Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Pelotonis shifting gears in a major way.
John Foley, the at-home exercise equipment company’s CEO and co-founder, announced ina letter shared on the company’s siteTuesday that he is stepping down and that Barry McCarthy, a former CFO at Spotify and Netflix, is assuming the role of CEO & President moving forward. Foley will now serve as executive chairman of Peloton.
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Foley called Tuesday’s announcement “one of the more challenging ones in our history” in the letter.
He laid out a series of measures the company had decided on in hopes of “taking care of our team,” including severance, healthcare and a complimentary 12-month Peloton membership for employees who will be let go.
The company also announced it would “wind down” its Peloton Output Park plant in Ohio and undertake “a significant realignment and reduction” in its warehousing footprint.
“We’re also taking a clear-eyed look at our culture and, if we’re honest with ourselves, we see some things that need to change,” wrote Foley.
In recent months, Peloton has encountered a series of challenges following its explosion during the COVID-19 pandemic — a period Foley called “a whirlwind of a learning experience” in Tuesday’s letter.
Peloton Tread.Peloton
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Addressing the reported production downshift, Foley wrote inletter published on Peloton’s websitelast month: “Notably, we’ve found ourselves in the middle of a once-in-a-hundred year event with the COVID-19 pandemic, and what we anticipated would happen over the course of three years happened in months during 2020, and into 2021.”
The letter continued, “We worked quickly and diligently to meet the demand head-on at a time when the world really needed us, in large part thanks to how hard you worked every day. We feel good about right-sizing our production, and, as we evolve to more seasonal demand curves, we are resetting our production levels for sustainable growth.”
The company also revealed last March thata child had diedas a result of a “devastating” accident with its Tread+, one of “only a small handful of incidents” involving the treadmill, Foley wrote on the company site at the time.
The company announced avoluntary recall of the company’s Tread+ and Tread treadmillsin May.
“We believe strongly in the future of at-home connected fitness,” wrote Foley. “We have a desire and a responsibility to be an industry leader in product safety.”
source: people.com
