This is the rise and fall of Pelaton. January 2021, this bike, this stationary bike that doesn't go anywhere. It's part of a company worth $50 billion. And what if I told you the same bike became the fastest growing fitness company in history, and it had a market value bigger than Ford, Adidas, and Under Armour combined? Wall Street calls this the perfect pandemic stock. Millions of people are obsessed. They say this is the future of fitness. Fast forward 2 years, the company loses 94% of its value. The CEO is out. Warehouses are stocked full of bikes that nobody wants. But I've got one question. How does Pelaton go from a $50 billion valuation to nearly bankrupt in just 2 years? How did it happen? Because this story, it's not just about one company. It's about what happens when everybody believes the same story at the same time and then reality shows up. Rewind to 2012. A guy named John Foley is sitting in a cycling studio in Manhattan. He's drenched in sweat and he has a problem. He absolutely loves spin class, but he hates the logistics. Booking classes weeks in advance, commuting across the city, fighting for a spot in the back row next to somebody else's sweat puddle from the previous class. And Foley thinks, "What if you could bring this studio home? Not just the stationary bike, not just the workout videos, but the entire experience, the energy, the competition, the community, all beamed into your living room through a giant HD screen. He pulls it together and he calls this Pelaton. And in 2014, he launches with a bold promise. Boutique studio experience at home on demand forever. But here's the thing, everybody thinks he's insane. Who would pay $2,000 plus dollars for a stationary bike? The monthly subscription is another $39. For context, you could buy a decent secondhand carbon road bike for that price. Or you could join a gym for like two years. But Foley sees this differently. He sees something nobody else sees because he isn't building a bike company. He's not selling stationary bikes. He's building something else, something that we've never seen before. And by 2017, Pelaton has 250,000 subscribers. By 2019, over a million subscribers. And people aren't just buying the bikes, they're joining a movement. There are hashtags all over Instagram. They have these like Pelaton leaders board, t-shirts, there's inside jokes about the instructors who've all become celebrities. People are naming their bikes and they're getting Pelaton tattoos. This isn't just a fitness product anymore. This is an identity. And then 2020 happens. March 2020, the world shuts down. Gyms closed, races canled for millions of cyclists and fitness enthusiasts. There's suddenly nowhere to go except Pelaton. Overnight, Pelaton becomes the pandemic essential. Orders surge $172%. The weight list hits 4 months. Their stock price goes from $20 to $170. They can't make bikes fast enough. They're chartering their own ships to speed up the delivery process. John Foley is on magazine cover has been called a visionary. By January 2021, Pelaton's market cap hits 50 billion. $50 billion. A company that sells stationary bikes is worth more than Ford. And here's where most people think that the story ends. John Foley, the pandemic darling, wins big, rides off into the sunset, and lives happily ever after. But that's not what happened at all. Because while everyone was celebrating, cracks were already starting to form in Pelaton. December 2021, HBO Max releases the first episode of the much anticipated, and just like that, it was the Sex in the City reboot. And in the opening episode, Mr. Big, he finishes his Pelaton bike ride and immediately has a heart attack and dies. Like, I'm not joking you. That's how they kill off one of TV's most beloved characters on a Pelaton. Within 24 hours, Pelaton stock prices dropped 11%. The company scrambles and it releases this defensive ad with I think it was Ryan Reynolds in it. But the damage, well, that's already been done and that's priced in. That's not even the real problem for Pelaton. Let's fast forward to March 2021. Pelaton's Tread Plus treadmill. It's linked to a child's death and 70 injuries, but the company initially refuses to recall it. The government actually has to step in and force Pelaton to recall this product. It's so bad. 125,000 treadmills recalled at a recall price of $165 million. But here's what nobody's talking about yet. While all this is happening, something else is changing. We all remember it.
The gym started reopening. Soul cycle is back. People are less scared. They're going outside again. They're riding bikes again. They're meeting friends. And suddenly that Pelaton bike in your living room, the one you waited four months for, the one that saved your sanity during lockdown, well, it's starting to feel like a little bit like just a bike and maybe an occasional place to hang your clothes to let them dry for the next morning. By November 2021, Pelaton slashes its holiday sales forecast by 1 billion and their stock craters 35% in a single day. Internal documents leak showing that the company has massively overproduced. They've got warehouses full of bikes that nobody wants. They've built an entire factory in Ohio that's now sitting there mostly empty. And then in February 2022, Pelaton halts production. Palaton lays off 2,800 employees. CEO John Foley steps down. The guy who built this whole thing, John Foley, gone. Let's pause and zoom out for a second because the numbers here, they're absolutely staggering. At its peak, it had a $50 billion valuation. Two years later, it's a $3 billion valuation. That's a 94% loss in value in 2 years. To put that into perspective, that's like if Apple lost 2.5 trillion, except Apple has, you know, multiple products. They actually have an iPhone, MacBook, wearables, Pelaton. Well, they had just one product, the bike. Well, and they had the recall treadmill. Here's the question that nobody's answering. Why did this happen so fast? Like, it's a staggering loss in valuation. In preparation for this podcast, I talked to former employees, to industry analysts, and even to some Pelaton subscribers, and there's three things that kept coming up. One, they mistook a moment for a movement. So, Pelaton treated the pandemic demand like it was going to be permanent. They built factories. They hired thousands. They ordered millions in inventory. They were betting the people would stay at home forever. former employees told me, "We were told to plan for 20% growth every quarter, even when anyone with eyes could see gyms reopening. It was delusional." That's a quote from a former employee. The second reason, the product never evolved. Like, if you look back at the Pelaton in 2014, now look at the Pelaton in 2025 and let's play a game and spot the difference. Spoiler alert, you can't because there isn't a single difference that I could find. While competitors like Zift added new virtual worlds every month, Apple added fitness plus. Mirror added AI form correction. Pelaton just made the screen a little bit bigger. No outdoor connectivity, no integration with real cycling metrics, no VR, no innovation, nothing. The third reason, the price stayed stupidly high. Like the Pelaton bike was over 2,000 for the first year after you price in the monthlies. That's pretty pricey. And as the pandemic ended, people did the mat. And the mat just didn't matt anymore when you were using it less. You know, we all do that gym mat. Okay, if I go twice a week, it's only going to cost me this. All of a sudden, if you only use this product like once every other week, it starts getting pretty pricey for that price tag. For the price of Pelaton, you could buy a legitimate carbon fiber race bike or you could buy like 3 years of gym membership. And yet, even as subscriptions started to fall, Pelaton refused to drop the price meaningfully. Internal emails. Internal emails showed that executives worried that lowering the prices would damage brand prestige. Meanwhile, used Pelatons were selling on Facebook Marketplace for less than $400. The prestige was already gone. So, where does this leave us? We're in November 2025 now. What is Pelaton today? Well, the company's still here, barely. They've got about 3 million subscribers. Now, that's not nothing. That's still a business, but they're burning cash. The stock trades at just over $4 today and they're desperately trying to pivot. They're renting bikes now instead of selling them. They're opening retail stores. They're licensing content to hotels and gyms, the exact places they tried to replace. Let that sink in for a second. Pelaton built a $50 billion company by saying never go to the gym again. Now they're literally putting their bikes in gyms just to survive. There's something strange happening in endurance sports and cycling right now. Nobody's talking about Nomio, but everybody seems to be using it. They've no influencer campaigns. They've no glossy ads. They just have the quiet word of mouth between writers who've seen what it does firsthand.
3 million loyal subscribers at 40 quid a month. It's like 1.5 billion annual revenue. That's not a bad business at all. It's just not a $50 billion business. Scenario two, the buyout. Private equity or a bigger player, maybe Apple, Nike, Amazon. It buys them for parts. The brand has value. The instructors have followers. The customer data is gold. They gut the hardware business. They keep the content and they integrate it into something else. The Pelaton bike, it becomes the relic that it should be. And the Pelaton app, well, maybe that survives. Here's what I actually think will happen. I think we're watching the end of the connected fitness boom. These companies promised us that the technology would replace going outside or attending actual workouts, but they were wrong. They had it backwards. The technology that actually won, the technology that's actually survived and is still thriving. It's the stuff that while indoors enhances our ability to enjoy outdoor experiences even more. Straa segments, Zifts, power meters, Wahoo smart trainers for structured workouts when the weather sucks. All of these, they're indoor and they help us prepare better for outside. Pelaton tried to bring the outside in, but cyclists don't want that. We like the misery. So, here's where we started. a bike that doesn't move that cost $2,000 that became one of the biggest companies in the world until it wasn't. And maybe that's okay. Maybe Pelaton's real contribution wasn't the bike. It was reminding millions of people that cycling indoors or outdoors in any form, it can change your life. Some of these Pelaton riders are still on their bikes in their living rooms. And good for them. But a lot of them, they took what they learned about consistency, about pushing through discomfort, about structured workouts, about the rush of hard effort. They took it and they applied it outside. They joined the local clubs, group rides. They entered races. They discovered gravel. They found bike shops and cycling clubs and real three-dimensional communities. You know, I'm genuinely proud of my little man cave, my escape, my safe place. It's not glamorous by any means. It's crammed into the spare room in our apartment with bikes stacked in the corner, boxes everywhere, and the smell of chain lube is just kind of hanging in the air. But in that corner, that's where the work gets done. That's where I switch off from everything else and I lock in on my training. And the centerpiece of it all, it's the Wahoo Kicker Bike Pro. Honestly, it's the ultimate man cave bike. The thing just feels alive under you. It climbs, it descends, it shifts all automatically. You can dial into your exact position to the millimeter just like your outdoor bike. And with the new setup, everything's smoother, quieter, and way more immersive. It's that perfect mix of comfort and performance that makes indoor cycling feel like a privilege, not like a punishment. And look, I'm Irish. I'm sitting in Ireland recording this right now. I know what it's like to wake up, look out the window, see wind, rain, and sideways hail and think, "Do I really want to be out there today?" And that's where the kicker comes in. You can get a worldass session done right there in your safe little space, no matter what's happening outside. If you want to build your own version of that space, a place to train hard, stay consistent, and escape for a little bit, check out Wahoo at wahooitness.com. They've got everything from the flagship Kicker Bike Pro to the Kicker Core 2, which gives you that same legendary ride feel at a killer price point. Wahoo! Building the better athlete in all of us. Pelaton's fall wasn't a failure of cycling. It was a reminder that cycling is way bigger than any one company or any one product or any one trend. The cycling industry will be fine. It really will because at the end of the day, we don't ride bikes to stare at screens. We ride bikes to feel like children again. Thanks for tuning in to this podcast. And if you made it this far, please do me a favor and take one second to subscribe to the channel and share this video with a friend. and share it with someone who you think would enjoy the video. Or if you're feeling really generous, share it into your club WhatsApp group.