Lululemon is giving up Mirror. And she’s tagging Peloton to help her parachute out of connected fitness.
As part of efforts to close the business, Bloomberg Reports that Lululemon plans to end hardware sales this year. The companion app will not be available to new users. in late 2023. Lululemon will continue to offer service and support to existing Mirror owners. According BloombergThose changes will begin to take effect on November 1.
To soften the blow, Lululemon signed a five-year deal with Peloton to provide ongoing content to existing users as well as develop co-branded apparel. As part of the deal, Lululemon will begin offering Peloton classes on its Mirror device and the Lululemon Studio app. Paid Lululemon Studio subscribers will have access to thousands of Peloton classes, videos, and series, while free tier users will get a smaller selection of Peloton content. Peloton, in turn, will sell co-branded Lululemon clothing in its stores and online starting October 11. The two companies will also host a series of in-person community events.
As for non-Peloton content, Lululemon will stop making its own workout videos next year and will also not include third-party content. It also decided to discontinue a digital-only subscription it introduced earlier this year.
This news from Lululemon Mirror serves as a reminder of the Achilles heel of connected fitness. Most connected fitness hardware is limited to the content of a single company. If that content runs out, you have a bricked device that you paid hundreds or thousands for. At the very least, the deal with Peloton helps Mirror owners get a few more years of use out of their devices and more time to find an alternative. However, it is much less risky to buy unconnected fitness equipment and pay for a subscription to a cheaper fitness app.
Peloton itself has deliberately moved away from hardware toward subscriptions. Earlier this year, he rebranded his app and launched three new app-only subscription tiers. And just yesterday, Peloton announced that Tom Cortese, the last remaining co-founder and chief product officer, was resigning. His replacement, former Twitter executive Nick Caldwell, was described in Press release for having “a proven track record of creating and expanding products and services that excite customers.”
