Technology
Trade My Spin is building a business around used Peloton gear
Peloton has had one of the tumultuous half-decades in tech. The home fitness company has experienced a few of the industry’s biggest ups and downs in a dizzying sequence. This is the story of a high-profile startup that became the main focus of a cult following amongst influencers and fitness fanatics. A worldwide pandemic catapulted the brand to unprecedented heights before overinvestment, product recalls, mass layoffs, and executive departures brought it back all the way down to earth.
Peloton is within the red in mid-2024, but not out of the business. The company avoided a major liquidity crisis with a massive debt refinancing in late May. That marked the top of a month that also saw a 15% staff cut and the departure of CEO Barry McCarthy a little over two years after he took over from founder John Foley.
Peloton’s unique rollercoaster ride has had a wide selection of negative effects. Excitement peaked at the peak of the pandemic, but because the world began to reopen, sales fell. Some who got hooked at the peak of social distancing have remained loyal to the brand. But many others have lost that bond. Some churn is inevitable with any fitness offering, but those numbers have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the reopening of gyms and other alternative exercise options.
As a result, a lot of unused, expensive fitness equipment is taking over space in homes across America; they’re now “coat racks,” as a coworker recently dubbed her Peloton bike. A fast search of Facebook Marketplace reveals row after row of exercise bikes routinely priced around $300 to $500—a fraction of the worth of a latest model (around $1,500). For many once-enthusiastic owners, the equipment has turn into a pain. But for a pair of East Coast entrepreneurs, it’s a chance.
This Change my spin The origin story begins humbly, when current CEO Ari Kimmelfeld began on the lookout for a good deal on a used Peloton bike. As good as the costs were on Facebook and Craigslist, in comparison with buying latest from the manufacturer, the experience had its own problems.
“Buying something that big was a huge inconvenience,” Kimmelfeld, who was then working at Ernst & Young’s strategy consulting arm EY-Parthenon, tells TechCrunch. “Five hundred dollars was a lot of money, and meeting up with a stranger and giving him money for a piece of equipment that you can’t really test. And I live in New York. Moving something like that from a Brooklyn apartment to Manhattan is tough. And there are no guarantees.”
Local logistics
Kimmelfeld began piloting what would turn into Trade My Spin last yr by collecting and selling used Peloton gear. The offering was essentially DIY logistics, removing the friction of shopping for and selling used exercise equipment. It was a conversation with Joey Benjamini that transformed the one-man operation into a profitable business.
Benjamini has built a logistics network based on cooperation with contractors Collectible classicsHis Pennsylvania-based classic automotive dealership relies on drivers to deliver vehicles sold primarily through the used-car marketplace Bring a Trailer.
“Logistics is the most complicated and important part of this business—and the biggest barrier to entry,” Benjamini tells TechCrunch. “We have a database of 1099 vendors who deliver for us. We’re constantly growing a network of drivers who know our company and our processes. Once a driver is trained, we send them out to pick up the bikes. It’s very simple.”
The latest team began working on the Trade My Spin website before looking for funding. The site stays easy, whilst the inventory has expanded to incorporate Peloton treadmills, rowers and a number of accessories. The Buy button displays a bustling marketplace for the service, while Sell displays a form for the equipment you would like to sell. With the positioning up and running, the young company raised a small amount of seed money to scale operations.
Interview with Peloton
The startup has also had multiple conversations with Peloton since its official launch in March. Trade My Spin’s primary focus within the conversations is that its relationship is symbiotic, not parasitic. At first glance, it’s easy to see why Peloton is likely to be hostile toward the corporate.
Seen as a zero-sum game, every used bike sold represents a potential lack of a latest bike sale. While it’s true that keeping bikes in circulation is a net positive on the sustainability front, Peloton shareholders are undoubtedly trying to the sales figure for change.
The math changes, nonetheless, while you consider that Peloton’s ultimate goal is to be a content company that sells equipment, not the opposite way around. Rather than simply selling used bikes as a missed sale on a latest one, Trade My Spin claims that each bike taken out of circulation is one less subscription to Peloton’s class content platform.
“Every bike we take is from someone who isn’t using it,” Benjamini says. “If someone isn’t using the bike, they’re not using the subscription. Peloton is a subscription service. It’s $44 a month. Every time we flip a bike—and we’ve flipped thousands of bikes—they make $500 a year.”
The relationship would little doubt have been different had Peloton been more proactive about moving its own used gear. Ultimately, Trade My Spin stepped in to fill this underserved gap out there.
New turn
Trade My Spin has built a logistics network that permits for same-day or next-day delivery in most major cities within the continental U.S. More distant locations can take as much as five days to satisfy an order, which is still faster than the three to 5 days it takes Peloton to process an order.
In the short term, expansion includes adding more fitness equipment to Trade My Spin’s buying and selling options. In the long term, the corporate desires to leverage its growing network of contractors to incorporate buying and selling all forms of bulky items. Trade My Spin will likely need an extra round of funding to attain this.
“We want to transform,” Benjamini says. “We’re going from where we are now and building a large-scale market for large items with logistics. That’s the game plan, and no one else is going to do it. There’s a barrier to entry and a moat around the business when it comes to drivers.”
Meta introduces teen accounts on Facebook and Messenger. A function that routinely saves young users for the impression of applications with built -in security, shall be available on these platforms within the USA, Great Britain, Australia and Canada, before it expands to additional regions in the long run.
Teen accounts first appeared on Instagram in September last yr after Instagram, and other popular social networks were grilled by American legislators for not doing enough to guard teenagers. As a part of Tuesday’s announcement, Meta said that he brings a brand new built -in account protection for teenagers on Instagram.
With the extension of Facebook and messengers, teenagers shall be routinely placed in an experience that goals to cut back inappropriate content and unwanted contact. Teens under 16 years of age need parents’ consent to vary any of the settings.
While Post on the META blog about launching doesn’t provide exact restrictions under which teenagers shall be placed, the corporate told TechCrunch We -Mail that teenagers will only receive messages from individuals who follow or had news earlier.
In addition, only teen friends can see and reply to their stories. Tags, references and comments will even be limited to people they follow or who’re their friends.
Teens will even receive reminders of leaving social networks after using them for an hour a day. In addition, they shall be enrolled within the “quiet mode” overnight.
As for brand spanking new instagram restrictions, teens under 16 years of age is not going to give you the chance to modify to the platform, unless their parents give them permission. In addition, teenagers under the age of 16 can have to get the parents’ consent to show off the applying function, which blur images containing suspicion of nudity in DMS.
The changes announced on Tuesday show the newest Meta step towards solving problems related to the mental health of teenagers related to social media. These fears were Raised by an American general surgeon and several states, a few of which have even began to limit teenagers from using social media Without the consent of the parent.
The Meta shared insight into how teen accounts on Instagram are doing, because the corporate claims that it has moved 54 million teenagers to teen accounts. The meta claims that there remains to be lots more, because this function remains to be developing all around the world. The company also shared that 97% of teenagers aged 13-15 maintain built-in protection, says finish.
The finish line also commissioned an IPSOS study, which showed that just about all surveyed parents (94%) claim that teen accounts are helpful for fogeys, and 85% consider that they make helping teenagers easier to have positive experiences on Instagram.
(Tagstranslate) Facebook
One of the new flagship AI Meta models released on Saturday, Maverick, Second rating at LM ArenaA test during which human rankings compare the outcomes of models and select which they like. But it appears that evidently the Maverick version, that the finish implemented on LM Arena differs from the version that’s widely available to programmers.
How several And researchers He pointed to X, Meta noticed within the announcement that Maverick on LM Arena is a “experimental version of the chat.” Chart on The official website of LlamaMeanwhile, it reveals that the testing of the LM META Arena was carried out using “Llama 4 Maverick optimized for conversation.”
As we wrote earlier, for various reasons LM Arena has never been essentially the most reliable measure of the performance of the AI model. But AI firms generally didn’t adapt or otherwise adapted their models to higher rating at LM Arena-Lub a minimum of didn’t admit it.
The problem related to adapting the model to the reference point, suspension of it, after which releasing the “vanilla” variant of the identical model, is that programmers are difficult to predict how good it can work in specific contexts. It can be misleading. It is best if the tests tests – miserably inadequate – provide a shutter of strong and weaknesses of 1 model in various tasks.
Indeed, scientists on X have Stark was observed Differences in behavior From publicly to download maverick in comparison with the hosted model on LM Arena. The LM Arena version seems to make use of many emoji and provides extremely long answers.
Okay, Lama 4 is Def and Littled cooked lol, what a yap city is that this city pic.twitter.com/y3gvhbvz65
– Nathan Lambert (@natolambert) April 6, 2025
For some reason, the Llam 4 model in the sector uses rather more emoji
together. Ai, it seems higher: pic.twitter.com/f74odx4zttt
– technological notes (@techdevnotes) April 6, 2025
We arrived at Meta and Chatbot Arena, a company that maintains LM Arena to comment.
(Tagstotransate) benchmark
Donald Trump has signed a brand new executive order “Save Tiktok”.
Tiktok will live to see the next day – at the least for now. On April 4, President Donald Trump signed a brand new executive order delaying the ban on a preferred social application by one other 75 days. The application was to darken in the USA on April 5.
The application, belonging to the Chinese company Bytedance, is now on the second extension in the first quarter of the 12 months. In 2024, President Biden signed bilateral laws of Ban Tiktok, citing fears about national security. Congress voted in a predominant means. Although Trump has signed the executive order to “save” the application, many questioned the legality of the movement. Like many president’s actions at the starting of his term, they complain that evidently he exceeds the authority of the executive office.
Trump announced his move to Stop the ban on social truthSaying that his administration remains to be working on the contract.
“My administration worked very hard on the Tiktok saving contract, and we have made great progress,” Trump wrote on April 4. “The contract requires more work to ensure the signing of all necessary approvals, which is why I sign an executive order to continue tiktok for an additional 75 days.”
Trump quoted his newly imposed tariffs to China as a key reason for detained negotiations for the buyer.
“We hope to continue working in good faith with China, which, as I understand, are not very satisfied with our mutual tariffs – necessary for honest and balanced trade between China and the USA,” wrote Trump. “It proves that tariffs are the most powerful economic tool and very important for our national security. We do not want Tiktok to go dark. We are looking forward to cooperation with Tiktok and China to complete the contract.”
This means a second time Trump entered to delay the ban. On January 2, just a couple of days after returning to the office, he signed the first extension to stop Tiktok, utilized by over 170 million Americans available to users.
The potential sales of Tiktok draws the major attention of the principal players in the business world. According to HillMany private equity firms, the Venture Capital groups and the best technological investors have introduced offers for a preferred application.
Among the firms, apparently in the mix are Blackstone, Oracle, Amazon – led by Jeff Bezos – and the founding father of Onlyfans Tim Stokely. Interest in purchasing Tiktok has increased, how uncertainty about its future in the US is always growing.
The application, utilized by 170 million Americans, is situated at the center of ongoing political and economic negotiations between the United States and China. Along with the upcoming pressure and deadlines, the possibility of selling opened the door to the largest technological and financial names.
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