Peloton instructors Jess King, left, Robin Arzon, center, and Rebecca Kennedy attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) AP—AP
Terry Sullivan, general manager of Fondren Fitness, a Jackson, Miss., fitness center, sanitizes barbells, Thursday, May 14, 2020. The city of Jackson is allowing gyms and fitness centers to reopen with restrictions at the end of Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s current stay at home order on May 15. Restrictions include establishing sanitizing stations, daily cleaning of equipment, face mask wearing, social distancing and limits to occupancy. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) AP—AP
A projection of a desert scene is casted onto a wall near a Peloton fitness bike in a basement home gym, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020, in Lutherville-Timonium. Home gyms have picked up in 2020 with sales of exercise bikes going up during the COVID-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) AP—AP
Mark Snyder, of Canton, Mass., adjusts his mask while working out on a treadmill, Monday, July 6, 2020, at Answer is Fitness gym, in Canton. Casinos, gyms, movie theaters and museums are among the businesses allowed to reopen in the state on Monday, July 6 under the third phase of Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s coronavirus economic recovery plan. The rules don’t apply to Boston, which is to move into phase three on July 13. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) AP—AP
The sweat used to pour at Philly Dance Fitness, where Deborah Hirsch offered a full array of classes to hip-hop, Zumba and Bollywood beats. But the coronavirus crisis has mostly cleared out her studios, forcing her to go where her clients are: home.
Now she live-streams more than 35 classes a week, a pivot that has kept her business afloat at a time of dizzying growth for all things fitness-related. Sales of fitness gear, gadgets and apparel have skyrocketed during the pandemic as homebound consumers have scrambled to build home gyms, loaded up on sneakers and downloaded fitness apps by the millions.
“As soon as the lockdowns took effect, the home-fitness business took off like wildfire,” said Matt Powell, vice president and senior industry adviser for the NPD Group, a market research company.
Americans spent heavily across all price points, from $3,000 cardio machines to $20 yoga mats. They also hit the running and hiking trails in earnest — Yellowstone National Park recorded its busiest September and October on record — and embraced other outdoor activities to escape the monotony of stay-at-home life.
Health and fitness equipment revenue more than doubled, to $2.3 billion, from March to October, according to NPD retail data. Treadmill sales soared 135 percent while stationary bikes nearly tripled, depleting inventories.
The trend has stretched through seasonal changes: The surge in bicycle and kayak purchases recorded in the spring and summer is now manifesting in cold-weather gear such as cross-country skis, snow shoes and outerwear.
Demand for equipment that can be used close to home or outdoors is “off the charts,” said Ben Johns, general manager for action sports for REI. Fire pit sales in the fall grew sixfold year over year, he noted.
“People clearly have looked to outdoor activities as a way to escape the realities that we all have to deal with.”
But 2020 also was a punishing year for gyms. Hirsch, the founder and president of Philly Dance Fitness, said business was flourishing at the beginning of the year. She was looking to expand, intent on moving from subleased locations to a spacious studio of her own. Some of her clients were running through final rehearsals of “Take It Off Broadway,” a jazz and burlesque dance show inspired by musicals.
But that changed in March, when the pandemic took hold. Like other small-business owners, Hirsch said, the sudden blow of government-mandated closures slashed revenue dramatically. Since then, any move toward recovery has gotten squeezed by capacity constraints and generalized anxiety that has kept potential drop-ins away. “The reason we are still here right now is because I haven’t been paying full rent,” she said. “If we had to pay full rent we’d be done.”
Now, amid a just-lifted citywide gym closure, Hirsch is just hoping to outlast the pandemic.
“Prior to covid, my job was to figure out what classes people like, find the best instructors and create a really awesome in-studio experience,” she said. “Now my job is to make sure they are good on live streams, troubleshoot tech issues and coordinate all of it so we can market it to audiences. It’s another layer of work that has been really challenging.”
Just as the virus has thrashed a specific set of industries while rewarding others — owing to the unique contours of public safety measures and the dynamics of the stay-at-home economy — segments within industries have been crushed or favored in similar ways.
Perhaps no fitness company better illustrates the explosive sales growth brought on by the pandemic as much as Peloton. Demand for its Internet-connected bikes soared in the spring and summer as gyms were shuttered or restricted and households invested in basement gyms. The company reported revenue of $758 million, a 232 percent increase from the same period the previous year.
The stay-at-home economy sent Peloton stock soaring more than 400 percent in 2020 and helped catapult it into profitability. The company is focused on growth, and has announce a partnership with Beyoncé; the release of a premium bike and a more affordable treadmill; and the acquisition of fitness equipment maker Precor, for $420 million, to ramp up production capacity and expand into the commercial market.
“We certainly want the world to get back to normal, just like everyone else,” said Brad Olson, chief membership officer. “We do believe that the pandemic has compelled consumers to reevaluate their fitness routines and many have discovered that the best, most connected workout can actually be experienced at home.”
Other connected fitness companies have also had significant growth spurts. After Mirror, the maker of the reflective-glass fitness device, was acquired by Lululemon Athletica, it expected to have ended 2020 with $150 million in revenue, up from a previously projected $100 million, according to company forecasts. And Tonal, the wall-mounted, strength-training home gym, reported a staggering 700 percent year-over-year increase in sales in 2020.
Americans were not just buying up high-end, screen-centric devices. When public health measures first led to gym closures in the spring, retail data showed massive sales spikes for an array of recreational and fitness merchandise, from dumbbells and roller skates to surfboards and golf clubs.
Dick’s Sporting Goods said same-store sales jumped by double digits during its most recent quarter, the retailer’s best performance since it went public nearly two decades ago.
While the at-home workout trend has been accelerating for years — propelled further because of the coronavirus — so too has the consolidation of gyms, analysts say. Mid-tier players have been squeezed by premier clubs such as Equinox and Life Time Fitness, and more affordable gyms, like Planet Fitness.
Since the pandemic struck, membership rolls have evaporated, shoving some of the most financially vulnerable companies into insolvency. Gold’s Gym, 24 Hour Fitness and Town Sports International, the owner of the New York Sports Clubs and Lucille Roberts chains, have all filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020.
Camilla Yanushevsky, an equity analyst at CFRA Research, likens the financial struggles of mid-priced gyms to beleaguered retailers that were too slow to adapt to the world of digital apps and burdened by high debt loads.
Analysts note that Equinox, on the luxury end, and Planet Fitness, on the value end, were both quick to launch workout apps in the early weeks of the outbreak, keeping their members engaged, even if they couldn’t pump iron or practice yoga at their physical locations.
“Our app consumption went through the roof,” said Chris Rondeau, chief executive of Planet Fitness, noting that online engagement fell once gyms began to reopen and members returned for in-person workouts.
“It’s a good supplement,” he said. “Everybody has a kitchen, but everyone goes out to eat because it’s a little bit more enjoyable.”
Boutique studios face their own obstacles. Largely locked out from high-dollar lending, and constrained by capacity restrictions or outright closures, small-business owners confront encroachment from the home-fitness companies targeting their clientele as well as the polished live streams and virtual apps that require robust investments to produce.
“When this shutdown happened we were put on the playing field with major national companies that had been live-streaming for years,” said Hirsch of Philly Dance Fitness.
“These people have lots of money and equipment and they have been filming high-quality, on-demand fitness classes for a long time. And they charge way less than I can afford to charge. I don’t have a marketing budget or plan that would allow me to scale the way I would like to.”
The explosion of home gyms and the desire for professional, on-demand workouts has sparked a gargantuan increase in health and fitness app downloads. Americans are increasingly streaming exercise classes from their phones and smart TVs and tracking an array of personalized health metrics brought to life through ecosystems of gadgets and dashboards.
Business leaders and industry observers also underscore that the threat of the coronavirus itself, not just the major business disruptions, has raised awareness about overall health and well-being. According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adults of any age with certain conditions are at increased risk of severe illness from the coronavirus, including afflictions that can be influenced by physical activity and nutrition, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
From January through November of 2020, approximately 2.5 billion health and fitness apps were downloaded worldwide, according to data from Sensor Tower — a 47 percent jump from the same period in 2019. A compilation of the most-downloaded fitness apps on Google Play and Apple’s App Store reveals an astonishing rise in interest, coinciding with the public health crisis.
Users downloaded Home Workout — No Equipment, the top fitness app of the year, 43.5 million times, more than doubling its installs from the previous year, Sensor Tower data showed. Strava, the GPS running and cycling app, was downloaded more than 20 million times, a 120 percent spike from 2019.
The year ahead will test which consumer behaviors are fleeting and which are here to stay, experts say.
“The longer this goes on, the tougher it will be to return,” said Landon Luxembourg, a senior analyst at investment research firm Third Bridge Group. Luxembourg described a central tension within the fitness industry, in which customers who have invested in their own equipment and grown accustomed to working out at home might be reluctant to rejoin their gyms and restart their memberships, even after coronavirus vaccines are in wide use. But the allure of returning to old habits, of reclaiming normalcy and reconnecting with the social aspects of working out has its strong appeal too, Luxembourg said.
“There is a group of people that want get out of the house and see people,” said Yanushevsky, of CFRA. “That’s what’s going to keep gyms around. People don’t want to work from home and go to the room next door and lift some weight and be on a Peloton,” she said.
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