The Nautilus Group and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced a voluntary recall to repair certain Bowflex home gym models by providing customers free replacement parts through the company’s warranty reserve.
The recall includes shipping a seat pin repair kit to people who have certain Bowflex Power Pro and Bowflex Ultimate models. It also includes offering a new incline support bracket to owners of the Bowflex Power Pro without Lat Tower built prior to September 1, 2002.
Seat pin repair kits are being mailed free-of-charge to all known customers of the affected product models, and incline support bracket repair kits will be shipped to customers when they respond to a post-card mailing that is being mailed this week.
“We established in our company a new higher standard that we call the Nautilus standard for quality and safety,” said Holly Valkama, senior vice president of manufacturing and operations.
“We require rigorous tests for all of our products as part of our new standard. In addition to applying this standard to all current and prospective products, we also went back and reviewed the field experience of older products, including the original Bowflex Power Pro model and others which have been discontinued. As we looked back, we noticed a pattern in our incident records on certain models, so we voluntarily proposed a repair solution to CPSC. They agreed with our plans, which is how we arrived at today’s announcement.”
“This voluntary replacement part recall serves as another reminder that Nautilus is a responsible fitness equipment manufacturer that is committed to standing behind the quality and safety of its products. The repair kits should take just a few minutes to install, and will help people use their Bowflex home gym confidently for many years to come.”
Rod Rice, chief financial officer, said the company has accrued more than $2 million in its warranty reserve as of September 30, 2004 to address the expense, which the company believes will cover all costs of the repair kit recall. “We believe our reserves are adequate to cover these expenses and believe based upon previous experience that this will not have a material impact on our business performance. All current and future product models already include improvements to seat pins and incline support brackets.”
Identified owners of certain Bowflex home gyms will automatically receive the seat pin repair kit in the mail in the next several weeks. Another group of owners of Bowflex home gyms will receive a postcard notifying them of an offer to receive a repair kit for the incline support bracket free-of-charge. No home gyms need to be returned, and customers are asked not to use their benches in the incline position until their repair kits are installed.
