My 2 cents. I’m fine with an increase.
Trainerroad fits my needs perfectly (YMMV), I use the low volume Masters plans as I’m time crunched and getting older.
A few decades back I was spending hours and hours reading The Cyclists Training Bible and planning my own workouts (on paper) around my racing schedule. These days I love just being able to plug in my events and let Plan Builder work out the rest, I just want to know what my workouts are for the week and get on with it.
AI FTP detection is pretty much spot on (for me) also, and I love that I can toggle workouts as indoor/outdoor and push to my head unit.
Sure, there is an occasional Plan Builder/workout hiccup, but seeing how far TR has come in recent years it’s pretty damn impressive really.
Living in Canuckistan I do wish I could be billed in Canadian dollars, but that’s a minor niggle.
Another triathlete and I love it and have been on board since the start. However it has long been shown that our side of the market is pretty much ignored. While they redid the tri plans, I still get brick runs in my plan with no ride beforehand. Really? If that’s AI in action, I’m not so sure of the value. I’ll stay but not very happy that man multiple requests to CS has been addressed but absolutely no progress other than passing the buck.
And that $15k was probably nothing compared to the true cost of organizational distraction. From my experience working with companies across many industries and regions, one of the most common attributes of success is having the discipline and leadership to focus on “core”. Something like shirts/kits/swag seems small, but it’s a slippery slope if the culture isn’t prioritizing the strategic stuff.
Sure, it would be cool to have a trainerroad t-shirt, but unless selling shirts creates a quicker release of unstructured ride support, then I’ll pass on the shirt.
Yeah but these days you just have another company set it up, do everything for you and you get a cut (yes, it is smaller but they do all the work). Been like this for years now at pretty much every high school for “spirit wear.” Takes about a hour to set something like this up.
EXACTLY. Also, it’s free advertising. There is absolutely no reason it should take more than a few hours of employee time. The point of this kind of merchandise isn’t to make a profit, it’s to get the word out.
If I had a dollar for every time someone brought me an idea that would only burn a few hours of time…
It’s always a time suck doing stuff like this. TR probably wouldn’t want to give carte blanche to a 3rd party when it comes to their brand. Some level of review on artwork, products being offered, etc. is normally manage by someone in marketing. And when they screw stuff up and it affects customers do you think TR is completely out of that loop? Contractors/vendors can be great for non-core work, but they still have to be managed. It’s likely not a big effort, but it’s still a distraction if it’s not supporting strategic goals.
And yeah, I understand that shirts/swag has been outsourced for years but it’s about organizational focus. Small non-strategic stuff adds up and becomes a drain.
As for whether shirts and hats move the needle for TR as a company, I’d defer to them to make that call. Having TR athletes walking around at events seems like a good idea to me, but I personally know very little about how to build a subscriber base in TR’s space. I assume they have some experienced people making these decisions and have prioritized things like the podcast and online content to build the brand. Resources at all companies are limited. Should someone who is focused on the podcast be bothered by the t-shirt stuff?
I get your point, and yes, if you do it all yourself it is not worth the time. But I’ve done this for years with our team…. it is as easy as an email and sending over logos you already have. And it would be as easy as a pinning a link to the online store on top of the message board. (That said, I don’t think there’s a huge market for it but could be wrong… thus not worth the hassle).
From a marketing perspective, something that would be worth the hassle is TR sponsored race shirts for local NICA teams. At least around here (Northern California) there are thousands of riders and super involved parents at every race. It is crazy how many kids are out riding on sworks and top of the line bikes that I still can’t afford. There’s your next generation of subscribers.
100% agree with you. TrainerRoad really lost its luster for me with the departure of key staff. The podcast got very boring and dry after that and I stopped listening to it a year ago. The technology promise of TrainerRoad and the absolutely KEY feature of being able to take unstructured rides into account with Adaptive Training and Progression Levels. RLGL is fine, but it’s not THAT useful, especially after having been training for many years. I stopped doing TrainerRoad workouts within the app and so all my PLs fell to 0, making the feature completely useless. That functionality has been promised for so many years now that it’s vaporware, which makes me sad.
I was on an annual plan, and have been a subscriber for many years, but I canceled my membership a couple months ago. I’m riding out the remainder of my annual membership, but at this point, the cancellation seems permanent for me.
They’ve said multiple time the marketing department is Jonathan. He’s got enough going on with the podcast and social media.
While the idea of TR merch sounds great, I think Nate wants TR to be a premium brand. That would mean any merch would need to be an expensive, premium product. If I were him, I would not want to deal with all the complaints about pricing or quality when it’s not aero enough, a thread comes undone, weird fit, or other issue. Yes, that should be handled by the 3rd party but people will complain.
I totally agree and think this is the real reason. It’s not that it’s not easy to get a merch company to produce coffee mugs, tshirts, key chains, stickers, coozies, simple jerseys, etc. It’s that they don’t want to do that kind of merch. Anyone saying it’s difficult to get the simple things I listed above has never done it. It’s REALLY easy. The high end high quality stuff is a whole different ball game, and yes, that stuff is also hard to sell.
Sure, my question though is how you would get that sense for something that is marketed as a budget option for training.
It wasn’t a derogatory statement at all, so I don’t want that to get confused. TR has always been a mass market product, that was always the point of it.
