Company Profile / Connected Fitness
The Fitness Company That Runs Your Treadmill For You
iFIT turned a decades-old treadmill maker into a subscription platform where a trainer in Patagonia can change your machine's incline from 3,000 miles away. Here is how the Logan, Utah company built connected fitness on its own terms.
Most people can name one connected-fitness company. It rhymes with skeleton, and it sells a very good bike. Far fewer can name the company that owns NordicTrack, ProForm and Freemotion, quietly ships dozens of smart machines a year, and reached roughly $1.75 billion in revenue while doing it. That company is iFIT, and it runs on a bet that is close to the opposite of buy-one-bike: don't just sell you the machine - control it.
Here is the idea in one sentence. You start a workout on an iFIT-connected treadmill. On screen, a trainer is running a real trail in the Andes. As the trail climbs, your treadmill climbs with it - the incline changes on its own, the speed nudges up, and you never touch a button. The class you are watching is the workout you are doing. That small mechanical decision - the machine adjusts to the content, not the other way around - is the whole company.
What iFIT isA manufacturer that turned itself into software
iFIT is a fitness-technology company headquartered in Logan, Utah. It designs and builds home and commercial exercise equipment and sells a subscription - the iFIT membership - that unlocks live and on-demand, trainer-led classes across cardio, strength, cycling, running, rowing, Pilates, yoga, HIIT and meditation. The hardware and the software are meant to be one product.
The company did not appear from nowhere. Its lineage runs back to 1977 and a treadmill brand called Weslo, co-founded by Scott Watterson and Gary Stevenson. That business became ICON Health & Fitness, one of the largest fitness-equipment makers in the world, before rebranding as iFIT Health & Fitness in 2021 to signal that the software - not the steel - was now the point.
Three price tiers, one login
Most connected-fitness brands sell a single hero device to a single kind of buyer. iFIT sells across a spread. ProForm is the value brand for people who want a smart treadmill or bike without the premium price. NordicTrack is the premium line, with faster screens and heavier builds. Freemotion is the commercial arm, outfitting gyms, studios and hotels. Underneath all three sits the same subscription.
That means the customer base is unusually wide: home exercisers who bought a machine, app-only subscribers who never did (including through the women-focused Sweat app iFIT acquired in 2021), and business buyers who order equipment by the pallet. The membership follows the person across phones, tablets and equipment, so the workout you start on a bike can continue as a stretch on your phone.
ProForm
Value smart equipment - treadmills, bikes, ellipticals - built to run iFIT out of the box.
NordicTrack
Premium home line with larger touchscreens, the X24 treadmill and bike, and heavier hardware.
Freemotion
Commercial equipment for gyms, studios and hospitality - iFIT's quiet B2B business.
Sweat & app-only
Equipment-free programs for members who train with just a phone and a mat.
Home workouts are boring, and buttons are the reason
The unglamorous truth of home cardio is that people quit. A treadmill in a spare room becomes a coat rack because there is nothing pulling you forward - no coach, no route, no reason to push the incline up. iFIT's answer is to remove the friction and the monotony at once. The trainer sets the terrain; the machine obeys; you just move.
The content is the part that is hard to copy. iFIT films its outdoor sessions on location - real trails in Kenya, Iceland, Italy, the American Southwest - rather than on a studio treadmill in front of a screen. When the on-screen trail rises, it rises because the trainer is actually climbing, and the resistance you feel is mapped to that ground. The library spans more than 120 countries and nine languages, which is a production operation as much as a fitness one.
There is a second problem hiding underneath the first: consistency. A person who works out at home has no class schedule pulling them off the couch and no one noticing when they skip. iFIT's live sessions, community challenges, badges and progress tracking are the softer machinery meant to fix that - the parts that turn a piece of equipment into a habit. The company has also convened a Science Council of health and exercise experts to guide how it personalizes workouts, a signal that it wants the programming to be defensible, not just cinematic.
The X24 treadmill, part of a 2024 lineup of more than 40 smart products across NordicTrack and ProForm, is built specifically for incline training and climbs to a 40% grade - well past what most home machines reach. The same launch introduced an updated iFIT OS and an AI Coach feature, moving the platform further toward guidance that adapts to the individual.
How it is differentOwning the factory, not just the app
The obvious comparison is Peloton, and the contrast is instructive. Peloton became famous on the strength of one exceptional device and a studio full of instructors. iFIT came at connected fitness from the other direction: it already owned the factories, the tooling and decades of equipment know-how, and it added the software on top. When the connected-fitness boom cooled, that difference mattered - iFIT was not a software company learning to make hardware, it was a hardware company that had always made hardware.
Breadth is the other difference. Rather than betting everything on a single category, iFIT spans treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, rowers, climbers, strength machines, mirrors and, since 2025, connected Pilates. Its rivals - Tonal in strength, Hydrow in rowing, Apple Fitness+ and Zwift in software - tend to own one lane. iFIT tries to be the operating system for the whole room.
A withdrawn IPO and a leadership reset
The money story is not a straight line up. In 2020, private-equity firm L Catterton and existing backer Pamplona Capital Management put in $200 million, reportedly valuing the company above $7 billion. In 2021, iFIT filed to raise up to $600 million in a public offering - then postponed and withdrew it as markets turned volatile and the pandemic home-fitness surge faded.
What followed was a reset rather than a retreat. In early 2022 the company raised $355 million, led again by L Catterton, restructured its leadership and cut staff. Co-founder Scott Watterson stepped back from chief executive to serve as Chairman, focusing on advanced product development. In October 2022, iFIT named Kevin Duffy - formerly CEO of consumer-audio group Sound United - as its new chief executive. The business model, hardware plus subscription, stayed intact through all of it.
Four decades of steel, a decade of software
What iFIT actually knows how to do is unusual to have in one building. On one side sit mechanical and industrial engineers who have designed treadmills, bikes and strength machines for more than 40 years - people who understand belts, motors, incline systems and the difference between a machine that survives daily use and one that does not. On the other side sit software, streaming and data teams building iFIT OS, the AI Coach and the pipes that carry live classes to devices around the world. Between them is an in-house video-production capability that shoots on real terrain across dozens of countries.
That combination - hardware, content and software under one roof, with offices reported in Logan plus Paris, Shanghai, Sydney and Leeds - is the moat. A pure-software rival can license classes but cannot easily build a factory. A pure-hardware rival can stamp out treadmills but cannot easily produce a filmed library in nine languages. iFIT is trying to be credible at both ends at once, which is harder to run and harder to displace.
Where it fitsA platform, sold three ways
iFIT sits in the middle of the connected-fitness market as one of its few vertically integrated players - it makes the equipment, produces the content and runs the software. It monetizes through direct-to-consumer and retail hardware sales, recurring memberships that unlock the interactive experience, app-only tiers for people without machines, and commercial contracts through Freemotion. Its acquisitions of Sweat (2021) and Reform RX (2025) show the direction: widen what a single subscription can cover, from cardio to women's app training to connected Pilates.
For a home exerciser, the practical promise is narrow and useful. You can climb a Utah canyon on Monday, row a Norwegian fjord on Wednesday, and take a strength class on Friday, all without leaving a spare bedroom - and without touching the controls, because the trainer is holding them.