a quick note: i realize this is a departure from what i normally used to write about, but i find this stuff fascinating. i’m sharing everything i’ve gathered going down a bit of a rabbit hole on the woes of peloton these days, but i also understand these people are all human, and i am a firm believer of assuming positive intent. with that disclaimer out of the way …
i have a drafted post on why we chose to go with a peloton bike (spoiler alert; love it! love the workout classes, love the instructors + music, and still love the brand), but with all of the kerfuffle (lol) and news headlines, i wanted to take a moment and just put together some thoughts, mostly for myself, but for anyone who hasn’t been keeping up with the flurry-bordering-on-snowstorm of headlines.
but first, the TL;DR:
at peloton’s all hands meeting, former employees who had been let go from the company somehow gained access to the meeting (loling at this, tbh) and were firing off some, well, fiery chats to the new and former CEO, accusing the company of mismanagement. i can just FEEL the panic of peloton’s PR team.
now some background
if you’re like me, and you get news alerts on your phone from a variety of sources, you’ve probably seen that peloton has had a hell of a week quarter couple of years. here are some of my observations:
- sales of bikes/treads dropped commensurate with people coming out of lockdowns/returning to gyms/finding other workouts. um, duh. i could have told you this. i’m no economist, demand expert, or insider at peloton, but i could have told you that nicer weather coupled with people being able to return to classes/studios/gyms would cut into your market. plus you have to assume that their market penetration for the consumer that can afford AND wants a peloton is pretty close to saturated …
- … so of course your sales are going to drop. innovate or die, i guess. don’t get me wrong; i love our peloton. but jacking up the price of a monthly service (ahem, amazon prime) is not going to cover inflation, increasing costs across the supply chain, and the fact that you need a source of revenue OR new customers (or both) to continue to drive growth. biz 101, my friends. (note: i am sure it’s more complicated than i’m making it seem, but sometimes good ‘ol common sense helps with business strategy).
- take care of your employees and your customers. it’s nice to see that peloton is offering some career services to those they just let go of, but from what we are seeing, their approach to laying off employees was the thing of HR undergrad textbook fodder.
- interesting timing for them on hiring someone with spotify on their resume. knowing how long a corporate hiring process takes at that level, i’m sure the whole joe rogan thing came up after barry was in the final rounds/had accepted an offer, but still. i hope the aforementioned PR team wasn’t part of the crew that was let go, because it sounds like they need to be all hands on deck right now.
- this article is interesting all around (and not in a good way). tbh, i really hate corporate bullying. it’s so low vibe. let’s do better, rich white men in suits.
- blackwells capital, who owns 5% of peloton’s share, put together a hefty deck (FKA powerpoint, for those not deeply entrenched in corporate life these days) on how they feel about peloton (spoiler alert: not good). worth at least a glance at slide 3 – the table of contents quite literally says it all.
to sum, peloton’s probably about to consider getting bangs, but i’m going to keep doing my workouts anyways because ally love‘s barre is going to get me through to spring, and kendall toole’s outfits are STRAIGHT FIRE, as the kids say. we love a bold lip and some gold layered jewelry, and peloton gives me all of that. still love ya!