While some indoor cycling companies have peddled into trouble this year, CycleBar says its business is booming, adding hundreds of new studios and franchise agreements. Cheddar News speaks with Trevor Lucas, President of CycleBar, about its business and the industry. 

While some indoor cycling companies have peddled into trouble this year, CycleBar says its business is booming, adding hundreds of new studios and franchise agreements. Cheddar News speaks with Trevor Lucas, President of CycleBar, about its business and the industry.&nbsp;

Closing Bell

Indoor Cycling Company CycleBar Rides Past the Pandemic and Competition

Well, indoor cycling has been running into some trouble lately, peloton making headlines, losing about 70% of its value this year and indoor cycling studios soulcycle announcing its shutting a quarter of its studios in recent months. Not all companies are spinning into setbacks though, indoor cycling brand, psycho bars as it secured more than 100 franchise agreements in the past year alone. And right now it operates over 260 studios in the U. S. So joining me is Trevor Lucas, president of Cycle bar. Trevor, thanks so much for coming on this show. What is working for your company? Thank you so much for having me. Um you know, at the end of the day, we are a franchise brand and and be having our franchisees is really who were riding on and really making this happen every day in our studios. They're building tremendous communities um inside and out and without them I think, you know, we wouldn't be where we're at today. Um part of our strategies acquiring and working with and training the best franchises that we could find and then deploying them out into the market and they build their studios. Um and one of the things we hear from our customers and we pull them over and over again is there's really four areas that really make us unique to them and really that's family poem community and inclusion and that inclusivity part I think is what really sets us apart. We have a ton of different rides that we can offer to our consumers and that really is a little bit of something for everybody. And I think that's really what helped us make it through this. So let's talk about the offerings. I think the studio is behind you Trevor. What can consumers expect? What is the at home and the in studio offerings that your company provides? Yeah, we really are building an omni channel approach to cycle bar really exponential fitness as well. So on the digital side we have exponential plus. Um and folks can access us via the web and can ride at home. They can also take part in all kinds of different modalities from uh plots to running to rowing in the different pieces that we have within the 10 brands. Exponential. Um and that's been a huge part for us too, because we can give our customers access to all of that. Um and then in studio a I mean, really, you can't touch it, it's an immersive experience that you can't really be anywhere else. Um You know, it's it's a multi century. Um it's the music, it's the lighting and the sound, it's all of it coming together to generate one cohesive experience. And then when you're out of class, we've built these amazing communities, I think people coming out of the pandemic really missed being around people and forging those relationships and we've been a bridge to kind of create that for them. And we've seen people coming back in droves really missing that piece of their lives, What's the expectation for 2023? And I ask because a lot of people, consumers, companies that like they are preparing for a potential slowdown in growth, what is your company forecast? And how are you preparing for the year ahead? It's a great question. I mean we're bullish on indoor cycling, we're continuing to grow. Um you kind of said some of the numbers earlier, but um you know, we've we continue open studios, we have a pipeline of new franchisees that are looking to continue to build out their studios and we're welcoming hundreds of thousands of new riders every year into our studios and we haven't seen that slowing down. So we're pretty, pretty bullish and pretty ecstatic about the future for the business and where it's going in terms of price points, Trevor any price gains on the horizon, what can customers expect to pay? Good question. So it really depends on the market that they're in. Um we have prices basically for everybody and it's really a subscription based model, so we have memberships that will taylor from somebody that only wants to come in four times a week or somebody that wants an unlimited experience and they can come as many times as they want and then on top of that we can bolt on the piece that's the virtual and at home peace with X Plus and so we can kind of tailor to all of them um in terms of price increases, uh you know, inflation really hasn't affected our business too much. We're not seeing that in our data. And so we're holding pretty steady in most markets. We'll take pricing where we can for the most part, but at the end of the day our customers are getting an amazing experience and we're going to continue to live on that and we're looking forward to continue partnering with our franchisees to continue to push that out into the market. What about any new offerings? Any new improvements are exciting new things in the pipeline. Trevor. Yeah, that's a good question. We're always kind of uh working on the right type within our studios. Like I said, we have a variety of different options from ones where folks just want to lose themselves in class and other folks that want to compete and, and really get to the top of the charts there. We rolled out a couple of different right types and iterations on our right types, one being our foundations class. Um, and we found that folks coming out of the pandemic, needed something to kind of ease their way back into. So we rolled, rolled that out last year. Had a lot of success with that. Um, so we're gonna continue to look at the, can we improve on that experience. Can we hype it up a little bit? We have, our current campaign is all geared around glow rides and doing glow in the dark and we're rolling black lights into the studios. So that's gonna be a little technology edge that we're gonna add in and just add some punch and flavor to the rights. Yeah, that'll be fun. Now, what about sourcing the bikes at the machines themselves? Because we've seen a lot of supply chain issues as well and you know, people are going to be on one of these bikes, they want them to be safe and effective. So where are the bikes coming from? It's a great question. So we have two partners that we get the bikes from. One is poor health and they produce Schwinn bikes for us. Um, the other stages and both are the top of the echelon in terms of producing commercial quality bikes are bikes have to withstand multiple riders for multiple classes every single day. Um, and so we do a lot of testing with them to make sure that that's the case. But all those bikes are deployed in our overturned 60 locations across the globe. Okay, good. New year's resolution. Trevor to be more active. I don't know. I think that could benefit your company just saying, Let's do it. Trevor Lucas, president of Cycle Bar Trevor, Thank you