Peloton bikes had been all the fad in the course of the pandemic, making cofounder after which CEO John Foley a billionaire. After which, after folks started venturing outdoors their properties once more, Peloton struggled to maintain its mojo.
Earlier this yr, Foley left the corporate, dropping 87% of his wealth on paper by the top of his tenure there. Now he has a brand new curiosity, and it includes rugs.
His enterprise, known as Ernesta, will provide custom-made rugs beginning within the first half of 2023, the Wall Avenue Journal reported Wednesday.
Having at all times liked inside design, Foley instructed the Journal that even earlier than the founding of image-sharing platform Pinterest, he would rip the pages from design magazines to create temper boards of his visible concepts. He discovered that custom-fitted rugs had been typically costly and that purchasing store-bought ones meant being caught with solely the precise sizes out there.
Along with his new enterprise, Foley desires to create a method for folks to purchase reasonably priced rugs—they’d begin at $200, in response to the Wall Avenue Journal—that could possibly be made to suit completely different dimensions. The problem, Foley mentioned, is to persuade consumers they need to spend money on custom-fit rugs.
“The group right here is earnest in its work to carry lovely, {custom} rugs to your property in a well timed, cost-effective method,” Foley mentioned on Ernesta’s web site. The corporate’s title, Foley wrote, displays his fascination with writer Ernest Hemingway.
Foley cofounded Peloton in 2012 after elevating $307,000 on Kickstarter to assist construct the exercise-bike startup. By January 2021, the corporate was price almost $50 billion, swelling Foley’s internet price.
However after the pandemic began ebbing, Peloton confronted a actuality verify.
The bike maker underwent a restructuring in September, throughout which Foley and fellow cofounder Hisao Kushi resigned from their govt roles. In October, his stake within the firm was price $100 million, down from $1.5 billion a yr earlier.
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