Peloton To Redesign Bike For DIY Assembly At-Home

The days of Peloton Interactive Inc. sending a delivery technician to a customer’s home to complete the bike assembly could end, according to Chief Executive Officer Barry McCarthy.

McCarthy told Bloomberg that Peloton has been working on a bike redesign that would allow customers to unbox and assemble it themselves, instead of a delivery technician spending 30 minutes to complete the assembly. 

“We’ve been working on it for a while, and it’s a real thing,” he said. “We’ll continue to cost-reduce the hardware, and we will engineer it so that you can assemble it, so that we can ship it via FedEx.”

The do-it-yourself push is to eliminate the fleet of delivery vans Peloton runs across the country, which is costly as the newly appointed CEO continues to implement a sweeping restructuring plan that just last week included the cut of 800 jobs, raising prices for its Bike+ and Tread machines, and outsourcing functions such as equipment deliveries and customer service to outside companies.

McCarthy hopes to turn around a business that thrived during the early days of the pandemic but suffered a crushing slowdown in the past year with plunging sales, mounting losses, and a stock price that is down nearly 90% over the past 12 months. The latest move is an attempt to reduce costs, though it might not be well received by customers if the skill level to assemble at home is beyond easy because many in our modern society lack basic handy skills.