What’s Happening: A tumbling stock price, ill-fated strategy, and a few PR flubs led to John Foley exiting the disruptive home fitness purveyor he founded a decade ago. Now he’s preparing for his next move: a DTC rug brand. Can he make it work?

The Download: John Foley spent the better part of this year reflecting on what made Peloton, the buzzy purveyor of gamified stationary home exercise bikes and treadmills, such a success. The disruptive, multibillion-dollar fitness brand he founded a decade ago resonated with consumers thanks to its focus on digital content and a fitness-meets-gaming aspect that ingratiated customers desperate to forge human connections during quarantine. Though Peloton was seen as a pandemic darling, sales floundered as life returned to normal and gyms reopened. A major restructuring eliminated thousands of jobs. Its stock tumbled, showrooms closed, and inventory piled up in warehouses.

Having resigned as CEO in February and executive chairman in September, Foley is returning to the direct-to-consumer space with the launch of Ernesta, a rug brand co-founded with former Peloton staffers Hisao Kushi and Yony Feng. Slated to launch in the spring, the company plans to sell 50 styles of custom-cut, machine-made rugs in five colorways at prices comparable to West Elm and CB2. Much like its community-minded predecessor, Ernesta—the name is a mashup of Ernest Hemingway and “Nesta,” Bob Marley’s middle name—will encourage buyers to engage with the brand on social media by posting before-and-after shots of material samples and transformed spaces.

Few predicted a pivot from exercise bikes to rugs, but Foley’s passion for interiors runs deep. According to Business of Home, he has long clipped pages from shelter magazines and developed an interest in floor coverings—particularly how a “big, grand, and beautiful” carpet can transform a space—when collaborating with a designer on his home on Long Island. While rugs are more niche than home fitness, Kushi views Ernesta’s potential in plain terms: “Rugs might seem like a potentially uninteresting category, but there’s probably at least one in your house.” The numbers back that up—residential rug sales are estimated to reach $25 billion by 2030, and more than 100 million rugs are sold in the U.S. each year.

The venture has already secured $25 million of Series A funding from Addition, whose leader, Lee Fixel, was one of Peloton’s early backers and board members. But the formula for creating a successful DTC brand isn’t so cut-and-dry anymore. Record inflation, supply chain woes, and import costs have all ballooned, eating into the margins of businesses that once relied on offshore production. (Jason Bornstein, principal of Forerunner Ventures, even said that going DTC is “no longer sufficient business model innovation” to attract investors.) Add the spiraling costs of Facebook ads and Apple’s stringent iOS privacy changes into the mix, and new DTC brands are finding it hard to track performance and find new customers.

To combat this, Foley plans to cultivate relationships with stateside mills to manufacture Ernesta’s rugs, forgoing physical retail and wholesale partners to sell exclusively online. He’ll also avoid pouring money into Apple and Facebook, relying on tried-and-true TV advertising to get Ernesta’s name out there. Foley also believes Ernesta is well-poised to survive a looming recession, which usually stokes value-conscious spending. “I want to show discipline, I want to show profitability, and have a real focus on unit economics,” Foley tells Forbes. Most important? “I want to control my own destiny.” Whether he can make it work remains to be seen.

In Their Own Words: “It feels like everyone in the world sells rugs,” Foley tells Business of Home. “The problem is, so few people focus on just rugs and bringing to market what the consumer wants, which is speed and quality and value and focus. I think Ernesta has the opportunity to be a category of one.”

Surface Says: With Audrey Gelman’s post-Wing pivot to opening a “country store” in Brooklyn and Adam Neumann somehow securing $350 million for his new rental startup Flow, we’re noticing a trend of the residential design space becoming somewhat of a repository for ousted CEOs desperate to save face in their second act.

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This Wednesday, join Surface at Molteni&C’s New York flagship for a panel on the evolution of craft across design disciplines. Writer and editor Jenna Adrian-Diaz will moderate the discussion among four industry experts—Kirsten Jordan, Mauro Porcini, Michael Gabellini, and Manuela Seve—with an audience Q&A and cocktails to follow.

Jean Dubuffet coined the term “Art Brut” (commonly translated as “raw art”) to describe self-taught artists presenting their experiences outside the restrictive bounds of society—think art eschewing academic tradition made by children, prisoners, or psychiatric patients. The French sculptor theorized these groups produced truthful works untrammeled by cultural norms compared to those envisioned by trained artists, whose technical and academic knowledge steers their perspectives. The philosophy inspired Galerie Philia founder Ygaël Attali to launch “Design Brut | Philia & Kids,” a workshop introducing young children to the practice of sculpture.

The workshop unfolded over five months in Breil-sur-Roya, a French village nestled in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur’s Roya valley, under the supervision of teacher Virgile Ganne and designers Antoine Behaghel and Alexis Foiny of BehaghelFoiny Studio. The children freehanded shapes and sculptural ideas on paper, which were brought to life in local olive wood by BehaghelFoiny and a local cabinetmaker. Each one-of-a-kind work, along with a short documentary that, according to Attali, “questions the actual definition of furniture design,” goes on view at 4 Rue Malher in Paris starting Thursday, and will be up for grabs on Galerie Philia’s website when the exhibition closes on Dec. 8. All proceeds will be reinvested to pursue the program’s second iteration.

With the news of Marc Berthier’s passing, we’re revisiting a 2018 interview about his newly redesigned Hermès Carré H timepiece, in which the legendary architect and designer explained why he felt like he “never belonged.” Even at 83, he remained as outspoken as ever.

Marc Berthier is a global design stalwart whose body of work spans five decades, and encompasses everything from architecture to furniture and consumer electronics. His creations have been recognized by MoMA, produced by Knoll and Hermès, and featured on the cover of Time. In 2010, he penned the rectangular Hermès Carré H, nicknamed “the architect’s wristwatch.” The Frenchman’s latest project is a redesign of that landmark timepiece—expanding the dimensions, tweaking the shape, and overhauling the dial to create an updated, special-edition version.

To celebrate its latest debut in Tampa, Edition Hotels threw a weekend-long bash with a live performance by Lenny Kravitz and late-night DJ sets by the likes of Mark Ronson and Q-Tip. Other festivities included dinners at chef John Fraser’s trio of restaurants—Lilac, Azure, and Market at Edition—after-hours parties in the first U.S. outpost of the Punch Room, and a rooftop pool party with a set by DJ Tokyo Rose. With Ian Schrager at the helm, the Tampa Edition marks the brand’s 15th property with numerous others on the horizon.

When was it? Oct. 20–23

Where was it? Tampa Edition, Florida

Who was there? Ugo Mozie, Rocky Barnes, Joan Smalls, Rob Gronkowski, Karrueche Tran, Jesse Williams, Laura Harrier, Jasmine Sanders, Zita Vaas, D-Nice, and more.

When: Until Dec. 11

Where: Spazio Amanita, New York

What: A recent addition to the Bowery by way of Florence, the Caio Twombly and Tommaso Rositani Suckert–founded gallery is hosting Eva Beresin’s debut solo exhibition in New York. Drawing from Beresin’s coming-of-age as an art student in Communist Hungary, her works, which are disquieting yet at times comedic, reflect the absurdity of artistic life in a censored society and the creative lifeline she found in the underground music scene at the time.

One of the most ancient places on Earth, the land around Tel Aviv has been inhabited by everyone from the Egyptians and Greeks to Israelis and Muslims. (A conflict over ownership that is still playing out today on bloody terms.) Nicknamed the White City for its panoply of UNESCO-certified Bauhaus architecture, the city’s multicultural heritage is woven into its fabric from Jaffa to Neve Tzedek to Lev Ha’ir. Yet modern Tel Aviv is a place of reinvention and a hub of innovation. After a decades-long stretch of development, Israel’s cultural capital seems primed to take its place among the pantheon of the world’s great destinations.

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