- Peloton and Lululemon announced a five-year strategic partnership.
- Peloton will develop digital fitness content for Lululemon, while Lululemon will become Peloton’s primary athletic apparel provider.
- Lululemon plans to discontinue sales of its Studio Mirror product before the end of the year.
Peloton and Lululemon are joining forces.
The two companies announced a five-year partnership Wednesday that will bring Peloton’s content to Lululemon’s exercise app. Lululemon in turn will become Peloton’s primary athletic apparel partner, and a select number of Peloton’s instructors will become ambassadors for the apparel retailer.
The terms of the deal, and whether the two companies will share revenue, were not disclosed.
Peloton’s stock jumped more than 15% in extended trading on the news. Shares of Lululemon — which has a roughly $48 billion market cap compared to Peloton’s $1.7 billion — were flat in after-hours trading.
As part of the announcement, Lululemon said it plans to stop selling Mirror, which allows users to stream workout classes, by the end of the year.
The company had been exploring a sale of the product after sales had come in below expectations and Lululemon was forced to take a $443 million impairment charge related to the equipment, the company said earlier this year.
Peloton’s content will now be accessible through Mirror, it told CNBC, but the fate of the Mirror device and whether the division will be sold off remains unclear.
Meanwhile, sales for Peloton’s connected fitness products have steadily fallen from their pandemic-era highs, so the company has zeroed in on content as its primary value proposition.
Its partnership with Lululemon will mark the first time Peloton has shared that prized content with another company, aside from a smaller partnership with Delta Air Lines that offers meditation and movement classes for fliers.
Lululemon’s app has about 13 million members, nearly double Peloton’s total global member count of nearly seven million. Under the agreement with Lululemon, Peloton will not have access to the members that are consuming its content.
The news comes one day after Peloton announced co-founder and Chief Product Officer Tom Cortese is leaving the company.
In May, CNBC spoke with Cortese and Peloton’s Chief Content Officer Jennifer Cotter about the company’s rebranding strategy and if it has any plans to partner with other businesses to offer its content.
Cotter, the brains behind Peloton’s content machine, said “nothing’s ever off the table” but said “there’s no real need” for such a partnership.
Cortese, for his part, made it clear partnerships weren’t on the horizon — at least in the short term.
“That’s not going to happen,” Cortese replied.
“One thing that has worked very well for Peloton in the past and will continue to work very well for Peloton going forward is our direct relationship with our members. We’re not going to lose our direct relationship with our members,” he continued. “It’s part of how we build community and how we build our business. There is no reason for us to have an intermediary between us and our members.”
Cortese couldn’t be immediately reached for comment following news of the partnership.
Source: Business - cnbc.com
