For a brief few hours, it looked like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) had stepped into the personalized home fitness business, until they announced their alleged formal partnership with Echelon Fitness had never existed.
According to an Echelon press announcement, their $499 exercise bike was developed while collaborating with Amazon, and Prime members were even offered a 30-day free trial for Echelon's connected fitness app. However the announcement has been deleted and the product listing has been changed to "currently unavailable." Amazon announced that the Echelon fitness bike was not an Amazon product, or even related to Amazon Prime. According to an Amazon spokesperson in a quote from Forbes, Echelon didn't even have a formal partnership with Amazon.
According to CNN, Echelon claimed they has build the bike specifically to be sold on Amazon, and have it Prime connected. They claimed they intended to continue selling it on Amazon once their branding had been confirmed, but it seems like they haven't had much luck with the Prime giant, since you can now find the affordable stationary bike at a different mega-corporation.
Those still looking to find Echelon's fitness bike will need to pay Walmart (NYSE: WMT) a visit, but only after checking if it's in stock, as the bike has sold out due to the price point and pandemic demand. While critics called the bike a Peloton (NASDAQ: PTON) knockoff, Walmart still has the Amazon scandal for sale at the same online listed price. There doesn't seem to be any mention of the same incentive of a 30-day free trial that was marketed at first, but the Echelon bike paired with its subscription styled app is still significantly less that Peloton's $1,500 bike.
Since Echelon's bike is much more affordable, it has seen a great demand as the country continues to work from home. Fitness brands that previous had cult followings now have massive amounts of consumers picking up their merchandise and subscribing to their apps to keep fit as gyms struggle to reopen at capped capacity.