Cycling enthusiasts largest cycling platform Zwift is set to launch their first smart trainer on October 3rd, 2022 at just $499 USD.
By now most cycling enthusiasts have experienced at least a ride or two on the virtual zwift platform. Although the zwift platform falls into the Peloton category in the broad nature of a virtual place to workout on while in your home, it’s massively different. Zwift not only allows a rider to use their own bike, but also features like terrain change and drafting, and all sorts of stuff that Peloton doesn’t. Peloton is more of the spinning fitness crowd, and Zwift is the cycling crowd that wants experience an as real as possible workout, indoors.
Overview
Until now, it’s been exclusively 3rd party companies building their businesses around supplying hardware like expensive indoor smart trainers, stands and accessories to consumers that work on the zwift platform. Companies have made hundreds of millions selling these indoor trainers, and zwift has done well in scaling it’s monthly membership business. As the pandemic hit, memberships soared, and smart trainers couldn’t be found available anywhere as they were all sold out.
It comes 2 years later now in 2022, as some things have settled in the manufacturing space that Zwift has decided to launch their own proprietary indoor trainer, and at less than half the cost of the most popular comparable models. At just $499 with a cassette included Zwift makes a massive statement, and takes a huge junk of revenue out of other Smart trainer providers. Let’s face it, zwift is going to make the best trainer for their platform and they’re using the same manufactures as all the other smart training builders, so why not?
Many companies are not happy about then move from Zwift, and have been preparing for it for some time now. Large competitor Wahoo fitness saw this coming and launched a platform called Systm to compete with the zwift platform. The systm platform isn’t great by any measure, and it is far away from competing with a platform like zwift, although some people do enjoy it. So it appears that Zwift will look to take a significant stake in the hardware came, leading from software.
What we can expect
There’s no doubt that Zwift is going to sell a lot of these trainers year one as the indoor cycling season approaches. The Digital platform has all of the advantages in their favor. The audience, the deep push notifications, the gamification, the ability to consistently show their product in front of millions for FREE, and of course the price point. At $499 Zwift is making this an absolute no brainer for consumers, making the indoor training space more accessible for riders all around the world. They can do this because their monthly subscription fee is like a gym membership at $14.99USD per month.
We expect that trainer focused brands like Elite, Tacx, Wahoo, and the smaller brands will all lose significant market share this year. As time passes, Zwift will likely gain more and more traction in the space just because they can get in front of people more often. The warrenty play isn’t really one to worry about because most of these trainer companies have a pretty bad policy as it is and most shops end up servicing these indoor trainers anyways. So Zwift just wins all around.
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