The ink has settled on a $200 million growth equity investment for in-home fitness streaming platform iFit, the company’s parent ICON Health & Fitness announced today. Pamplona Capital Management led the raise.
WHAT THEY DO
iFit — which shares its parent company with workout machine makers NordicTrack, ProForm and Freemotion — has built a streaming platform for use on these companies’ products. Users can sign up for individualized virtual workouts and classes led by live trainers. Additionally, the platform will automatically adjust the settings of the machines during a session to match the on-location workouts being displayed.
“Our company is unique in the fitness industry. We have multiple brands including NordicTrack, ProForm and Freemotion, with multiple price points and multiple product lines of treadmills, bikes, elliptical machines, rowers and strength products,” Scott Watterson, founder, chairman and CEO of ICON, said in a statement. “As a result, we enjoy a booming direct-to-consumer business and a successful retail distribution, with more than 1,500 locations where consumers can shop our connected equipment in person. These factors create a prime environment for sustainable membership growth.”
Watterson noted in the announcement that iFit added more than 77,000 paid iFit subscribers in the last quarter, giving the company a userbase of roughly 330,000 members.
WHAT IT’S FOR
Watterson said that the investment will “allow iFit to further accelerate its rapidly growing interactive fitness platform in the connected home and club fitness industries. We will dramatically expand consumer awareness, broaden the most expansive library of interactive fitness content in the world, and continue to invest in innovation and technology that truly enhances our customers' fitness experience.”
MARKET SNAPSHOT
Peloton and its connected exercise bikes are the clear competitor for iFit. The company was in the spotlight its September IPO, which has fluctuated quite a bit since its $29 per share opening, and is now in the midst of a drop kicked off by a holiday ad controversy.
But even outside of Peloton, investors have also been throwing their weight behind other players such as Tonal, with its connected weights ($45 million raised in April); Mirror, with its full-length streaming monitor ($34 million raised in October); and Echelon Fit with its substantially cheaper exercise bikes and digital workouts (undisclosed raise announced in July).
Meanwhile, retailers such as Best Buy have picked up on the demand for connected in-home workout products, and as such have announced plans to bring several of these to store shelves over the course of the year.