The pandemic-fueled craze for exercise bikes like Peloton — with on-screen trainers spurring on locked-down couch potatoes to feel the burn — has apparently ran its course.
As a substitute, treadmills — with the raging coaches replaced in some cases by streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video — have regained a foothold in lots of households after Peloton’s implosion, industry experts told The Post.
Lou Lentine — chief executive of exercise equipment company Echelon Fit, which sell each treadmills and stationary bikes — projects a 40% increase in treadmill sales within the fourth quarter in comparison with a 12 months ago.
Peloton also sells each kinds of exercise equipment, but doesn’t break out sales figures.
“You don’t need a coach to inform you to work out harder every single day,” Lentine said. “People need to get their half-hour of cardio in but in addition they want to observe the most recent Netflix show.”
The evidence has been borne out in sales figures and searches for the competing in-home machines over the past 12 months, in keeping with Jungle Scout, an information and analytics platform for ecommerce sellers on Amazon.com.
Treadmills sales have soared 99% from last 12 months, in comparison with a 3% drop in stationary bike sales, in keeping with Jungle Scout, which cited data through Aug. 26.
![An Echelon treadmill](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000027311995.jpg?w=1024)
What’s more, Amazon searches over that span that include the word ‘treadmill” dwarf those for “exercise bike” — 106,087 per week to 35,303, in keeping with Jungle Scout’s data.
“Peloton made bikes trendy, but now that its marketing machine has quieted down, treadmills are hotter than ever,” Lentine said.
“Customers were brainwashed to purchase bikes,” Lentine added, stating that treadmills have all the time outnumbered bikes in gyms.
![Lou Lentine](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000027539839.jpg?w=872)
The Chattanooga, Tenn.-based company’s treadmills, which start at $1,300 and might cost as much as $4,000, are sold at Walmart, Costco, Dick’s Sporting Goods and on Amazon. Peloton’s treadmills start at around $3,000.
Echelon plans to launch five latest treadmills at different price points with different bells and whistles over the subsequent six months, Lentine said.
They may include models that may stream Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video together with news providers, as well as offering Zoom capabilities as more staff shift to a hybrid schedule following the pandemic.
“We wish to see whether people can do a Zoom call while they’re (understanding),” Lentine said.
Against this, sales of Echelon’s line of exercise bikes have stagnated.
“We’re heavily stocked on bikes,” Lentine said. “We are usually not putting in a whole lot of latest orders for bikes.”
![A Peloton bike](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/08/NYPICHPDPICT000026544433-1.jpg?w=1024)
Echelon and other exercise equipment makers are still absorbing a glut of motorcycle inventory built up through the pandemic when demand soared.
The downshift back toward treadmills by fitness buffs comes amid Peloton’s spectacular downfall after a spate of bad publicity that included product recalls and lawsuits linked to customer injuries – including the death of a baby.
Its stock price closed Friday at $6.50, plummeting from $160 a share through the heights of the pandemic.
Last 12 months, Peloton was forced to slash costs and laid off greater than 5,000 employees. Its founder and CEO John Foley stepped down and it recalled its original bike since the seat post was breaking unexpectedly.
In its most up-to-date quarter, Peloton reported that its subscribers declined by 29,000 on account of the recall.
The corporate launched an ‘entertainment’ option on its screens this summer, equipping them with Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and YouTube and it has been testing other streaming providers like Disney+, Apple TV+ and HBO Max.