TCO 192 | Peloton Data

192: Jess Sims Finally Appears on Live with Kelly & Ryan plus our interview with Bob Treemore

Last Updated: April 30, 2023By Tags: , , , , ,

TCO 192 | Peloton Data

 

John Mills joins us to discuss Peloton’s upcoming earnings call.

Forbes writes about Peloton’s delivery issues.

Changes have been made to how PR’s are calculated for boot camps.

The Peloton blog has tips for how to become more flexible.

Dr. Jenn – Stop making your exercise all about calories.

Jess Simms was finally on Live with Kelly & Ryan.

Bloomberg writes about how Peloton plans to keep growing post-pandemic.

Shape.com talks to Tunde about her skincare.

Pop Sugar gives us a look at Peloton instructors’ workout routines.

Insider.com has the details on Ally Love’s food choices.

Yahoo has an article about Jenn Sherman.

Ben Alldis did an AMA on Reddit.

Freightwaves.com investigates “Container-gate” and its impacts on Peloton.

Logan Active Clean is the best way to clean your Peloton.

Echelon partners with Mario Lopez and tries to infiltrate the White House.

Apple Fitness now has its own artist collaboration.

Bowflex launches two new pieces of equipment.

Jennifer Garner talks about her favorite Peloton meditations.

Adrian Williams was on the Shondaland podcast.

Mark Lindsay, former lead singer of Paul Revere & The Raiders) got a Peloton.

Kendall Toole has a new movie ride.

Selena Samuela has an Instagram post about her days as a rock star.

Peloton has a new “Strength for Runners” collection of classes.

There’s a new boot camp challenge.

Artist Collaboration – Post Malone.

All this plus our interview with Bob Treemore!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

192: Jess Sims Finally Appears on Live with Kelly & Ryan plus our interview with Bob Treemore

How are you feeling?

So far so good.

Crystal got her COVID vaccine. We talked a while back about how we participated in the COVID vaccine trial. I got the real thing and she got the placebo. They are now letting people unblind themselves to find out if they got the real thing or not. Then if they got the placebo, they can get the real thing.

We always thought I had the placebo, but it was confirmed.

It was confirmed, so she got the real shot. In case people were wondering or somewhat appalled, so you can unclench your pearls, even within the group of people that participate in the medical trial and receive the placebo, they are still issuing them according to CDC guidelines. You’ve just put in a different pool of people i.e., medical trial people. They started with frontline workers who had gotten the placebo within the medical trial, then it was older people with health issues, then they got to you and you’ve been classified as an essential worker. If we post pictures on Instagram later of us licking door knobs, that’s why.

Don’t worry, we’re still taking all this very safely. In general, I want to make it clear, we still plan to follow all the guidelines. You’re still wearing your mask everywhere and doing all the things, and I will be too.

Before we get too far field here, we should probably point out you did your Clubhouse thing.

I did and it was a lot of fun too.

We’ll be doing another one this week and I’ll actually be able to be at this one.

We decided we’re going to do a weekly thing. It’s going to be every Sunday at 4:00 PM Central, 5:00 PM Eastern. It’s a lot of fun. I love how everybody was jumping in. There are a lot of people in the Clubhouse platform that really are not part of the Peloton community. They have a Peloton but they’re not in the community. It’s been fun educating people and that kind of thing too. If you want a Clubhouse invite, I am dead out. I am out of invites. I have no more. If I get more, then I will post and let people know, but there’s already a backlog because everybody wants in. It’s the new hot thing right now.

Fish around with your friends.

Ask your friends, post on all the groups. That’s how people are getting in. Don’t give up. I just don’t have any right now.

Also, we’re going to bring back the Zoom call. We’re going to do a Zoom call next weekend, not the 30th, but the following Saturday.

That would be February 6th.

Watch this space for details on that. We’ll post it within the group and all that. Shameless plugs, as if we haven’t been doing that already, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart, TuneIn, wherever you find your podcasts, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure and subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you would be so kind to leave a review. We have a review to share. This is from Rnsteph. She says, “This is my favorite podcast. I’ve been a member of the Peloton community since the beginning of the year. Thank you, COVID. Unfortunately, I didn’t find this podcast until the summer. However, after listening once, I was hooked. I love that they keep me up to date on all things Peloton. Crystal and Tom are funny and enjoyable to listen to. I listen to this during my commute on Mondays. It’s the only thing I look forward to on Mondays. When I hear Peloton has breaking news, I instantly think, “I wonder what crystal thinks about this.”

You can always message me, Steph.

Her leaderboard name is StephanieSwan if you want to track her down.

Thank you for the kind review.

Also you can check out our Facebook page, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. We have a YouTube channel where you can watch everything we’re doing right now. You can see us do it as well as hear us do it. You can find that at YouTube.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, be sure and subscribe to that as well. Sometimes we post other things in there and you don’t get to wait for us to talk about it. Rhere’s all that, let’s dig in, shall we?

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Joining us from Run, Lift and Live is John Mills. John, how’s it going?

I’m doing well. How’s it going?

You are pumped. I love it.

Kicking things off with news from the world of finance, Peloton has announced their second quarter fiscal earnings call release date.

It’s going to be on February 4th and it’s always at 5:00 PM Eastern, 4:00 PM central. John, walk us through what you’re expecting to see because I love your questions. I want to dig into this.

Going back to the last three earnings call dating back to the May 2020 earnings call, they consistently ask about production, the manufacturing facilities. Those are common questions because in the last three, we would have been in the heat of the pandemic, in the heat of demand. They’d been struggling with that. I suspect that same theme will reign supreme in the early questions in this call.

Do you think they’re going to be a little more pointed, maybe not so many soft balls?

Yeah, I think that they’re going to ask about the manufacturing. I think there are going to be questions that you may not off the bat think they’re related to, but they’re going to have some tie back to manufacturing and service.

That will be fun to listen to. I’ll have my detective hat on and my pencil taking notes. What else are you expecting to happen? If you looked into your crystal ball, do you have any thing you’re looking to see?

The rower.

If you're dedicated to the product, stuff comes naturally. You get fitter, whether it's weight loss or whether you're building muscle mass. Click To Tweet

Let that rower go. I’m tired of hearing about that rower.

I’m hopeful that we hear something that’s not just another play on what we’re looking to do with regards to some of these things, but that there’s something tangible, something new relative to it. If it were me, from my own moral perspective, I think I would want to say something tangible relative to a product and service and manufacturing. I’m hopeful that we’ll hear something a little more tangible, so we’ll see.

Do you have any thoughts about what they might talk about with the Tread sales that have opened up in the UK? I’m curious to hear if this question comes up because in the Clubhouse meeting we had, Gina was there, I know you were there. Gina brought up that she actually went to the store and they told her, “We’ve got all the regular Treads. They’re sitting in a warehouse. They’re here but nobody can buy them until March 30th.” What’s up? Is somebody going to ask about that on the call?

Maybe they’re sitting in a warehouse because they just want to know. Maybe they have been in a warehouse where maybe they’ve got 40% of what they anticipate in a warehouse and they’re letting them stack up so they don’t have this again.

They should probably tell their showrooms that, instead of their showrooms telling everybody, “They’re all here.”

That question is definitely coming up. The question about how it’s been going in the UK and how is delivery going in the UK? What’s the volume like in the UK? Have they been able to fulfill that demand? Are you expecting to be able to fulfill the demand when the new Treads drop? Those questions are definitely going.

It’s going to be fun. I’m very curious to see how those questions line up with your predictions. I’m excited to see that.

I’m going to segue into an article you found on Forbes, Peloton’s Predicament: What To Do When Demand Outstrips Supply.

This article was hilarious to me because it talks to the things that we all talk about like supply chain management 101 type of conversation in this thing. It was more or less like someone was taking the thoughts that everyone has and then throwing them into an article. They knew we’d read it because everybody’s thinking the same thing.

Peloton is a good clickbait right now.

That’s how I read this thing. They’re going, “There’s a little bit of an issue and it would’ve been nice to be able to solve this by better supply chain management.” You probably should do one of these next list of things, communicate better.

Forbes, you should read this blog post. We have discussed the hell out of those.

I posted it going, “Are they going to punish them or something or giving them a talking to?”

I think the author has a three-column a day.

In all seriousness, the New York Times wrote about it. I think people are trying to pick it up. You can’t just recycle it, so then you have to find a new spin on it. I will give them this, at least it’s stuff that he came up with. He didn’t go over there and lift the New York Times article because we all know there are a lot of people that do that.

Here’s a thought I had as I was looking at this Forbes article. Everybody’s all in a panic about they’re missing their moment and they’re going to lose all these customers. I’m asking the question and I sincerely mean this. I cannot think of an answer but maybe someone else can. Name a company that had a product that was popular, people couldn’t get it, and now they went out of business because of it.

It’s not a thing.

They still to this day make Cabbage Patch dolls.

There are people out there that love Peloton and they’re totally hating on them. Everybody wants to predict the future and they want to be right about it. There are a lot of people that are predicting that this is going to hurt Peloton. I do think it’s going to hurt their NPS. I think there’s going to be an impact on that. I don’t see anything to indicate that it’s going to hurt them financially. Everyone says this is a good thing. If you have that many people wanting your product, they’re willing to wait twelve weeks. They might bitch, but they’re willing to wait.

I even questioned whether or not it’s even going to impact their Net Promoter Score. Aren’t those surveys from customers? If you don’t have your bike yet and I can’t count those numbers in my results, do I have to count anything you say from a survey perspective?

That’s a good point. What you’re saying is you’re going to buy a Peloton and then you get so frustrated with it, you decide not to buy a Peloton, then you don’t fill out a survey. Therefore, your feedback doesn’t count.

I’ve got to imagine that your response isn’t a part of the NPS because I would assume those are all customers.

You’re absolutely right. They give it to you after you have the product because it’s all about like, “Would you recommend Peloton to somebody else?” You get it after you have your delivery. That’s the whole point of it.

Where you might see some negative people sneak in is if they’re app users. They could be like, “I have the app.” I don’t know what the line of demarcation is for what the Net Promoter people consider a customer but potentially.

Those are valid points.

I’m curious about that too. It may not even affect them there. In this article, what’s interesting is they point that out. They’re like, “Normally, opportunity is born out of crisis.” In this scenario, they have a crisis is born out of opportunity. It’s the reverse. It begs the question exactly what you’re saying, Tom, in that scenario. It’s painful to a lot of people, but how much of it is a problem?

I see everything through the prism of concerts because I work in the concert industry. I can think is, “That Taylor Swift girl, watch out.” If she sold out four shows and people aren’t going to like her anymore. Nobody thinks like that. It would have been true with Taylor Swift tickets. I’ve done concerts that have been super-fast sellouts. I get a lot of people yelling and bitching and saying it’s not fair, but they still like the band, they still buy a ticket to the next show. Even if they decide that they’re never going to come to my venue again, they say that until a band they like shows up. I try not to have this as a mentality, but I also try to use this to comfort myself. You’ve got to make a concerted effort to get somebody to be like, “I’m not going to go see a band I like because I hate your room.” I don’t think long-term it’s going to be a significant impact.

I was thinking through everything. I think the only thing we didn’t address that’s still hanging out there that they can be judged on is their Better Business Bureau score. It sucks. It’s bad.

Ultimately, you go to the Better Business Bureau, at least when I do, I go to the Better Business Bureau, the only metric I’m using is, “Is this a fraud? Are they flat out stealing my money?” I don’t think anyone thinks Peloton is a fraud, that bikes don’t actually exist.

There are people that think.

There are people saying that because they’re whining and I get the frustration. Peloton is not defrauding you. It’s just you don’t know what words mean. You’re trying to use big ones to sound like you’re going to threaten them, but they did not defraud you. There is a bike that will be there, and if there isn’t, they’ll give you your money back. Ergo, you can be upset and you’re entitled to be upset, but that is not fraud.

I read an article where they do a Peloton Bike+ review. It really encapsulated it for me. The person who was doing the review was like, “I got the Bike and there’s this scheduling that I didn’t like. People are having all these delays and there are all these problems.” At the very end of it he goes, “I’m never going to give that Bike back. These classes are awesome.” That’s the nutshell.

We will sit tight until next week until we can discuss the earnings call. Until then, John, where can people find you?

They can find me on Facebook in my Run, Lift and Live group or page. They can find me on Instagram, @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Thank you.

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There have been some changes made to how PRs are calculated during bootcamps. Do tell.

Now, basically the only sections that are calculated are when you’re actually on the Tread. Before, your entire PR went from the beginning of the bootcamp until the end of the bootcamp, and it would stop calculate. It would stop counting while you were on the floor during the floor section.

How does it know what you’re doing? You could be sitting there just eating.

That makes sense, but your PR still went over that whole time. Now what they’ve done is take out those sections altogether, so literally PR stops counting, not just your output stops going. Before, your output stopped but the PR kept going. Now, the PR is only encapsulating the portions that you’re actually on the Tread.

It can’t measure you because you’re off the machine. They were still calculating that under the total metric, which isn’t fair because they have no way to gauge.

Exactly, it actually made your PR go down. Now, you’re only seeing the portions you’re literally doing to run. It’s a much more accurate representation of the time on the Tread.

It seems like a fair adjustment.

I think it needed to happen. I’m glad that it did.

The Peloton Blog had a nice post about how you can become more flexible.

This is an article that Denis and Adrian both give their thoughts on how you can use different stretches to become flexible, and how much that benefits your other workouts. You may not think that you need to stretch after a Bike ride for example, but you do. The reason is that it helps you be stronger next time. If your hamstrings are all tight, your quadriceps are all tight and your hip flexors and everything is tight, what happens is they can shrink up whenever you’re on the Bike and you go, go, go. If you don’t stretch out afterwards, then the next time you get on the Bike, you’re actually keeping everything so tight. It didn’t get to stretch out and use it to its full potential. Now, you’re only using a little bit less of the muscle and that happens every time. They talked through all of that and they give you the details on what kind of stretches are best for the Bike and what kind of stretches are best for the Tread. It’s a very good article and I recommend everyone read it.

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Joining us again is Dr. Jenn Mann, a licensed marriage, family and child therapist, sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, or her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She’s written four best-selling books and she has an app called No More Diets, which can come in very handy for people. Welcome to the show once again, Dr. Jenn.

Thank you so much.

Our question this week, we talked about this last time about how we put this out on The Clip Out group, yet another reason why you should join it. This is from Katie Norris. We asked what struggles people are having that Dr. Jenn could help them with. She says, “What isn’t my struggle? Mainly I struggle with not equating calorie burn with health or fitness. It’s just so programmed and reinforced on a lot of different platforms like my Apple Watch. I know that strength is very critical to health and fitness and weight loss, but if I don’t see the calorie burn, I feel like I wasted my time.”

This is something that a lot of people relate to. It’s what I call diet mentality. That diet mentality is about calorie focus, withholding things from yourself based on these numbers, and looking at your food in terms of good food and bad food, “I was good or I was bad.” That always gets you into trouble. I think that it’s very astute what she said about that she’s noticed it on her Apple Watch and the influx of number information that we get in this day and age can take us off-track from what’s important. To me what’s important is health longevity that we’re working out so we can get the benefits in terms of our bone density, in terms of our cardio benefits, in terms of our strengths, in terms of our balance. As we age, we tend to lose balance. It helps us live a long time. When we get focused on the calories, it can become very self-defeating and it can become very negative, especially if you’re smaller, if you’re shorter, if you weigh less, then you’re going to get numbers that may be very discouraging, “Why am I even doing this workout anyway? Who knows how accurate the numbers even are?” Especially when we’re talking about a strength workout, because it’s not like the Tread or the Bike where you’re hooked up, they know the pedals, the strokes, the feed, all that sort of stuff. It’s a little more arbitrary and less accurate.

What I would recommend for her are a few things. One is there’s a different way of thinking about this. Some people call it mindful eating. Some people call it intuitive eating. There are a lot of different names for it, but I would recommend that she check out some of these philosophies that are more about your relationship with food and taking out the calorie numbers, and really learning to listen to your body, to honor your body. I have an app called No More Diets that is based on this philosophy that was created by people like Geneen Roth, who wrote Breaking Free From Emotional Eating, which I would recommend. Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole wrote intuitive eating, another book that I would recommend. What you want to do is work on changing your mentality. I understand this on a very profound level because I once had an eating disorder for a good decade, and I’ve been recovered for a few decades now fortunately, which I never thought was even remotely possible because I was obsessed with the calories and the numbers in and the numbers out and all of that stuff.

I would recommend that you can have a lot of different clock faces on your Apple Watch or your Fitbit or any of those and I would take the calories off. I would take that out of your repertoire for a while and focus on your relationship with food, on learning to listen to your body, eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re satisfied. We’ve talked a lot about the hunger scale, a scale from 0 to 10. Ten being the fullest you’ve ever been, Thanksgiving full, your stomach is going to burst. Zero being you fainted, you’re on the floor, you’re so hungry. Five being neutral.

What you want to do is learn to eat when you’re a three, which you know you’re hungry. If you’re like, “I think I’m hungry, but I’m not sure,” you’re probably a four. If your stomach is growling, starting to feel faint, you’re probably a two. If you feel like you’re about to lose it, you’re feeling dizzy, you’re a one. You don’t want to let yourself get hungrier than a three. On the other side, you don’t want to eat past a five or six. A five is neutral. A six is, “I can tell I’ve eaten food but I’m not stuffed.” A seven is full and eight is stuffed, and nine is painful. What you want to do is you want to learn to start to honor your body by eating when you’re hungry, solidly at three, and stopping when you’re satisfied, not full. Working on listening to your body and asking yourself, “What does my body want? Not just what does my mouth want? How do I want to feel at the end of this meal?”

That’s an important question to ask. There are some times where we need the comfort of being like, “I want to feel a full belly. I want to feel satisfied like I am comforted and I don’t have to worry about where food is going to come from next.” There are times where it’s like, “I like to be able to run down the block. If someone were chasing me, I would like to be light on my feet and to feel light after I eat.” I think also we have to look at our emotional relationship with food. When we’re that focused on calories, it neglects that there are times in our life where we have an emotional experience with food always, from the moment we are born, when we are fed, whether it’s breast or bottle, we are held, we are comforted, so we associate food and comfort.

There are times where we need more calories, not necessarily even physically but sometimes emotionally. Then there are days where we need less and that it all balances out when we listen to our body and we’re in tune. That’s a skill that one needs to learn. The more we’re focused on the numbers, the numbers take us away from ourselves. If they take us away from honoring our bodies and trusting our bodies, and they send us a message of, “You can’t be trusted,” you’ve got to look at these numbers.

I worked with a lot of people in recovery from full-blown eating disorders, or even what we call subclinical eating disorders. I think that most women in particular, a lot more men now, at some point have a subclinical eating disorder. A lot of the instructors lately have been talking about their own experiences with eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Kendall has talked about it. Rebecca has talked about it. They’ve been posting about it. This is something that a lot of people struggle with. It’s very important to learn to honor your body and make your relationship with food primary, and how your body looks at working on self-acceptance secondary.

Do you think there’s an easy way that she can take that same advice and use it when she’s working out to not focus on the numbers? I think that was amazing advice. I know how I am and I’m like, “Now I’m on the bike and I see the numbers. What do I do with that?”

I put a Post-It Note over it over the calorie numbers. I think that it’s too distracting. Let’s say that she’s been doing it for so long that she cannot see the calories but she sees the miles, she’s going to be doing the calculation, just take the whole thing out or put a piece of paper over it. Make a commitment for a period of time one week, one month, whatever, to experiment with not having that up on the board, as well as her watch, and focusing on tuning into herself. Before she gets on the Bike to ask herself the question and calories cannot be the answer, “What is my reason for working out right now?” If calories can’t be the answer, what is the reason you’re working out? To focus on that during the workout.

TCO 192 | Peloton Data

Peloton Data: Someone should probably have raised a flag and said, “It’s not appropriate to have our inventory accessible to anyone.”

 

We live in a society that has taught us to focus on the calories and the numbers, especially right now with all the influx of information we get, but really what leads us to become lifetime exercisers? What makes us love exercise? What makes us live longer in the end? What makes it a positive experience is our relationship with exercise and our bodies and all of that, as opposed to those numbers. Those numbers tend to only be used to beat ourselves up with. I’ve never had anyone use those numbers purely for just self-love. You’d be pretty far along in your recovery and highly developed to be able to do them neutrally. If you’re there, then more power to you. That’s great. It’s very possible long into recovery or if you’re somebody who does not issue this interesting information.

As you said in the other episode about Peloton, it’s unicorns and rainbows. Someone that looks at calories only as data, I think that’s your unicorn. There are a lot of people that do that.

I am one of them years ago had I not done the work on myself and had I not recovered from my eating disorder.

Thank you so much for joining us. Remind everybody where they can find you.

You can find me on social media @DrJennMann. I post everything including my InStyle Magazine Column, although I haven’t posted about it in a while, but I need you because it goes up every week. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, the works, but I also post all of my Peloton workouts on my Insta Stories for those that are Peloton freaks like me and are interested.

Thank you.

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It finally happened, Jess Sims finally made it on to Live with Kelly and Ryan.

It happened last Thursday, and she was on and she did a HIIT workout and a different workout. She gave them a very good workout, which is what she does. How cool is that that she got to have her segment air? It’s lovely to see our Peloton instructors being able to it. It’s cool. I remember when we first started this show and they weren’t out there doing this thing.

It was such a rarity and now it’s all the time.

Do you remember either Today’s show or Good Morning America segment that was a huge deal, and a whole bunch of Peloton members got to go? Erica Mills was there. There were a whole bunch of people that we’ve interviewed that were up on that stage with the instructors. That was the first really big thing like that. Now, it’s happening all the time.

Bloomberg had an article, Peloton Moves Into Breakaway Mode to Secure its Sudden Dominance.

Honestly, there’s not a whole lot here that we don’t know. I love this article because it talks about instructor compensation. It talks about how Peloton handles their instructors’ compensation differently than other fitness companies. For example, we have heard for a very long time that Peloton hires them as full-time employees. This article confirms that most other fitness companies they’re contracted and it’s per class. I’ve always known it was different at Peloton because there’s a reason they’re loyal. There’s actually talent agents that help find new instructors. That’s interesting because it did not always use to be that way. Maybe it’s like a two-step process like the talent agents find them and then our instructors look at them in person and see how they are. It says here that the more senior instructors make upwards of $500,000 in total compensation, that does not count the money they make from external sponsorships. It’s a validation from what we’ve been saying how well these instructors get paid. Also it says here that they have handed equity awards to people throughout the company’s rank. It says that they give former employees and current employees stock options. It’s both and it’s all levels of employees. It’s not just the instructors. They’re doing okay.

I thought this last sentence was pretty interesting where it says, “Regulatory filings show current and former employees as of September 30, 2020, held stock options with several billion dollars of unrealized gains.” To me it says the people on the inside that have received stock options, even though it shot up, they’re still not selling.

That’s exactly what that means.

I know some of them probably are still in a time period where maybe they can’t. I would think most of them are done now.

It’s been over a year.

That means that they’re at an all-time high, but I think this is just the beginning, “I’m not selling.”

That’s exactly what that means. I’m glad you pointed that out because there are a lot of employees that work there that they’re not selling because they know Peloton is still destined for a lot more. It also indicates that one instructor last year received a six-figure salary and a bonus offer. They’re doing okay. Granted it’s New York City where they live, so they need a lot of money.

$500,000 a year is a lot of money, but it’s not as much in New York as it is in other places.

You are starting to see it pay off, and what I mean by that is that instructors are starting to buy houses. We talked about Emma Lovewell. As a side note to this, Alex Toussaint moved into his first house and it was a very cool moment. He posted it, he’s very proud as he should.

You’ve got to think if you’re a fitness instructor, you don’t get into that thinking you’re ever going to reach this level. To me, it’s like the first wave of rock bands. Before the Beatles and after the Beatles, nobody envisioned that as you could be in a band so popular, everybody in the world would know who you are. That’s what they’re experiencing right now.

On that note, I want to add my personal opinion. In the last weeks, I have seen people freak out about at least four different instructors leaving because classes have been canceled. These instructors are not going anywhere, guys. If they go anywhere, it’s because something bad happened, either physically to them, the company had to let them go for some reason, but they’re not leaving voluntarily just because. They know that they are riding a money wave. They know that they are lucky individuals and they work hard to be there. They’re not going anywhere. If you hear people saying that, you can tell people to shut up.

Obviously, eventually instructors will leave because it’s just the nature of life. This idea that every week, there’s a new one leaving.

It’s always because classes got canceled. Maybe they had an illness, maybe something was going on personally. Do not jump to conclusions. I f you hear other people jump to conclusions, talk them down because it’s not true. I have seen many rumors get out of control. It’s stupid.

There was an article in Shape Magazine all about Tunde.

It’s how she takes care of her skin on and off the Bike. Most importantly, in my opinion it’s a step-by-step how she rocks her bold lip color on the Bike and how it stays on. That is not easy. It talks through that. It’s in Shape Magazine and you need to check it out because it gives all the details.

PopSugar had an article, Two Peloton Instructors Share Their Fitness and Food Diaries For The New Year.

It focuses on Jess King and Anna Greenberg. I thought it was interesting because it talks through how often they work out and in addition to their workouts that they teach at Peloton. It goes through literally every day as a workout diary. Definitely check that out so you can get some ideas. I think it’s interesting to find out what their schedule is. They work out a lot more than you would think.

Apparently, it must be a talk about a Peloton instructor’s food choices this week because Ally Love is in Insider.com talking about her daily diet and workout regimen.

I think that you hit the nail on the head when you said anything Peloton is clickbait. Again, it’s funny to me how they’re everywhere now.

They should be careful because clickbait implies that it’s not true or it’s really ramped up. It’s just that Peloton right now drives clicks.

I said it in another way. It’s just that having the word in the title in some way drives SEO. It’s not really clickbait. This article goes through what she eats in a day, how much sleep she’s getting, what kind of routine she’s doing.

I don’t know what she’s drinking there, but it looks positively disgusting.

I think that’s matcha. Celery juice, that’s what that was. It wasn’t matcha. Celery juice does not sound good. I’m not going to lie. Just drink water.

Yahoo had an article about Jenn Sherman talking about how she became the first ever Peloton instructor, which is a story like if you’ve been around, you’ve heard a million times at this point. It’s a great story. There are many people coming into the world of Peloton. For a lot of people, it is a new story.

Not to mention, you can listen to her tell it herself because she was on the show.

Episode twelve.

She tells the entire story and it’s fabulous. The email still exists that she sent to John Foley, “Give me a job.”

She should print it out and frame it.

It has become a piece of Peloton history.

Ben Alldis did an AMA, which means Ask Me Anything over on Reddit.

I didn’t get a chance to swing on over and see his answers, but I thought it was worth mentioning because one, you should go check it out and two, it’s the first time. If there’s ever been another time, I don’t recall, that an instructor has been interacting with the Reddit community. They’re a large community.

It’s a huge community over. There are 140,000, 150,000 people in that Peloton Reddit community.

I remember when it was like 10,000 and now it’s crazy how this world keeps blowing up.

Checking in with one of our favorite websites, FreightWaves.com.

This website is so fun.

The headline of this is Peloton: The poster child for Containergeddon.

I’ll be honest, I only glanced over this, but this entire article goes through the fight that is going on in the industry to get the containers. This entire container gate is what led to them doing the free air freight and also buying a cargo plane.

Peloton likes to control their own destiny, that’s for damn sure. That’s pretty deep in the weeds about what the delivery delays are being caused and/or exacerbated by. If you want to check that out, you can do that at FreightWaves.com. People can’t get enough of the Logan Active Clean we’ve been talking about.

I know. Everybody that gets it loves it as much as I do, which makes me feel really good. I try to only talk about things that I truly enjoy. This one smells good. It’s non-toxic, it’s safe. There are three different products. One, you can use to freshen the air before and after your workout. They also have one that is a yoga mat and equipment cleaner, which is by far my favorite because it’s so versatile. You can use it on your Peloton, on the screen, on the seat. You can use it on your Peloton Tread, the screen.

Any of these machines of Peloton, where there’s Bike, Tread, Tonal, Mirror, there are many different types of parts on these machines. You’ll be like, “What should I be cleaning with?”

You should be using this because it has no alcohol.

You’re like, “What I want to clean the screen with might not be what I want to clean the metal with, versus the plastic versus the rubber.” With this, you can go crazy with and you don’t get to worry about it. A lot of stuff you clean screen with, it works okay at first. Over time, it starts to dull the screen because it has the alcohol in it.

This one, no alcohol, nontoxic, technically you could drink it but don’t. Then the third product, the hand sanitizer. It also does not have alcohol in it. It has all of these things that smell good. They all have a great sense to them and they’re nice sized bottles, so you can take them anywhere. The towels are amazing. I cannot say enough good things about these towels. They’re soft, they’re microfiber, you can use it on your screen. You can use it on the Bike. You can use the larger one for a sweat towel, which I do. It’s great. I highly recommend it. If you’re interested, you should totally check them out at www.LoganActiveClean.com. If you use Clip Out 10, you will get 10% off your order. Follow them on social media, @LoganActiveClean, and on Facebook it’s Logan Active Clean. I believe there is free shipping over $59.

One more quick tip, use it in your car, dashboard screen. You don’t have to worry about it.

It smells good.

—

Echelon had a big announcement this week.

They are partnering with Mario Lopez.

Also Known As Slater from Saved by the Bell.

I love that show.

In all fairness, we’re not even trying to rip Mario Lopez. People love stuff like that. It’s just funny when you see the level of stars that Peloton works with.

Unfortunately, there are levels of stars in any industry. There’s Beyonce.

There’s McCartney and Madonna and then Shonda Rhimes, huge names. Then Echelon is big like, “We have Mario Lopez.” It’s like, “Okay. That’s nice.”

It makes them happy.

Although I’ve heard good things about the new Saved by the Bell show.

I want to check it out. I totally love Saved by the Bell.

The show runner used to be one of the main writers on 30 Rock. They say it’s actually pretty good.

I don’t doubt it. That sounds like a great show runner.

While we’re torturing Crystal by talking about Echelon, they decided to get into the “Joe Biden, can’t get his Peloton in the White House” game by posting on Instagram that they would bring a bike that doesn’t have a tablet.

Therefore, he can ride it, but what good is it if he doesn’t have a tablet? Also, it has a Mac address, so it still wouldn’t fit their security protocol. That’s silly. If anybody is still worried he’s not getting a Peloton, I want to be very clear that he will get his Peloton Bike. It will be fine. He’s not going to change to Echelon. You don’t go to Peloton and then go, “I think I’ll move to Echelon because it doesn’t have a tablet.”

Apple Fitness announced they are doing an artist collaboration now.

Jacqui Cincotta posted this in Run, Lift and Live. I wanted to have a picture of it specifically because I could care less that they have an artist series.

Dolly Parton’s a good one.

I love Dolly Parton, but what really catches my eye about this is how much it looks exactly like a freaking Peloton ad.

Yeah, from a graphic design standpoint. You really would have to stop and focus on the fact.

I totally did. I was like, “Oh.” I had to do a double-take on this, so I find that fascinating. That was my big takeaway from it. Apple has the rights to many large catalogs of music. It should not be difficult for them to get licensing for any of these.

They have all the money in the world.

This is not shocking. It’s shame that it looks exactly like Peloton. I would like to see them do something a little different. It says a lot about Peloton.

It says a lot about Apple when you have to stoop to copy in someone’s work, that’s just lazy. John Mills posted over in Run, Lift and Live about Nautilus dropping two new products.

They’ve got a Max Trainer M9, which he says is not so exciting, and the new Bowflex T22 Treadmill. He says it’s very similar to their T10 Treadmill, but it has a 22-inch screen. He thinks that the intent is to better compete with the Tread+ but it doesn’t have the slats, and it costs $2,700. In his mind, this is going to sell well because it’s like an intermediate. It’s more akin to the Tread minus for a lack of better word, just the regular Tread that Peloton is coming out with. He thinks that they’re trying to stay in the race, but right now he’s still seeing that it’s Peloton and ICON. Nautilus has an earnings call coming up though, so we’ll see.

I think right now all of those companies are doing well. When people talk about the Corona bubble for these fitness companies, I don’t think Peloton is going to experience it, but I think a lot of these other companies are.

—

Apparently, Jennifer Garner is a fan of the Peloton.

We’ve talked about this before. I didn’t know so much that she was a fan of meditation classes specific to Peloton, but she has done Live videos with Chelsea Jackson Roberts. They talk about meditation obviously because she’s a meditation teacher. I missed this because there was a whole week last year that Jennifer Garner put together a thing for Peloton. She loves her meditation, and her favorite meditation to use is Peloton. I thought that was very cool, a whole article written about it.

Adrian Williams was on Shondaland, which is the Shonda Rhimes podcast.

He talks all about the death in his family that led to Peloton. It gives his entire backstory, which as you know, I’m a huge fan of hearing that. I love hearing the stories of how they got here. You definitely do not want to miss this.

We’ve had another celebrity new to Peloton. It was shown on Facebook that Mark Lindsay got a Peloton. If people don’t know who Mark Lindsay is, he was the former lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders. He posted a picture of a Peloton. I have a picture of me with him and Micky Dolenz. Paul Revere and the Raiders, for the people who are under 100 years old, they had quite a few hits songs. They had a song called Kicks. They actually sang the original version of Steppin’ Stone, which was then later covered by The Monkees and became a much bigger hit. If you know one Paul Revere and the Raiders song, it’s going to be Indian Reservation, the Cherokee people song.

I was like, “The Tim McGraw song?”

That’s technically a Mark Lindsay solo song, but then they released. It’s a weird story. He didn’t have COVID, but he had every symptom of COVID and they tested him three times and he kept coming up negative, but he had all the same symptoms and they don’t know what. He’s better now. As you can see by the picture, the dude’s in good shape for his age and still sounds great too. His wife was like, “We’re going to keep you even healthier and we’re going to get you a Peloton.”

Tom, pull all your music strings and get him on the show.

I will see. He just got it, so he doesn’t have anything to talk about.

We’ll make it happen. It’s fine. I’m sure we can think of something.

Kendall had another movie ride.

This one was all movie musicals like The Greatest Showman, that kind of thing. I haven’t gotten to it yet, but the pictures looked amazing and fun.

Selena Samuella, had an interesting Instagram post.

This cracks me up. This is really an advertisement for the Rock This playlist that she was doing. Peloton teamed up with Spotify Lab this week, and they had a Rock This playlist and several of the instructors joined in. This cracked me up because this is Selena in apparently the ‘90s. She was in a band. That’s why I felt this was interesting because her she’s had a lot of different stages in her life and this was her music stage. It’s very ‘90s and this was her in her band.

Do we know what the name of the band was?

I think it might say down further. She’s talking about the other people in her band. I thought it was an interesting post. I didn’t go fact check it. I didn’t dig that deep. Also if you didn’t notice, they had a Rock This playlist and there were others. It was Selena and Kristin McGee and Emma Lovewell all had classes for Rock This, so you might want to check that out.

Peloton has new stuff to make you a stronger runner.

What they did is a bunch of different Strength for Runners classes. They put them together in a collection.

They’re stacking for you?

Yeah, but you don’t have to take them all at once. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend that you take them all at once. You’re supposed to spread these out to help with your running. The reason these are great is these collections, you can find them and you know that those are classes you want to take if you’re a runner. You don’t have to dig through all of the Strength classes to be like, “What should I do as a runner to get stronger?” That’s why these collections are so helpful. Now that they’ve updated the Android app that you actually can see the collections, it’s nice because now you can pull it up on your Android app because you couldn’t for years. You can see that on your Apple app as well.

There’s also a new bootcamp challenge.

You have two weeks to take four different bootcamp classes. From what I can tell, it was the Tread classes because it was Matty and Selena that were on an Instagram Live talking through all kinds of bootcamp questions. Whenever they talked about the challenge, they only talked about Tread classes. I don’t remember the exact dates, but it’s approximately fourteen days, four classes.

Finally, there’s a new artist series this time featuring Post Malone. Has he been around long enough?

It doesn’t have to be a long time.

Anyone with a passion for data can access data. Click To Tweet

I was like, “Are there enough songs to put in another class?”

He has a lot of songs.

A lot of these guys, as they start, they make mixed tapes.

They collaborate with other musicians, so he’s probably on other musicians’ stuff. People love Post Malone. A lot of people are really excited about this one. This is one of those artists that when I hear a song by him, I like it, and then later somebody will be like, “That was Post Malone.” I don’t listen to the radio anymore, so I don’t see the artist with the name that often. I almost always like his music. I don’t think I like it enough to be like, “Woo-hoo Post Malone.” As we’ve already talked about, that’s a good thing. I shouldn’t be loving every single artist collaboration or they’re doing something wrong.

—

Joining us is Bob Treemore. We’ve referenced some of your tweets and digital digging in the past. You’re pretty good at getting into the background.

We don’t even know what to call it because we don’t know what it is. You’re not hacking something.

Let’s call it deep data analysis. It is not hacking. Deep data analysis is what I do on Twitter and that’s what I’m doing here.

You’re not doing damage to anything.

You have a deep love of Peloton like we do. Your data diving comes from a place of love and protection for Peloton.

I’m as passionate about Peloton, the brand, the company and the people who run it and probably anyone reading. It’s a fantastic company. I’m 100% behind them.

Having said that, when did you come across Peloton originally?

I was not in the fitness world beforehand. I’m not going to the gym or what have you. I started hearing about it in late 2019. You guys had Monica on, the commercial came out and I’m like, “This looks like a neat product.” Instead of hauling myself and my wife down to the gym 20 miles away, we could do it right here. I’m very computer literate. I would love to have a computer literate machine to work out with and check my stats and deep data analysis. It would be a lot of fun. Shortly after that, I bought stock in Peloton. I told my wife, I said, “If we can make enough money to buy a Peloton in the stock, we’re going to go ahead and buy it.” To no surprise of anyone, it did not take long at all. We bought it quick.

You bought the stock and then sold the stock too.

No. I refuse to sell my Peloton stock. I only bought more.

That’s how I feel about it. Tom and I have talked about it. We’re like, “We could make so much money at this point. I don’t want to because there’s a large future ahead of us.”

We’re not here for that, but the stock, my first purchase, I’m up around 350%. I’ve made many more from that. It’s a great company. People love it. People are buying the bikes and the treads.

Are you a bike owner only? Do you have a tread? What is your Peloton status?

I would love to have a tread. The room situation, we’re not quite there yet, but one day, we will have the tread. Right now, we just have the bike. We got that in June of 2020.

You see that stock to do a little bit better and then you can get the house to put the tread in.

You’re not far off. I’m trying to swing my wife an addition so we can have one of those full-length window solariums to put our tread and our bike in, but we’ll see.

Eric Goodman, who’s also been interviewed on the show, he has his in sunroom. He posts these cool like time-lapse photography. When he works out first thing in the morning or during the sunset, you can see the sky going across as he’s running and stuff. It’s cool. That would be my dream to have that, but our yard is super tiny so that’s not going to be a thing. What was your fitness level like before? You said you weren’t necessarily going to the gym.

It was pretty sedentary. The doc said, “Listen, Treemore, you got to lose a couple.” Since June, I’m down about 25, 30 pounds and haven’t changed anything in the diet. It’s a phenomenal product. I’m sure you all have talked about in the past. I’m so happy that Pelton doesn’t push the whole weight loss program. There were a lot of shenanigans going on in that area. If you’re dedicated to the product, stuff comes naturally. You get fitter, whether it’s weight loss or whether you’re building muscle mass, it’s fantastic.

This is where the Peloton business model benefits the consumer as well as Peloton. You’re a fully sincere and a good person, but I don’t think it’s entirely altruistic and if you push it as weight loss and you lose the weight, we see what people do like, “I got my goal. I’m done now.” You put it back on and you stop using the product more, if they want you to keep spending that $40 a month on a subscription.

That’s a different kind of pushing of things.

It would encourage the end-user to fall out of usage with the product. Where if all they’re selling you is a product, which is what everyone before them was doing, once you have that initial transaction, I don’t care. How many more bikes are they going to sell you? How many more treadmills are they going to sell you? How many more Bowflexes are they going to sell you?

They’re selling the community. They’re selling a relationship.

Everybody talks about a bike, but the first product they created was a treadmill. It’s the treadmill of getting your $40 a month?

It’s a lifestyle change. I’ve had the product since June, I’ve done 226 workouts. My wife has over 200 workouts. We enjoy it.

Are you guys doing bike content or do you use some of the other content?

I primarily do bike. My wife, the Pilates classes came out and she’s very excited about that. She did all the core workouts for an eight-week program. She’s deeply invested in both bike and the other half. It’s good for her.

Let’s get into these stats that you’re pulling down from the Peloton website’s server. Let’s start there. How does it work? Where are you getting this information?

In a way that regular people can understand.

We need the dumbed-down version.

I’m probably going to have to hedge a little bit here. To what, Crystal was talking about to an earlier point, this data probably shouldn’t be available. It is available to someone who’s resourceful. I’ve been in computers for many years. I’m probably more resourceful than most.

Would you want to give people on how-to?

I don’t want to give people a how-to. I’ve reached out to Peloton security. They have a whole security team out there and I’ve reached out to them several times with a few things. Some they fixed. Some I’m trusting that they’re working on. We all understand the concerns and that these numbers are out here. Competitors is number one, someone like Lululemon or Nike. We know Lululemon and Nike also sell in the Peloton store. They know what their sales are, but they are a direct competitor outside in the apparel market. I’m primarily in the financial Twitter area. There’s a whole other group of people. I have a lot of analysts following me.

People can retrieve very confidential information as to what their next quarterly results are going to be based upon apparel. That said going back to the original point is that it’s available. I’m giving the security team time to fix it before I post a whole lot more. I’m trying to be vague. At some point in time, if Peloton doesn’t choose to close this area, I’m going to have to assume that it’s okay to be public data. I’d be happy to post as much information as I have, but right now I have full access to their inventory levels across everything in the apparel area. I don’t have access to anything bikes. We know there’s also that accessory area with yoga mats and dumbbells. I do not have access to that area, but everything in the apparel section, accessories and clothing, that’s all completely available right now.

Is that something that you see a lot on other retail type sites or have you ever even looked?

I’ve looked somewhat. My day job is an omni-channel logistics. I deal a lot with Shopify and things of that nature. A lot of our accounts are in direct fulfillment to customers like Peloton is. I’m sure Peloton works with companies that are similar directly to mine though they do not work with my company. I have not seen other data out there. I haven’t done a comprehensive of all the popular sites, but this area that I’m accessing, I hesitate to say it. There’s no reason it should be there. I can speculate that it’s there because perhaps someone didn’t think it all the way through. It’s still there. They’ll carry it through to disguising or hiding this data.

I didn’t know if it was a quirk of retail shopping software, but it sounds like that it’s not.

I know why it’s there. I can tell you that. The reason it’s there is related to the experience of shopping and that portion of the retail experience is very minor. If it went away, I don’t think anyone would notice.

You mentioned though that you found like Bradley Rose. You found one that was listed and you found Pilates. Is this in the same “area?”

It’s a different area. It’s a different avenue of gaining access to information. It is different. Anyone with a passion for data can access this data. I don’t think I know anything particular special. I enjoy digging into Peloton on every aspect, not just apparel. My Twitter feed is filled with ten different topics. Apparel is a portion of that, probably less than 10%. The data’s there, whether it’s instructors, whether it’s classes, the whole gambit. I try to find anything I can.

The information that you’ve seen about their clothing, their inventory line, do you feel like that’s a significant portion of their revenue or not?

It’s probably not. I don’t want to dive into the fascinating world of Securities and Exchange Commission quarterly filings, but for here, I’ll do it briefly. In 2019, Peloton pulled in roughly $1.8 billion in revenue, not just in sales and actual, they put in their checking account $1.8 billion, about $20 million was apparel. It’s very small. They reported it in a section in their filings called other, which is not well-defined in their quarterly reports, but it is defined as mostly apparel. There might be some other things, maybe they’re including dumbbells. That’s going to at the hardware side, but maybe they have other small areas of revenue, $20 million out of $1.8 billion is almost nothing.

My first thought for other that’s non-apparel was like revenue from the juice bar. You got to log that somewhere.

We’re not going to know that figure moving forward, that $20 million figure, because they’ve chosen for whatever reason to go ahead and move it. They decided to merge it in their other two major categories, which is subscriptions and hardware. We have stopped receiving information on their apparel.

Why do you think they chose to move that? Do you have any thoughts? I know you’d be speculating. I’m just curious.

I can only speculate, but there’s two reasons, maybe a sub-reason or two. One reason we’ll get out of the way and that is the accounting folks said, “Listen, John, getting this other stuff is a real hassle, breaking out these numbers into this other category, which is 0.5%, even less than our total revenue. It’s not worth the ink printed on the page. Can we move it into everything else? No one will ever notice it.” The accounting folks could be one side or maybe some accounting regulations. Others doesn’t make sense to them. The other thing is that Peloton who, we all know, likes to mimic Apple in many ways. Peloton looks up to Apple in many ways. Apple stopped disclosing their iPhone numbers and those types of numbers anymore to analysts.

They decided it’s our business. We’re not obligated to tell you how many iPhones we sell. We’re going to stop doing it. Peloton could be doing the same thing and that is apparel. This is where it gets into two different sub-reasons. Apparel is so low, it might be embarrassing to put $20 million on a quarterly sheet or they expect it to explode someday in the future, if they launch other things that they could do with eCommerce and apparel. Maybe they don’t want people to understand how big it has exploded. Those are my two theories.

I would lean more towards the second one, the explosion theory. Even though it’s small in relation, how many Bowflex leggings are they selling? When you compare it to other similar companies, nobody’s moving product like that. Even though it’s in the grand scheme of things, not a huge number, it’s also found money. I don’t think they ever thought, “We’ll make millions of dollars off of merchandise.”

I know they didn’t because when we had Jill Foley on, she specifically said the boutique started, not a lark, but this little thing. People asked for it, so they did it. To me since I had Peloton, it has exploded.

It’s become its own lifestyle brand.

By far, the most engagement that I hear from people is, when is the next line coming out? People are crazy over that. I also didn’t know if it had anything to do with the fact that so much of what is bought in the boutique is through referral credits. That they don’t want to put that out there either. If you worked into it backwards, somehow you might be able to figure out what their referral credits are or aren’t and how much people are spending. I don’t know. That’s another thought that goes through my head.

You have a longer history than I do with a boutique. When the boutique first came out, one of the things I track is every week I do a log of the vendors who sell on Peloton, and how many items each one of those vendors has for the various men’s or women’s clothing lines? Right now, they have thirteen vendors out there with the Lululemons and the Fourlaps and etc. When boutiques first launch, was it simply Peloton or was it only like Lululemon gear?

Lululemon started about a few years ago doing those. It wasn’t just Peloton, but it was not the partnerships we see now. That is fairly new in the history of Peloton. That’s why I find it interesting because there was a while that it was like almost all Peloton branded. They started doing some partnerships and they started doing partnerships with like Terez leggings. They started doing partnerships with Wich and then Lululemon and Nike came in. It’s been interesting to watch because now they have Lanston, Solfire and Beyond Yoga. None of that stuff used to be there. For me, it’s been this huge explosion.

From your point of view, I totally get what you’re saying. People have been watching it, it doesn’t seem like that crazy. Watching when it’s like used to be that, they always did this giant sale at HRI. When you went to that sale, you used to be able to go in and get everything you wanted from the year and get mega percentages off. In 2020, we had no sale. The inventory isn’t there. It’s selling out so fast. I don’t know if that’s on purpose. I don’t know if they like to keep it small, if there’s a reason for that to keep it exclusive. There are a million reasons I can think of, but it’s always been fascinating to me to watch.

Since I came across this data, I don’t want to say exactly when I found this area, I’m surprised to how low the inventory was as to my expectations. It may be perfectly normal for them. They may be thinking they’re bringing in enough or maybe a lot. I can tell you from my expectations as an investor, I expected to see a lot of five-digit numbers, tens of thousands of leggings or what have you. I was quite shocked that they weren’t quite those numbers frequently.

I can’t help, but feel that they like the optics of things moving quickly.

2020 was extreme. In the past, they’ve never not sold out of things. They’ve never had a drop that didn’t sell out within a week or two since I’ve been around. I’m not going to say every single item, but a lot of the items sold out. With the exception of the last drop, 2020 has been like it sells out in seconds. It’s crazy. That’s why I was curious about the data that you’re seeing. Did they increase it significantly with this last drop or was it was not as palatable to people because obviously that can be a thing too. The data person in me is curious about that.

TCO 192 | Peloton Data

Peloton Data: There’s a big future for anyone with Peloton stock because people are buying the bikes and the treads; they love it.

 

You have a longer history, but with COVID deliveries slowed though the overall market has expanded. I’m assuming a lot of people had hoards of promo codes that they were waiting to spend and waiting for apparel drops. A lot of that went out early in 2020 and then not as many promo codes came into people’s pockets because deliveries and sales have slowed down a little bit. I’m hoping promo codes go out. I don’t know the future of promo codes, whether they’ll stand the test of time or not. We assume it’s a portion of what people spend. We don’t know the entire figure of that. It is interesting that it seems sellouts are getting smaller, whether it’s due to higher inventories or whether it’s doing less demand or whether it’s due to not enough promo codes. It’s all interesting.

It’s because they’re increasing the supply because they’re bringing in more subscribers than ever.

That was my assumption. Because of the timing, I predicted that this would happen in 2020. Back in April and May, people started getting upset over it. By July, they were furious over how fast the things are going. I was like, “Hang in there.” You have to order this stuff six months in advance. If you figure, they had this major influx of people by the end of that six months, there’ll be more caught up. It’ll start to chill out. Here we are, another six months into that and things have leveled out. In my head, that’s what it is.

You’ve seen an influx of referral credits because not only all these new people buying bikes, but you had a lot of people upgrade themselves from the bike to the bike plus. I’m sure they gave themselves a referral credit so they could go to the boutique. You got to figure the lion share of those bike pluses probably had a referral credit attached to them.

Although I have to say most of the bike pluses at the very beginning, you couldn’t get a referral code. It’s similar to what they did with the tread. They were the ones selling it so you couldn’t get a referral from them launching it. That’s how they approached it. I’m not saying that was the way they handled it across the board. I know people that got exceptions to that, but that was their thought. You said it doesn’t take a lot of specialized knowledge to necessarily do what you’re doing. What about closing the holes? Does the security team need to have a level of know-how if they know where the information is, that probably shouldn’t be there? Do they need to know a certain set of skills to go close it?

I deal in the area. I don’t want to get too deep into it, but security teams do a lot of things and they don’t do a lot of things. There were two gaps around inventory. They are reported one and they closed it. There is this secondary one that is still open. It’s probably not the traditional role of this security team to know how to fix this second hole, but I would hope within Peloton staff, if someone does. I’m deeply hoping that they have forwarded that to those individuals.

Other than what you discussed about that data gap, it makes something better about the consumer experience. Is there any other potential benefit as to why they would leave that available?

I can’t see any other benefit to it. There are probably other ways to replicate the consumer experience that this data is attempting to do or is doing right now. I’m big Peloton fan, but it was just overlooked. Perhaps not enough time spent rolling out this area that I’m looking at. Someone should probably should have raised a flag and said, “It’s not appropriate to have our inventory accessible to anyone.”

I could see that being the case because they’ve grown so fast and we’ve talked to several different people at different levels. As they’ve grown, they’ve always kept it very lean. That’s always been their background of like, “Keep our workforce lean.” That’s gotten better as they’ve grown, but especially in the early years, people were doing eight different jobs because they were lean. What you’re saying, as a theory, makes a lot of sense that it might’ve gotten overlooked because there were so many other things happening as they grew. That wasn’t necessarily something anybody thought about digging deeply into.

It’s not a huge revenue generator.

In all the digging that you’ve done, has there been any other weird, funny, quirky thing that you stumble upon that isn’t necessarily like some crazy data breach, but it’s like, “That’s funny or that’s fascinating?”

On the instructor side, there’s some photos that not everyone has seen. Some of those are, I wouldn’t say humorous, but they’re interesting. This is again a different area. There are other people who know about this area I’m talking about, not inventory, but the other areas. We have a full instructor listing from day one or at least I can conjecture that one of their very first instructor was Mariah Carey. It is right there along with Alex, Christine and Leanne is Mariah Carey. I don’t think Mariah Carrie, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think she was an instructor.

She has never done a class. That’s never been a thing.

When they were setting it up, they were like, “Who can I put in here?” Someone said, “Put Mariah Carey in there.” They did. It’s still there.

Is there an instructor named Ted on the list?

Would you like me to look?

I would. There’s a long-standing joke in the community about Ted. One of the very first commercials that was a Peloton commercial on actual TV, which back in the day was mind-blowing. There was on the leaderboard. It showed Ted as an instructor and everyone was like, “Who is Ted? Who’s this guy?” It’s Mariah’s husband.

Did they say this person’s last name?

I don’t remember what it was. I want to say it was like Ted A or something. I can’t remember. You can say it though.

I haven’t gone through the entire area that I’m looking at, but this might be a legitimate person. I apologize if this is or a former instructor because we have access to all their former and current instructors, about 150 on total. Ted King, this person looks legitimate. I’ll cycle through and see if there’s any other Ted’s but Ted King is there. It says he was a Garmin instructor.

I don’t know if it’s the same guy, but there is a Ted King on Instagram.

He’s a retired American professional road racing cyclist who last rode for UCI Pro Team Cannondale-Garmin. You’ve answered the question.

It’s a long-standing mystery.

It’s already been discussed. I know I put it on Twitter as soon as I discovered it. It has moved to other places as well. We have Fernandez, that’s now somewhat common knowledge that she’s at least being entertained or at least being discussed. There’s Goran Jurenec. He’s also in there and he has the same fingerprints that Cliff had when he was hired. His profile before he was announced, Cliff profile looked like a certain way. There are three other people’s profiles who look the same way. Peloton has done a little bit of cleaning. I’ve archived all this data. I have it before they did some cleaning, whether it’s because of me or who knows why, but they did a little bit of cleaning. There’s Bradley Rose. There’s Mariana Fernandez. There is Goran Jurenec and they all have the same fingerprint that Cliff had before he was officially elevated.

What does that mean? I don’t know what you mean by that.

I think he means like digital fingerprints.

Before Peloton announces it to the world, I have a feeling they already know. They probably hired this person 30, 60, 90 days ago. They did a contract with them or something like that. The paperwork went down to the person who ran the Peloton members website and they said, “We’ve got Cliff. He’s going to be hired.” That person very innocently said, “Let me input him into the database.” I’m going to put some test data here. I’m going to put some default values. They do put his name. They put Cliff Davis. Everything else is empty. You know that profile we had on Cliff. He’s an instructor in Germany. He came from this background. He came from that background. That’s all null. That has no data whatsoever. There are some other areas. His name is there. These other areas are defaulted. There are a few other key items that fingerprinted that they look very unique. Right now, we have three people who look very unique like Cliff before the database person said, “Let me fully enter his data.” That is Bradley, Fernandez and Goran Jurenec.

I feel like Mariana might be the person who’s going to do the Spanish language classes because we’ve been talking about that for quite a while that we anticipate those coming. That makes a lot of sense. Is it looking like Bradley and the other guy are going to be in the UK? Can you tell?

That’s tough to say. I can tell again what the initial data person, what they entered as their discipline. We knew Mayla. She was a yoga. Cliff was cycling. Brad is listed as cycling. Goran is listed as cycling. That is the initial entry for the people that we have. Take it for what it’s worth. The data entry person, hopefully they’re doing it right but I don’t have the nation from which they’ll be broadcasting from.

I would think someone will want to know if none of this affects user data.

Zero. Their CPI or Confidential Personal Information, all that data is locked up in a vault. No one could get that data.

When we’re talking about all this, I was thinking like people might be wondering and I was pretty sure that was the answer, but I’m like, “People are probably wondering like, ‘They’ve got my credit card information. Do I need to be concerned?’” It sounds like at least with your level of skills, everything’s okay.

It’s nice to have these early insights into instructors and classes and I post them as soon as I find them. The inventory thing, it’s not bikes and treads. If it was bikes and treads, analysts would be climbing all over this and there’d be a big scramble because $1.8 billion would affect the stock price immediately. It’s not bikes and treads. It’s apparel, which is a fairly minor thing. In the scheme of things, we’ve got some fun stuff. On the rumor side, I think they could ask that data clerk to stop entering and maybe enter it the day of or maybe the day before, instead of months in advance. On the inventory thing, someone can easily fix that as well, but it’s not effecting the security and the confidentiality with the revenue that they have.

If they eventually grow eCom to be a multi-million-dollar area, they don’t want that out there. I’ve more or less stopped reporting the exact figures because I don’t feel it’s right. I did feel they were being a little bit slow in fixing the first hole. I posted some figures. They quickly repaired that. I’m trying not to go down the same road. I’m trying to give them a little more time fixing the secondary hole. If enough time goes past, I’m going to have to assume that they’ve decided that it’s okay for people to see this. It’s not overly interesting except for the fact that someone is reporting on it.

When they see your name in the title, they will be reading.

I’m Bob Treemore in the Twitter world. Peloton knows who I am.

What is your leaderboard name?

My leaderboard name is tied to my credit cards. They know exactly who I am.

I was going to ask what your leaderboard name is, but after you said that, I’m assuming you don’t want to tell people.

It’s on my Twitter profile. It’s there, Bluehousebro.

If you follow him, he can track you back and tell you what classes you’re going to take.

I cannot do that.

Thank you for being such a good sport and talking through this with us. I appreciate you taking the time and answering all of my curiosity because I have a lot.

I’m thrilled to be here. I appreciate you guys inviting me on. It was a lot of fun. Thank you.

Thank you much for taking time out of your day to join us. This was a lot of fun.

I appreciate it.

—

That brings this episode to an end. What pray tell do you have in store for people next week?

We are going to talk to Cyndy Leonard. You’re going to hear a weight loss story that is absolutely inspirational. Her post that she did her before and after on Facebook had 17,000 likes. It was an amazing transformation.

Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me at Facebook.com/CrystalDOKeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter, on the Bike and of course the Tread, @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TomOKeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group and sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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