iFIT CEO Resigns, Peloton Changes Prices... Again! | The Weekly Watt

Intro this video is brought to you by tempo how's it hanging my peloton freaks ifit creeps tempo peeps and all the rest of you connected fitness geeks i am your host colin jenkins welcome back to the weekly wat where we cover the week's top connected fitness news stories and Todays Top Stories updates this week ifit takes center stage with some of the biggest news including their ceo scott waterson stepping down after 45 years and possibly the biggest controversy for ifit that we've seen yet centered around mixed community reactions to their new march challenges to which even one of ifix top traders had to go to the facebook group to try and keep the peace then we have pelton switching up the pricing yet again for the third time in recent months and there's a whole lot iFIT CEO Steps Down more so sit back relax clip your feet in tap that like button if you haven't done so already and let's get the show started after 45 years if's co-founder and ceo scott waterson has finally stepped down this week mr watterson wrote i am proud of what we have built in ifit over four decades and our ability to successfully adapt to a rapidly evolving health and fitness landscape today's important updates strongly focus the business for continued growth and what has made us successful in the first place technology innovation and the member experience and the update to which he is referring is that ifit this week also announced a 355 million dollar capital raise from a private equity firm to quote enable more focus and investment in growing ifit's leading brands content library and product offerings with the sole purpose of enhancing the member experience and unlike peloton ceo john foley this resignation was said to have been previously planned and not as a reaction to poor performance and speaking of good old john he continues to make headlines for a peloton even weeks after stepping down a ceo this week john foley sold an Peloton CEO Selling additional 50 million dollars worth of his peloton stock to an investment firm backed by michael dell mr foley still owns enough shares to retain voting control of peloton but yeah now that he's no longer ceo it seems like he plans on cashing out as much and as quickly as possible as long as he can still retain that control and interestingly he also put up his giant east hampton mansion for sale if you've been watching the weekly walk for the past few months you may remember that john foley sort of angered a lot of employees by lowering their wages while at the same time finalizing his purchase for a 55 million dollar mansion well it seems he no longer wants it and just a few months later it's back up for sale at about two and a half million dollars less than what he bought it for and if you think john foley is flip-flopping a lot well take a look at peloton's Peloton Changes Prices pricing structure for their bikes and treads holy they can't seem to figure out how they want to price these first late last year they decided to lower the cost of the peloton bike by around 400 from 1895 to 1400 to be more competitive with other companies then they decided no that doesn't work and effectively raise the price for all devices up 250 to 350 through increased shipping charges which started february 1st and now just one month later they are offering a 300 discount for their bikes and treads if you have a referral code hopefully you didn't buy a peloton bike or tread in february actually you can still contact them to get that discount applied as long as your purchase was made within 30 days but don't worry the price is likely due to another change soon as the new ceo barry seems pretty in love with the idea of lowering the price for the bikes further and instead raising membership rates for new members which by the way will make the resale value of the peloton bike close to zero which is probably a topic for a whole nother video oh and peloton has extended their iFIT Community Backlash trial period from 30 days to now 100 days so now you have 100 days to decide if you want to keep your bike or tread after it is delivered okay back to ifit and what could be their biggest community backlash yet and that is a response to their new olympic challenges they released in march last week when i announced that nancy kerrigan was filming classes for ifit well i guess she was only one of many current and previous olympic athletes filming classes for one of their many new challenges this month in fact they released a new 16 class challenge for the bike the tread the elliptical the rower and even for strength which is a ton of content so normally that would be a good thing the problem is most of the classes were taught by olympic athletes many of which have probably never coached before and coaching believe it or not is not an easy thing to do especially when you are just looking at a camera and not actual people and while some of the athletes did a great job others were clearly unprepared and this caused a large number of fairly mean comments towards these classes and coaches in the ifit facebook group as well as reviews for each class on the ifit platform so lots of ifit members were obviously upset with these poorly taught classes but an equal amount of iphone members were upset about how other members were treating these coaches at which point even john peel one of ifit's biggest stars went to the group to share his thoughts he wrote when our biggest dispute in a day is whether or not we are enjoying a challenge that's filled with some of the greatest athletes in the world doing their best to share their story nervous to perform well myself included and show up for you all to enjoy i think we are all okay and have to realize this isn't going to please everyone there is no such thing as perfection so none of these workouts will be perfect yes we want to be impeccable going into filming because we know how much you all mean and how much you deserve our very best but please don't come down on these athletes who have never been in this situation before they aren't hired to be the next greatest trainer they are hired because they are the best at what they put blood sweat and tears into years ago and are willing to share these podium moments with us i'm okay taking the criticism i actually prefer it in order to grow this was my first time on the roar as well and there is major room for improvement i can generally admit that this is a community a family at the end of the day just understand that we are so lucky and be unfortunate to have this opportunity to debate what we do and do not like but please keep the negativity to a minimum unless it's not me i'll let you blow off your steam and i'll take the heat in some private conversations he wrote a lot more and i think it was well written and much needed and while i think most of us can agree with what john is saying i feel the whole problem stems from a much bigger issue and that is that these connected fitness companies keep trying to bring on famous people or athletes to help coach classes i have seen this tried over and over and over again and none have ever done a really good job and why would we ever expect them to they don't coach like that or have experienced coaching like that for a living so personally i really wish all these companies would just stop using athletes as coaches or if they really want to for marketing purposes maybe pair them with an additional coach sort of like how they brought in michael phelps but most of those classes were really taught by wouldn't you know it Outro john peel and now a big thank you to tempo for sponsoring today's episode and helping make the weekly watch possible i've talked a lot about the tempo move and how i think it is probably the best overall product for someone to get started with strength training in their home but i also want to give a shout out about the tempo studio because even though the studio is a bigger investment than the tempo move i think it is definitely worth it you can check out my review of the tempo studio through the link in the description below but essentially you are looking at one of the most future proof devices that has some of the best strength training classes available in connected fitness with rep and weight tracking dumbbell barbell kettlebell and yoga programs all designed with the latest exercise science so that you are not training randomly and that they actually make sense to provide you with great results and that's it ladies and gentlemen thanks again for hanging out with me here as we have some fun learning what's new in connected fitness i appreciate it as always and can't wait to see you next time until then have a great week