NYC startup peddles used Pelotons at after pandemic-darling crash

A New York City-based startup is buying up used Pelotons that have been collecting dust since the pandemic and reselling the once-prized bikes for a tidy profit, The Post has learned.

Trade My Spin, launched in March by CUNY alum Ari Kimmelfeld, looks to jump-start interest in the flagging exercise bike maker by enticing new customers with a cheaper entry price to own a pricey Peloton.

Kimmelfield scoops up the unused bikes for as little as $200 from people who fill out a form on the company’s website and are just looking to get the bulky bikes out of their homes.

“These are really glorified clothing racks,” Kimmelfeld told The Post.

Trade My Spin resells the Pelotons for between $500 and $700 — a relative steal compared to the price of a new bike: between $1,200 and $3,000. 

The company has sold about 2,000 bikes over the past four months, Kimmelfeld said.

Most of the profit comes from selling accessories, including Peloton shoes, mats and weights for the bikes, along with extended warranties. 

The shoes might sell for $79 instead of the $125 for a brand new pair or a $49 mat compared to a $75 new one, Kimmelfeld said. 

The business has plenty of room to grow, he insisted.

About 25% of the 4.5 million Peloton bikes and treadmills that were manufactured since 2019 are not being used, according to Trade My Spin research, which is capitalizing on the excess inventory that wound up toppling two Peloton CEOs and caused it’s stock to plunge 97% over the past three-plus years.

It’s peak price was $167.42 on Jan. 31 2021 and it closed at $3.65 on July 29, 2024.

“Peloton’s business and share price as a whole doesn’t look that great, but the fundamental business is much stronger. It’s just not reflected in their financials,” said Kimmelfeld, who grew up in Brooklyn and earned degrees from Baruch College and CUNY’s Macaulay Honors College.

“When I ran the numbers for how many Peloton bikes were not in use, that made me think that there’s an opportunity for people to recycle the bikes and for people to join the Peloton ecosystem for a much lower price point.”

Peloton, meanwhile, benefits from getting new customers who are signing up for its $44 monthly subscriptions for online classes.

However, it disputed Trade My Spin’s number crunching, which is based on public data the company has disclosed about its paid subscriptions – three million – and sales data, Kimmelfeld said.

“While Peloton appreciates entrepreneurial spirit and innovation, the data provided by Trade My Spin is not accurate. We won’t go into further detail about our sales numbers,” the company said in a statement.

Peloton sells its own refurbished equipment and says the secondary market has been “growing steadily” – so much so that the company recently launched a “History Summary” of each bike ever sold that includes “the approximate number of historical workouts, date of first activation, service visit history, and number of previous owners,” the company said.

That hasn’t discouraged other resellers on Facebook Market and Craigslist, along with Trade My Spin, from attempting to profit from the pandemic craze — when customers snapped up Pelotons like candy then abandoned them when COVID petered out.

Kimmelfeld was inspired by his own difficult experience of trying to purchase a Peloton bike during COVID for starting Trade My Spin, he said.

“There are many pain points we are trying to solve, like trying to move a 130-pound bike down a three-story walk-up and fit the bike into a cab,” Kimmelfeld said.

He founded the company with car entrepreneur Joey Benjamini, who runs Collectible Classics, which sells used luxury cars including Aston Martins, Corvettes and Jaguars online out of Philadelphia. 

The 20-something founders were introduced by Kimmelfeld’s wife — a Philly native — and have raised private equity for their venture.

Kimmelfeld declined to say how much has been invested in the company.

Benjamini heads up logistics for the startup, which contracts with truck drivers to pick up Pelotons at customers’ homes in major cities including NYC, Boston, Dallas and Chicago and to deliver them to new owners.

Most of the bikes have low mileage of fewer than 150 rides, Kimmelfeld said.

The logistics of picking up such heavy equipment ended Peloton competitor Echelon’s brief promotion last year when Peloton recalled 2.2 million seat posts associated with its original bike.

Echelon had offered to pick up the defective equipment and give customers a credit to purchase an Echelon bike. 

“Whenever Peloton had a big recall on their seat posts breaking, we had hundreds of takers of our offer, but it was a logistical nightmare and we stopped it,” Echelon chief executive Lou Lentine told The Post.