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Peloton S-1

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141–150 of 212 posts

Re: Peloton S-1

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really crazy to me is how expensive those spin classes are, how many people go to them, how little they pay the stay, and how all those companies still lose a ton of money!

How much do instructors get per class? $25?

Yep.

Re: Peloton S-1

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a better investment would be to buy a road bike for $2,000. Spend $245 on a trainer and gear. Finally, get the subscription to the classes, and now you have both Peleton classes and a road bike.

The best way to buy a $2k road bike is to pay $1k and buy it from someone who thought it would be a great idea to buy a $2k road bike. Kind of like when my dad bought an elliptical machine and my mom called it the world’s only $2,500 clothes rack.

She lied. It is far from being the world's only $2,500 clothes rack.

Re: Peloton S-1

#143
post #18

It really makes we wonder how we could be on the verge of a recession when companies like this become successful? Maybe I'm just too cheap to ever buy something like this but it feels like a mass marketed luxury good that requires a decent level of consumer confidence to have succeeded.

The company is selling the bikes and treadmills at a 43% gross margin. This company somehow sells its bicycles at a higher gross margin than Apple(38%). How!

Re: Peloton S-1

#144
post #6

Nice unit economics: Our Connected Fitness Subscriber Lifetime Value for fiscal 2017, fiscal 2018, and fiscal 2019, was $267.1 million, $604.4 million, and $1,053.8 million, respectively, or $3,433, $4,015, and $3,593 per Connected Fitness Subscriber, respectively. As we expand our content offering, develop new interactive software features, and grow our community of Members, we believe we can maintain a low Average…

What's amazing is that they get people to pay _more_ than they would - or would even think of paying - for a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu, but their content creation costs are obviously a fraction of what it take to produce even one show on those platforms.

It actually make a profit on their content production. Attending each class in person costs as much as a typical spin class. A back of the envelope estimate says they're probably pulling in $250k+ MRR from the studio alone.

Re: Peloton S-1

#145

I was surprised to see how low the gross margin is on their subscription business, it has only recently broken above 50%. The cost of revenue for their subscription business includes licensing the music in their workouts, and the costs to operate their NYC and London studio. I was also surprised to see the margins on the bike itself are about the same as on the subscription business. They have room to lower the price…

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Re: Peloton S-1

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you spend that much on the bike you'd better get your money's worth.

I bought nearly new equipment for my home gym for 1/5th of the retail value on Craigslist... tons of sellers out there.

Is it true that the best deals are in February, after people realize they won't use the equipment they bought in January for New Year's resolutions?

Re: Peloton S-1

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a better investment would be to buy a road bike for $2,000. Spend $245 on a trainer and gear. Finally, get the subscription to the classes, and now you have both Peleton classes and a road bike.

You’re assuming that people who buy a Peloton want to ride outside. Also, half the purpose of Peloton is the tracking and app integration.

No, some people have $2,000+ road bikes that have never seen the road or been outside. They just set them up on a trainer with sensors ([1][2][3]) in their living room.

[1] https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/au/en/tacx-vortex-smart-...

[2] https://www.99bikes.com.au/accessories/indoor-trainers/smart...

[3] https://www.pushys.com.au/accessories/stationary-stands/smar...

Re: Peloton S-1

#148
post #57
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> compared to driving to e.g. SoulCycle or a spin class Radical idea: rather than choosing between a $2,000 stationary bike for your living room or burning a bunch of fossil fuels to move yourself and your 2,000+ pounds of motor vehicle to a gym to ride somebody else's stationary bike, you could just buy an ordinary bike and ride around outside. You could probably even buy a indoor trainer for your ordinary bike as w…

At least in the US, trying to ride a bike outdoors in a lot of places is a good way to get yourself killed by a car. I've spent the last 5 years in NYC and SF (which are both very bike friendly). I bike rarely and pretty cautiously, but even so all of my closest calls with getting killed by a car have been on a bike.

Copenhagen is bike friendly. Amsterdam is bike friendly. NYC and especially hilly SF are neither bike friendly. At best they are bike tolerant :)

Re: Peloton S-1

#149
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radical idea: Peloton's target market is the kind of person who is willing to spend $2000 on an indoor spin bike either as their primary mode of exercise or as one of many bikes they own. Especially people who want to spin during times of inclement or excessive warm weather. The Peloton may not make much sense to people living in pleasant cycling meccas on the West Coast, but east of the Rockies the weather is a lot…

In particular, Peloton's target market is overwhelmingly female . You won't find it in this S1, but this alone is why you can straight up disregard everything you will read on HN today about their business model. No, it turns out women don't buy carbon bikes, a standalone trainer, wrench a cassette on it, put the bike on, hook up a tablet somewhere, install a power meter, ... it's the ole "rsync is superior to Dropbo…

I think your rsync-dropbox analogy is a good one, but I also found your statement about how it's a gender thing to be somewhat sexist, (it almost sounds as if you're implying that rsync is for men and dropbox is for women because in general men are more inclined to do difficult things than women).

Re: Peloton S-1

#150
post #11

Under the risks section: "We derive a significant majority of our revenue from sales of our Bike and a decline in sales of our Bike would negatively affect our future revenue and operating results;" What many people don't know is that you can access all their classes using your own exercise bike and their apps, paying a little over 1/4 of the normal monthly subscription fee. The limitations of this approach is that y…

Peloton's absurd price is the only reason it is popular. It's for people who want a song and dance with their exercise instead of focusing on working out.
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