Peloton Vs. SoulCycle: The Battle Heats Up
Photo Credit: A SoulCycle storefront is shown. A new report found that the boutique spinning company has been surpassed by competitor Peloton in U.S. customer numbers. Flickr / @shinyasuzuki
Skift Take
There’s no denying SoulCycle has a huge competitor on its heels. Whether Peloton has surged past the studio-class brand is still unclear. Regardless, SoulCycle needs to find a way to regroup — and fast — if it wants to remain the leader in the stationary cycling space.
Back in 2015, the boutique spinning company SoulCycle was, literally, riding high. It had just filed for an IPO and had about three times as many customers as its main competitor, Peloton (a luxury, stationary bike company with streaming video classes).
Flash forward to 2018, and it’s quite a different story. SoulCycle shelved its plans to go public earlier in the year, and a new report from data company Second Measure shows that Peloton has taken a slight edge over SoulCycle in terms of U.S. customer numbers.
Even though SoulCycle said the numbers are incomplete (although another report from data brand M Science offers similar results), it can’t deny that it has a major threat on its hands.
Plus, it has an obvious disadvantage: Most locations are on the coasts. And while SoulCycle did open new studios in Las Vegas and Denver, it’s hard to compete geographically with a brand like Peloton, which can reach customers virtually anywhere.
Peloton is making a big advertisin
