A beloved name in sporting goods will soon be no more.
Eastbay, a company whose mail catalog became a favorite of sports fans across the country, will reportedly cease operations in 2023.
According to Wisconsin Public Radio, 210 workers will be laid off as part of the closure in Wausau, Wis.—the same town where the company was founded in 1980.
Evolving from a small regional venture into a nationwide powerhouse, Eastbay began selling its own line of clothing in 1990. The company offered jerseys, jackets and other paraphernalia in team colors, as well as an array of sneakers from Nike, Adidas, Converse and other companies.
Eastbay became a source of nostalgia for Generation X and millennials in later years, even as the company persisted as a Foot Locker subsidiary and continued to attract over 400,000 Twitter followers.
“It was my Bible as a kid,” 76ers forward P.J. Tucker (then on the Rockets) told the Los Angeles Times in 2019“. Mind you, I had no money to buy shoes, but I would just study Eastbay… I would look at it like it was a school textbook.”
