Wahoo Fitness has raised prices on all their products for US buyers, with the price increases ranging from shruggable to ‘holy crap’, depending on the product in question.
Undoubtedly, the exact amount of each price increase varies likely on where the country of origin is, plus which precise tariff category it falls under. Just because a product is made in China or Vietnam or Thailand, doesn’t mean that everything made in that country is subject to a flat-rate tariff. As has always been the case, tariff charges are hyper-specific to certain product types, as classified by a massive index of product categories. Companies spend vast sums of time and effort to find the most optimal classification for their product.
But at the end of the day, most of the new US tariffs are sweeping (with few exceptions), and Wahoo (like all companies selling into the US) has gotten caught up in that storm. As you may remember from a month ago, Wahoo tried to add a tariff surcharge for US purchasers for their new TRACKR Radar, only to have that smacked down by e-commerce giants. So instead, they added a shipping surcharge, but that only complicated things for retailers (and was misleading to consumers). Finally, the company has decided that simply raising prices is the most logical way forward.
Here’s a list of all of the price increases. Initially GPLAMA had noticed the price increases on the three bike computers + treadmill, and then I decided to continue that rabbit hole over my morning coffee.
TRACKR HR: $89 to $99
TRACKR RADAR: $199 to $249
BOLT 3: $329 to $349
ROAM 3: $449 to $464
ACE: $599 to $624
DESK: $199 to $229
HEADWIND: $299 to $319
KICKR CORE (+Zwift COG Variant): $499 to $534
KICKR ROLLR: $599 to $699
KICKR CLIMB: $699 to $749
KICKR V6: $999 to $1,049
KICKR MOVE: $1,299 to 1,349
KICKR BIKE SHIFT: $2,499 to $2,549
KICKR BIKE V2: $3,799 to $3,899
KICKR RUN (Treadmill): $4,999 to $6,999
Notably, Wahoo’s US site still seems to be updating itself, because if you hover over products, you’ll see the old price. But once you open the product page up, you’ll see the new price. Also notably, Amazon’s pricing on many of these, like the new ROAM 3 & BOLT 3, appear to still be older. Undoubtedly it’ll take time for retailers to update pricing too.
Meanwhile, I do appreciate that Wahoo isn’t punishing European (or other region) users for the US’s play-time. European pricing has remained as-is, insofar as I can tell. This is notable as sports tech companies have been taking various approaches here. In the case of Suunto, Polar, and now Wahoo, they’re letting the US absorb those tariff price impacts by themselves. Or, in the case of Polar, not even launching the Polar Grit X2 yesterday, to the US for now.
Whereas some companies are instead raising prices across the board, seemingly to either soften the impact of the tariff on US customers, or, to just be more profitable. We’ve seen Garmin keep so-called price parity between the US and EU on recent launches, meaning the price is both $749 & 749EUR. It’s a practice many companies have tended to do in the past, but now is more difficult to do with the tariffs depending on the country of origin. Of course, there’s also the reality that for some products Garmin is just raising prices because they can. On their earnings call, they alluded to the massive cash reserve they have, and having a bit more flexibility to absorb some of the tariffs without having to increase all prices. Said differently, it can swing both ways (keeping costs lower, or raising them).
Garmin’s CEO said during the most recent earnings call that:
“So we’re evaluating pricing not broadly, but specifically in context of each market and product line… there are cases where definitely, there’s room to have different pricing, and there’s other cases because… it’s more competitive and difficult to increase prices.”
At the end of the day, there’s no good answer here. But of course, we already knew that months ago.
In the meantime, if you wanted any of the above products near-term, I’d be buying them today-ish, before retailers get wind of the price adjustments and increase their platforms.
With that, thanks for reading!
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