The Book of Eastbay

Unable to contain himself, Rick pitched Art: move back to Wausau and start a business selling shoes. Art said, "What are you, an idiot? Selling shoes? How is this even worth trying?" This is the story of Eastbay, a startup tale unlike most you've read. First it was $5,000 worth of track sneakers sold out of the back of an AMC Gremlin. Then it was a quiet storefront behind the main street in Wausau, Wisconsin. Then it became a catalog, a bible to GenX kids growing up in the 1980s and '90s, a powerful tastemaker so authentic that pro athletes swore by it. Sneakerhead culture started here. This is the story of Eastbay, a company ahead of its time that mastered mail-order selling before Amazon existed. That understood the emerging cultural power of sneakers before anyone else saw it. That grew so fast and was so successful in the first athletic mail-order wholesale shoe business that Nike pulled its AIR products from the catalog. After five years, Nike decided to allow AIR products back into the Eastbay catalog and ultimately Eastbay partnered with Nike to produce several Nike catalogs. This is the story of Eastbay, founded by Art and Rick, born days apart and placed in bassinets next to each other—as different as two lifelong friends can be, but bonded by a friendship that's lasted through the wild, tumultuous, heady, difficult, exhilarating, frustrating, and ultimately massively rewarding lifetime of building a business that mattered with as talented and devoted a team as any two founders could hope for. Sneakers are a $100 billion business and a global obsession, and it all started in the pages of Eastbay, where kids were encouraged to dream big, and dream often, which is just what the founders were doing all along. This is their story. This is The Book of Eastbay.