Tread+ Rear Guard

Context

In March 2021, there was a tragic accident involving a Peloton Tread+ and the death of a child. The sales of the Tread+ were halted, and the equipment was recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Beyond the heartbreaking loss of life, there was a pronounced impact on the business: not only in lost revenue from sales and subscriptions, but an undermining of trust and safety. 

In the intervening two years, Peloton developed a rear guard attachment for the Tread+ under the guidance and with the cooperation of the CPSC. 

In May 2023, Peloton was approved to announce the guard and begin the process of fulfillment. 

Problem

In order to begin production of the guard and get it shipped, Peloton needed to first determine how many units needed to be made. The Ecom team was tasked with writing, designing and building a deceptively-simple form page. The form needed to be quick, but at the same time, only generate qualified leads. 

Due to another impending recall, where Peloton was in the fiscal year, and other considerations, there was little time between the approval of the guard by the CPSC and the launch of the page. Not only did the page need to be approved by our internal VP of Policy and Legal, but by the CPSC itself. The pressure was on. 

Solution

In order to move quickly, I worked with a product designer to repurpose components from a standard lead-generation page. I developed initial content, then iterated rapidly based on strong Policy feedback. Throughout the process, I simplified and clarified the language, while still keeping it compliant to mandatory legal and policy constraints. 

Additionally, I worked with data science to determine what information we would solicit from users to generate qualified responses. We didn’t want people without a Tread+ to add noise to the dataset. While there was an initial ask for a difficult-to-find serial number, I was able to confirm that we could sufficiently qualify data based on much more readily available information (ZIP code and email). 

Outcome

By using existing components, collaborating with high-stakes cross-functional partners (many of whom were not used to Content Design), and gathering insights from data science, we were able to launch the page a day earlier than initially asked. 

Additionally, of the 16.5K emails received, we confirmed that 95% of the leads had a Tread+, and were therefore qualified to receive the rear guard. There was also a significant percentage of people who visited the page, but did not put in their email. This indicates that the language and experience had sufficient friction to dissuade non-qualified users from engaging. This meant a cleaner data set, which would inform production and get Peloton selling Tread+ again. 

In Fall 2023, Peloton began fulfilling orders for the rear guard and put the Tread+ back out in the market.