CNN
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Peloton is partnering with TikTok to create short-form exercise lessons and different content material because the struggling digital health and tools firm makes an attempt to rebrand.
As a part of the partnership, TikTok will roll out a #TikTokFitness hub that includes a devoted Peloton part with customized content material created for the platform, the businesses announced Thursday. Customers will be capable to watch a variety of Peloton-powered content material together with dwell lessons, shorter health clips, movie star collaborations and movies from instructors.
“We collectively acknowledge the best way folks have interaction with health is continually altering,” mentioned Oli Snoddy, Peloton’s Vice President of Shopper Advertising and marketing, within the launch. He mentioned TikTok needs to develop its content material “to new audiences, and in fully new methods.”
The Peloton hub on TikTok marks the primary time the health firm is producing social content material for a accomplice outdoors its personal channels, bringing collectively two pandemic-era darlings that noticed explosive development because the world stayed at residence. Peloton’s inventory worth peaked in 2020 at greater than $160 a share however fell dramatically to lower than $5 at instances since. Its shares had been up about 9% after the information Thursday that they’d be partnering with the social media app, residence to 1 billion lively customers globally.
“There’s all the time been this type of interconnectedness between Peloton and TikTok,” mentioned Jennifer Grygiel, an affiliate professor and social media knowledgeable at Syracuse College. “You’re caught at residence, and what’s higher at residence than a stationary bike or a brand new social media platform to get you to do participatory dance strikes?”
The collaboration comes simply months on the heels of a major rebrand meant to border Peloton past being an organization that makes high-end, in-home health tools akin to spinning bikes, treadmills, rowing machines and subscriptions to health lessons folks can observe whereas utilizing that tools.
The corporate endured financial struggles and a sequence of public relations snafus. A 2019 ad triggered backlash for seemingly peddling adverse physique picture and privilege. Then a few common TV choices featured rich folks on Peloton bikes encountering well being issues. A Peloton-induced heart attack killed Carrie’s beloved Big within the “Intercourse and the Metropolis” reboot titled “And Simply Like That…” One other coronary heart assault nearly wiped out Mike “Wags” Wagner in “Billions.”
In January 2023, the corporate agreed to pay $19 million after the Shopper Product Security Fee levied “one of many largest civil penalties in its historical past,” the company mentioned, following a recall of 125,000 unsafe Peloton treadmills.
The corporate introduced a “new chapter” in Could pushing a extra inclusive model identification with a wider vary of health choices, extra free lessons, tiered memberships and an emphasis away from biking.
Peloton was a pandemic celebrity with its modern at-home bikes and corresponding dwell, upbeat lessons harking back to a classy, in-person biking class, soaring in 2020. However the firm struggled to adjust in a post-covid world of reopened gyms and in-person lessons. Prospects began rejecting the excessive price ($3,000 for a motorcycle plus $49 month-to-month subscription) and the inventory misplaced 76% of its worth in 2021. As Peloton has fought to remain alive within the years since, it has seen memberships and income fall, executed rounds of lay-offs, shuttered shops and elevated costs for tools.
The health firm misplaced 65,000 app subscribers final quarter. It reported a virtually $160 million internet loss for the previous three-month interval.
“We have now to make our revenues cease shrinking and begin rising once more,” Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy wrote in a workers memo final summer season when saying layoffs. “Money is oxygen. Oxygen is life.”
Beforehand a CFO at Netflix, McCarthy joined Peloton in February 2022 to save lots of the flailing enterprise, with efforts together with the rebrand, a rental-bike service and partnerships with entities together with the NBA and WNBA, Lululemon, the College of Michigan and Liverpool Soccer Membership.