SoulCycle, every mention

Peloton - the entire history and strategy behind America's trendiest workout · Acquired Feb 10, 2022 · 29 mentions

• ▶ 26:46 Ben Gilbert This story starts in 2006 with SoulCycle.
• ▶ 26:49 Ben Gilbert And I think without going into the whole SoulCycle story, by the way, there are two awesome episodes of how I built this one on SoulCycle with the founder founders there.
• ▶ 27:16 Ben Gilbert It was SoulCycle, but on a screen in your living room.
• ▶ 27:19 Ben Gilbert And SoulCycle was this massive dominant brand if you were touchy-feely, and then there was Flywheel, which if you were more numbers driven, you know, Flywheel was more your shtick.
• ▶ 27:28 Ben Gilbert So I guess it was more of a Flywheel than a SoulCycle, but it had the prestige brand of a SoulCycle.
• ▶ 27:37 David Rosenthal You may know, but there's, there's very intertwined history with SoulCycle and Flywheel, right?
• ▶ 28:04 Ben Gilbert SoulCycle is totally taking off, and, and this, you know, not yet connected fitness, but sort of… Boutique fitness.
• ▶ 28:30 Ben Gilbert I, ah, I can't commit to five days from now making sure that I schedule that spot in SoulCycle.
• ▶ 28:37 Ben Gilbert What if I could decide last minute and there was an infinitely scalable version of SoulCycle where the room wasn't bound by four walls?
• ▶ 28:46 David Rosenthal Well, we'll get into who John is in a, in a sec, but, uh, I was gonna do this second, but you're absolutely right to start with SoulCycle and Boutique Fitness and Flywheel, uh, and Barry's Bootcamp and, you know, all the other
• ▶ 34:45 Ben Gilbert They thought if we have a bike, even if it's, you know, like, uh, a bike with our software, that's interesting enough to people, and we can partner with either SoulCycle or Peloton.
• ▶ 35:11 Ben Gilbert I think SoulCycle sort of gave them the cold shoulder as sort of, you know, they were so hot at the time and so big and so dominant, but, uh, Flywheel, they actually got to terms on what would it look like to make this thing not only, um,
• ▶ 1:45:35 Ben Gilbert Like I won't, it's funny how I feel like a little bit weird wearing my soul cycle, like shirt and stuff now, cause I haven't been in two years, but the Peloton stuff, maybe it says a lot about me, but happy to wear it.
• ▶ 2:01:14 David Rosenthal Like, you know, the amount that Peloton can invest, even with the music, uh, variable cost overhang, but the amount that they can invest in content and in the best instructors, I think, which is where this plays out the most, uh, relative…
• ▶ 2:01:48 Ben Gilbert And it says, I mean, that proves in the pudding that like Emma Lovewell and others used to be SoulCycle instructors.
• ▶ 2:04:17 Ben Gilbert Uh, so what if they actually had pursued a deal with SoulCycle?
• ▶ 2:04:23 Ben Gilbert And I'm gonna use Soul over Flywheel because I think even though Soul wasn't giving them the time of day at the moment, that's the more interesting one.
• ▶ 2:04:32 Ben Gilbert SoulCycle has not had a very good last couple of years.
• ▶ 2:04:36 Ben Gilbert And first there was the Trump fundraiser, and then there was the like failed go public of the SoulCycle Equinox, um, fitness conglomerate.
• ▶ 2:05:16 Ben Gilbert And it's at a SoulCycle studio, even though I used to do that a lot before I got my Peloton.
• ▶ 2:05:30 David Rosenthal It's like just, yeah, if you want to stay healthy, I would only consider it in like you and I, when, when we would get together, we used to go do a soul cycle.
• ▶ 2:05:48 Ben Gilbert So would it ha so obviously soul cycle came out with a Peloton competitor after Peloton
• ▶ 2:05:55 Ben Gilbert And it was, it wasn't fully SoulCycle.
• ▶ 2:05:57 Ben Gilbert It was like part SoulCycle, part Equinox parent company.
• ▶ 2:06:04 Ben Gilbert Uh, what would have happened if you had this sort of like JV between Peloton and SoulCycle five years in, in a strong position six years in when COVID hit?
• ▶ 2:06:25 Ben Gilbert Put, you know, putting cameras in, building a little SoulCycle studio.
• ▶ 2:06:37 David Rosenthal Like, there would have been too many incentives and resources within a SoulCycle or a flywheel to, like, you would have to really cannibalize a lot of the core in-person, you know, operations.
• ▶ 2:07:21 Ben Gilbert At this point, they're a TV production company with celebrity instructors who happen to be good at riding bikes, but it's a TV studio, and it would be very hard to turn any of these SoulCycle, you know, places into TV studios.
• ▶ 2:07:37 David Rosenthal And so if you're like making the decision at SoulCycle, like, I'm gonna take our best content and instructors, dedicate them to that for this thing that I revenue split with.