bike and loves it. She is an exercise enthusiast and not at all a cyclist. Without any input at all from me, she quickly gravitated to the ftp test and doing a structured program filled with “power zone” workouts, and she tells me about doing intervals in zone 4, etc. and is hyped up for her next FTP test. Meanwhile, I’m down in the basement on Trainerroad basically doing the same thing except my entertainment is Season 4 of Gomorrah on Netflix rather than an instructor. We are basically doing the exact same thing except different entertainment and we came to it from a different avenue. I think there is a lot of overlap, they just haven’t been marketing to the same groups.
*Warning - small data set.
Is your contention that these 179 followers are therefore representative of the entire enthusiast indoor cycling market?
Maybe…and I’m just spitballing here…that is because they have different target audiences? 
I agree. It wasn’t meant to be conclusive. But even 1-2% of Peloton cyclists is likely larger than TR’s entire customer base.
In sharp contrast to when I joined TR in 2018 when there were limited indoor training and, particularly, structured indoor training options. Today, the market is flooded with options as there is no unique way of “making you a faster cyclist”. TR was an early leader. Today, it is arguably not, at least by market share. Peloton is an important player in the space regardless of how the companies (TR, Zwift, Peloton) define who their target market is.
Simple question - does anyone think that anyone inside Peloton HQ has once said “Man, we need to look out for TrainerRoad. I mean, I know guys like NordicTrak and LifeFitness, with their massive advertising and R&D budgets, are coming directly at us with comparable products / services, but we gotta watch these guys in Reno who are targeting high-end racing / performance cyclists”?
Seriously…how is this even a discussion?
Peloton is certainly happy to pick up any serious cyclist along the way, but they aren’t targeting them.
OK, I’m out.
yes, been eating popcorn for 3 years. From the beginning it would have been far more interesting to switch the topic to Zwift and TR.
But yeah, like others mentioned, I know some really fast cyclists that are using Peloton. And they are happy, and unlikely to run out and buy a smart trainer and pick up either Zwift or TrainerRoad.
Here’s what I want to know.
Is Peloton a durable trend? I’m not saying 5 years. I’m saying 10 years. 20 years.
Jane Fonda
Jazzercise
Gold’s Gym
Fitbit
Lifetime
SoulCycle
OTF
Will Peloton be able to become a more durable part of people’s lives, and achieve some stickiness. Or will it end up in the discard bin like some of the names above?
Peloton began delivering bikes in 2014
A few years ago, I hung out on the Facebook pages of TR, Zwift and Peloton. Was looking to get a sense of the profile of typical customers of each company.
TR and Zwift were very similar. Peloton quite different.
That was a few years ago. I think Peloton is getting closer with things like the latest gen bike that has “auto follow resistance” (erg mode), and power zone workouts (a few years ago, I never saw the term FTP mentioned on the Peloton Facebook page).
But I’d say the overlap in target customers is still pretty small, but growing.
If Peloton were to enable their bike/screen to run TR or run Zwift and control the bike (I don’t think it can do this today?), then the overlap would accelerate.
I can’t really fathom why this is being debated so hotly. The overlap between Peloton customers and TR customers is going to be extremely small. Who cares? It’s not like TR customers are going to be flocking to PTON bikes and willingly paying $40/mo for instructor led training.
In my Strava feed, I’ve seen exactly one rider post Peloton rides in the winter. It’s only occasional and my guess is that he’s riding his wife’s bike from time to time for a change of pace.
I wonder how much longer PTON can exist. They have $2.6B (BILLION) in debt and haven’t turned a profit yet. When their debt gets repriced at current interest rates, watch out.
They need to be acquired by someone.
100%…this is all but inevitable. And when they get bought by some VC group, they will bastardize Peloton to wrong every nickel out of it before they declare bankruptcy.
What is the over / under before we find stripped down Pelotons in Dick’s Sporting Goods….3 years?
Yes. Just doesn’t seem big enough to be a self-sustaining company over the long term.
I doubt any PE firm will buy them with their current debt load. I’d bet they’ll go into bankruptcy, and be bought out of bankruptcy.
That is probably right. It is a perfect example of recency bias (our meteoric growth will continue forever!) and associated irrational exuberance. I would love to see the case study on this after the dust settles.
Out of curiosity, what’s the line in the sand to ‘qualify’? Is it user count? Is it years? Is it mainstream popularity? Is it technical prowess?
It continues to be genuinely bizarre how some hardcore cyclists keep hating on Peloton while praising Zwift. Just as a recap:
- Peloton’s been around longer
- Peloton’s approximately 7-8x larger by subs (Zwift doesn’t publish numbers, Peloton does)
- Peloton is still actually growing each quarterly (the most recent quarter being the summer quarter no less), meanwhile Zwift has shrunk since the pandemic, down 25% for Peak Zwift this year.
- When’s the last-time any major pop-culture thing referenced Zwift?
- Peloton’s continued to release new hardware, while Zwift gave up on a new bike/trainer after spending untold sums/years
Don’t get me wrong, Zwift is great, and this isn’t a slam on Zwift - but to point out the hypocrisy. The blindness is astounding sometimes. And sure, Peloton has had some royal screw-ups too. But is the qualification criteria getting more headlines written about screw-ups? Or is it having a smaller company shielded from public view due to being private, so few things get written up because said company also advertises extremely heavily in the cycling media industry, arguably sustaining some of the publications that might otherwise write things about them?
Yes, both companies have laid off people - it’s just that every news outlet on earth loves reporting about Peloton’s layoffs. So has Wahoo (and Zwift, and Strava, and, and and…), and yet nobody is talking about Wahoo? I mean, literally multiple creditor agencies have said they don’t see how Wahoo will be financially viable in the coming months (and that’s putting it lightly).
Nevermind that Peloton comes out with a Peloton Bike+ that’s more accurate on the first try than Wahoo, Tacx, or Wattbike’s smartbikes at release. Or heck, even now the Peloton Bike+ holds power more accurately than the new Wattbike ATOM 2020 or Tacx Bike NEO Plus. Or, for that matter the Wahoo KICKR Bike V2. So it is technical prowess? Cause apparently, that’s not the line in the sand either.
Still, what’s far more interesting to me is Peloton’s next quarterly earnings. That’ll be about a year from the new CEO - and he asked for a year, though realistically we’d have to give him to till the quarter after, since these results wouldn’t encapsulate his full change period.
In any case, back to the point at hand with the list of companies? I’m struggling to understand how one gets on or off that list. Let’s take TrainerRoad. It’s a fraction the size of Zwift, which is a fraction the size of Peloton. It’s been around only slightly longer, and has also seen a reduction in users since COVID. It’s certainly not known outside the hardcore cycling sphere. Yet oddly, Fitbit, despite somehow being in the dustbin still sells many millions of devices per year (perhaps 75-100x what TR does in sub numbers), and is one of the world’s most recognizable tech brands - literally the wearable equivalent of saying Kleenex.
Anyways, like I said, it’s so bizarre to me…you’ll still find me using all three platforms, but man…
Food for thought:
- This past summer, Peloton created a new FTP-focused program for cyclists (Peak Your Power Zone)
- Peloton has significantly expanded their FTP-focused (Power Zone) coaching staff in recent months
- Peloton finally added FTP power zone mid-workout targets to the screen last month
- Peloton has said they want to put their platform on other bikes/platforms (thus enabling power from any device, the current major stumbler to people using trainers)
- Peloton hired Zwift’s lead hardware partner integration person (the person literally responsible for things like ANT+/BLE connectivity to hardware partners)
- And this ignores that they currently have a slate of power zone training related things (albiet not customized programs towards a training goal).
Does it mean Peloton is going after TR or Zwift? Nah, not yet - not directly. But they’re just a few moves away from it. Peloton has had as Tour de France pro (Christian Vande Velde) on-staff in the past, albeit he hasn’t taught anything recently. All Peloton has to do to steal a bunch of people away is:
A) Here’s ANT+/BLE connectivity to power meters/trainers (and Peloton already does ANT+/BLE across their stack, just not PM/trainers - the major gap for people to use the platform unless they buy hardware)
B) Here’s a new set of classes from CVV or a few other new/notable pros we threw some money away
C) Here’s a slightly tweaked version of their Peak Your Power Zone feature called “Race Your Power” that now just targets a race date and automatically pulls in appropriate classes just like TR’s training plans do. Peloton has far more classes to pull from
Tie that up in some marketing/PR spin, and thus begins Peloton’s march into this segment. A march they’ve already hinted at numerous times over the last year.
Will it happen? Who knows. Peloton has been in “spaghetti vs wall” mode for the last year under the new CEO. As whiplash as it is, financially, it does seem to be working.
Don’t forget they had George in the early days too.
One thing I think they’re going to have to do if they want to win more cyclists is to remove the focus on doing more and more short classes at the expense of the longer ones. There are only a few classes longer than 30 minutes per week, and the vast majority are now 20-30 minutes. My wife just looked, and there have been less than ten 45 minute classes in the past week. Sure, you can now “stack classes”, but they all have warm up and cool down periods that disrupt the flow.
The guy I noted above who turns the screws on our weekly ride has been known to do Peloton centuries….he just keeps stacking up classes, back-to-back until he hits 100 miles, cumulative.
