Eastbay Women's Fashion Brand

Eastbay is an American supplier of athletic footwear, apparel and sports equipment which sells by direct mail - and since 1997 it has been the direct-to-mail division of Foot Locker, Inc. That single sentence explains the whole shape of the business a women's shopper meets here: this is not a designer's label with a single creative hand, but a sports catalogue house, selling athletic apparel and shoes from other brand names as well as some clothing under the Eastbay brand name itself.

The company began in 1980 when Richard Gering and Art Juedes set up a shoe sales company. With about $7,000 worth of running shoes, they set up shoe clinics near their hometown of Wausau, Wisconsin; at each stop they sold their shoes and provided price lists. A business that started by carrying running shoes to runners, town by town, grew into a national mail-order sports supplier - and the price list handed out at those clinics is the direct ancestor of the catalogue model Eastbay still represents.

From Shoe Clinics to the Foot Locker Family

The founding detail matters because it explains Eastbay's strengths. A shoe clinic is a fitting service before it is a sales channel: runners arrived with real feet, real training loads and real complaints, and the shoes had to work. That heritage shows in how an athletic catalogue should be shopped - by fit, sport and surface first, and by colour last. Eastbay has been part of the Foot Locker, Inc. family since 1997, which placed the Wausau mail-order operation inside one of the world's best-known athletic footwear retail groups while keeping its direct-to-customer identity.

For women, the offer is athletic footwear, apparel and sports equipment across brands, plus Eastbay's own-name clothing. That mix is the practical point of the page: a multi-brand sports supplier lets a shopper compare a training shoe, a running top and a pair of leggings in one order, sized and specced against each other, rather than hunting three separate brand stores. The brand name on the box will often be someone else's; the curation, the catalogue and the service are Eastbay's.

Shopping Eastbay Well

Shop a catalogue house by specification. For footwear, start with the activity - road running, gym training, court or trail - then the fit: length with a thumb's room for foot swell, width that holds the midfoot without squeezing, and a heel that stays seated when you rise on your toes. For apparel, read the fabric first: training pieces earn their place by moving moisture and surviving repeated washing, and leggings and shorts should be tested in a deep bend and a squat before the tags come off, whatever the brand inside the order.

Because Eastbay sells many brands side by side, use that breadth honestly: compare the same category across two or three makers at your price, and let fit decide. Keep the order's paperwork until the second wearing - athletic shoes in particular can feel right in a hallway and wrong at mile two. From $7,000 of running shoes in Wausau in 1980 to the direct-mail division of Foot Locker since 1997, Eastbay's story is a service story, and the best way to use it is the way its founders started: shoes fitted to the sport, lists in hand, no guesswork.

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