Thanks to its bikes and treads, offering 100% interactive “live” sessions, allowing live dialogue with coaches and other participants, Peloton is revolutionizing home sport practice. The company is a big hit in the United States with more than 1 million users already totally addicted.
For its followers, there is a before and an after Peloton. Peloton’s success is such that the brand has become a verb, and its thousands of new customers have started to “peloton” at full speed! It must be said that the experience is revolutionary: equipped with sensors, a touch screen, camera, and microphone, Peloton bikes and treadmills allow you to practice sport at home from a distance, while stimulated by sports coaches and other students who interact with you live. This revolutionary concept, based on technology, community involvement, and social interactivity, has attracted many stars, such as Beyoncé, who is a regular user and has recently become a brand ambassador.
Peloton reproduces the real-life conditions of a sports hall or peloton – hence its name – and, as in a face-to-face class, students are encouraged to improve their performance through ingenious devices: assiduity and regularity of training, the number of days and cumulative hours spent exercising, distance covered or calories burned, with the added bonus of a choice of thousands of recorded or “live” virtual courses, adapted to all levels and constantly renewed, as well as stimulating musical programs to give you more energy. At the end of the class, the three best students in the session climb onto a virtual podium, cheered by a vibrant “shout out” from the instructor in front of the whole class! If the training is carried out at a distance, the viewpoint angles and the interactivity of the sessions minimize distancing and the feeling of loneliness by creating a virtual team working together in real-life conditions. Everyone can participate, feel valued, and therefore stimulated. It quickly becomes addictive!
And that’s not to mention the team of coaches. At Peloton, they are not simple instructors but “elite coaches”: from the slightly hippie, new-age guru to the teacher with the commando build of the Marines, all the coaches are presented with personalized cards to enable you to choose the personality to suit you. Some are real stars, like Alex Toussaint, whose mantra is “feel good about your body, look good, do better” and who is followed by 300,000 subscribers on Instagram, or Jess Sims, a former basketball player who has 171,000 subscribers.
The Peloton experience comes at a cost: the bikes and treadmills will set you back US$1,895 and US$2,495 to US$4,295 respectively, a high price to which must be added the subscription fee to the video courses, which starts at US$39 per month. But these prices haven’t prevented the company from experiencing a dazzling development: founded in 2012 by John Foley, one of the former managers of the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain, Peloton has seen its growth explode in the face of confinement, to the point of being unable to satisfy orders within proposed deadlines. The number of Peloton subscribers, which now exceeds one million, has enabled the company to triple its turnover in the third quarter of 2020, compared to the same period the previous year. Peloton thus anticipates revenues of nearly US$4 billion this year. Listed on Wall Street since 2019, the company’s share price has soared by 450% over one year, representing a capitalization of more than 30 billion euros in November 2020!
The French will have to wait a little longer to get their Peloton bikes or treadmills, which for the moment are only available in the United States, as well as the United Kingdom and Germany in Europe. In the meantime, the Peloton Digital application is at your disposal, and there’s nothing to stop you from exercising during this period of confinement, by taking out a monthly subscription to access the courses and communities: from new-age enthusiasts to German aristocrats, there are groups for all tastes, and Alex Toussaint and Jess Sims are just waiting for you! Well … shall we Peloton?
Bicycles: from US$1,895 to US$2,345
Treadmills: from $2,495 to $4,295 US
Available for delivery in the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Peloton Digital and Club Peloton applications available at the Apple Store in France.
