Peloton partners with TikTok on classes, content

Peloton has launched a partnership with TikTok.

Courtesy of: Peloton

Peloton launched a partnership with TikTok on Thursday as a part of its strategy to alter its public perception and attract a broader array of consumers as sales and profits fall. 

The partnership will create a recent fitness hub on the social media platform dubbed “#TikTokFitness Powered by Peloton.” It’ll feature short-form fitness videos, longer live classes, content from Peloton’s instructors and collaborations with TikTok creators. 

Shares of Peloton surged greater than 15% after the news was announced and closed about 14% higher.

It comes about six months after Peloton rebranded itself as a fitness company “for all” and launched a tiered pricing strategy for its app. The changes were designed to position Peloton as greater than just a motorbike company and convey in recent customers who may not have been capable of afford its pricey connected fitness equipment but may very well be interested by a monthly subscription for its content. 

“On the one hand, there is a longer-term goal around changing perceptions around who Peloton is for to multiple various kinds of audiences and I feel one in all the true strengths of TikTok … is that it increasingly reaches everyone, including the younger audience,” Oli Snoddy, Peloton’s vp of consumer marketing, told CNBC in an interview. Within the short term, the partnership will seek to construct on what Peloton says has been a successful relaunch by boosting metrics comparable to app downloads and conversions, said Snoddy. 

In the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, Peloton became a Wall Street darling after gyms shuttered and consumers flocked to purchase its stationary bikes and at-home treadmills. But demand plummeted when the virus receded and consumers returned to normalcy. 

Within the three months that ended Sept. 30, Peloton lost 30,000 members and revenue fell to $595.5 million, down from $757.9 million three years earlier at the peak of the pandemic. 

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy, who replaced the corporate’s co-founder John Foley in February 2022, has been working to rightsize the business and set it up for long-term growth and profitability. He has focused on boosting Peloton’s subscriber count and opening up recent pathways to owning Peloton equipment by offering a rental service and refurbished options. 

While the initiatives are showing early signs of progress, Peloton still is not earning profits off the members that it has, making partnerships with firms comparable to TikTok and Lululemon critical to its long-term success. 

“We’ve over a billion users across the globe of all demographics,” Sofia Hernandez, TikTok’s global head of business marketing, told CNBC. “People from 16 to 60 are on the platform and after I take into consideration [Peloton’s] campaign of ‘anyone and anywhere,’ there’s not a greater place to succeed in that level of audience we have now, that level of a various audience.” 

Hernandez noted that the partnership will transcend workout videos and can include “behind the scenes” videos comparable to “prepare with me” clips and other fitness-adjacent content that provides people on TikTok an inside look into Peloton and its instructors. At first, the content will feature well-known instructors comparable to Cody Rigsby and Ally Love, however the partnership also hopes to introduce a few of Peloton’s lesser-known instructors to a wider audience and boost their followings. 

“We all know that when people experience Peloton, they really get it, they fall in love,” said Snoddy. “This is admittedly about taking the instructors and the content we have now and type of dimensionalizing it to a broader audience on TikTok.”

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