In the days before the internet shopping boom, the arrival of a glossy Eastbay catalog — developed right in Wausau — was a hotly anticipated moment for young athletes across the country, including future NBA legends like Shaquille O’Neal and Kevin Durant. Long before Eastbay became a national cornerstone of sneaker culture, it was just two local guys — Rick Gering and Art Juedes — selling $4,000 worth of running shoes out of the back of an AMC Gremlin.
But the story of a national sports retail empire didn’t start in that AMC Gremlin, much less a corporate boardroom; it started in the maternity ward of Wausau’s St. Mary’s Hospital in June 1952, where Art was born. Rick was born just two days later and the two were placed in bassinets next to each other in the hospital nursery. As if fate was determined to keep these two together, Rick’s family moved just three houses down from Art’s a few years later, on Wausau Avenue.
“Outside of my sisters and my mom, of course, Rick’s the first person I really remember,” Art said.
The two grew up together as childhood friends. There were no other kids in the neighborhood, so they spent a lot of time together in their early years.
“Our parents would kick us out at the crack of dawn and we weren’t supposed to come back home ‘til the street lights came on,” Art said. “We spent a lot of time together.”
By 1980, after years of college and moving around for different jobs, Rick and Art found themselves in contact with one another. Art was teaching and coaching at Union Grove High School and Rick was managing the Recreational Services Department of UW-Stevens Point and assisting with the track team. That role at UWSP gave Rick an early, hands-on education in budgeting, hiring and managing recreational inventory — but it was a trip with the UWSP track team to a national meet in Arkansas where Rick made a life-changing discovery that kicked off the venture that would become Eastbay.
“When we got down there we were just amazed at the different kinds of shoes that were there that we had never seen,” Rick said. “We decided that we would start putzing around and thinking about how we could get these shoes back up in Wisconsin and how could we start a business that would allow us to go to the athletes and show them a better selection.”
Rick and Art spent about three years considering the business from all angles without any real-world progress. In 1983, they were introduced, by chance, through an athlete friend, to Dave Hill, the owner of Eastbay Running Store in Milwaukee. Hill was interested in helping them start the business, so Art and Rick visited the running store and left with $4,000 worth of shoes (about $13,500 in 2026 dollars) and an idea of how they were going to start the business.
The original plan was to take a fit inventory (one shoe for every size and type) to local schools and help student athletes pick out the right shoes for their feet and activity. Then the kids could order the shoes from Eastbay Running Store in Milwaukee.
“Most of the other retailers were waiting for the kids to come to them and we decided that being athletes ourselves, we knew that stores just don’t come to schools,” Rick said. “The kids are excited at the schools and they’re in a better frame of mind to buy and look at things, so we thought if we could go directly to the kids at the schools then we would have a chance to sell more shoes.”
The first stop they made was UW-Stevens Point. The hypothesis was correct, the students were enthusiastic, so much so that they “started digging right through” the shoes and wanted to take a pair home right away.
“We quickly found out they didn’t want to order, they wanted to buy what we had,” Rick said. “Our whole business plan went out the window and we knew that we had to build an inventory because if we went to a school the kids are just going to want to buy them on the spot so they could take them home with them.”
Rick and Art changed their business plan and scoured all opportunities to pull together a diverse inventory to sell directly to the kids.
“We generated some sales from the university and we took that money and everything we did up after that we put right back into inventory because we knew that inventory was the critical piece,” Rick said. “If you had it, they would buy it, especially if they liked what you were selling.”
Business was picking up and the guys were taking shoes to schools all across the state, but the real moneymaker, the catalogue, would develop a little later out of necessity.
“Coaches would call and say, ‘My one guy wasn’t here, can you send pictures of the shoe?’” Art said.
After a few years of that, Art and Rick realized it would be easier to send pictures out in advance with the shoe listing.
“We’d make a small price list with pictures,” Art said. “Then eventually that became a little black-and white-mailer and that became a color mailer. It had like 30, 40 shoes on it.”
In 1987, the full catalog was developed. Eastbay was off and running with a tremendous start. For many kids in small towns across America, Eastbay was their connection to sports gear.
“We had to write in the catalog, ‘please don’t call for a catalog,’ because that’s how fast we were growing, we just couldn’t keep up with the orders coming in,” Art said.
Eastbay transformed from a local operation to something much bigger in a short amount of time, and the duo didn’t fully realize that until the catalog started expanding to five or six new states at a time. At first, it seemed like Eastbay was serving areas where retailers weren’t getting the newest and best shoes, but eventually, they broke into New York, California and big cities.
“Before the internet, people don’t realize we were probably the only access most people had to seeing the new products, new athletic footwear,” Art said. “Today it seems impossible that was happening, but when we first sent out the Air Jordan and the Nike Dunk, we had all the team colors of the Air Jordan. We had white and purple, white and green, blue and black — everything. Things that today would cost a lot of money, we sold them all for $49.95.”
Rick credits much of Eastbay’s success to the 1980s running boom. Not only did Eastbay grow out of this, but the shoe companies they were partnered with, titans like Nike and Adidas, also saw their initial, massive growth at this time.
“It was so exciting, for me every day was Christmas,” Art said.
“There were so many firsts,” Rick said. “The Air Jordan was a unique thing because it was a shoe made for a single athlete. The first Nike Air midsole came out in ‘85. The team colored shoes came out in ‘85 for basketball, wrestling, baseball and football. There were just so many firsts that led to where we are today. We got a front row seat to the golden years of watching the athletic industry grow up.”
“Somehow we landed kind of in the middle of all that,” Art said. “We all grew up at the same time. We grew up mail order, catalog, nobody else was doing what we were doing. At the same time, nobody else was doing what the athletic industry was doing with ESPN and so on. It was fun to have a front row seat in it.”
At its peak, Eastbay mailed millions of catalogs annually in the pre-internet era, connecting shoes to athletes (both student and pro), hobbyists and celebrities.
“You’d be working and all of a sudden somebody would say David Letterman called up for a shoe or Shaquille O’Neal or whoever,” Rick said.
Despite all the moving parts across the country, and the hard-working staff in Wausau, what kept Eastbay growing and moving in the right direction was the friendship at its core. The deep-rooted, lifelong trust between Art and Rick allowed them to forge a powerful business partnership built entirely on their contrasting personalities. Rick, a perfectionist, naturally gravitated toward the organizational and management side of things, bringing a sharp attention to detail. Art, on the other hand, was the driver, characterized by a “let’s get it done now” mentality.
“When you put those two together, I think it really worked out well for us that we got things done great ... We made one pretty good business person together,” Art said. “We have different strengths and we trusted each other’s strengths.”
“Art comes up with tons of great ideas and I’m good at organization and managing,” Rick said.
“Rick’s daughter mentioned the other day that I don’t think there’s been a day gone by that you two haven’t talked to each other,” Art said.
In addition to their lifelong friendship, Art and Rick credit Wausau’s strong sports culture as a foundational part of Eastbay’s success and development.
“Boy, growing up with Win Brockmeyer and Bill Smiley as coaches and Vern Gaugush over at Newman — Wausau’s I think the only town that has three Hall of Fame NFL football players,” Rick said. “It’s got a huge sports culture and the history is just so rich with fabulous coaches. When you get those good coaches, they develop good kids and good athletes and those were the people we were fortunate enough to hire at Eastbay.”
In 2023, Eastbay was formally shut down and merged with Champ Sports. These events came long after Art and Rick sold their stakes in the company in 1997 to F.W. Woolworth Company (later Foot Locker). Art and Rick stayed on until 1999, when the catalogue transitioned to e-commerce and the internet. Eastbay’s distribution center remained in Wausau until 2023.
Though 20-odd years had passed, Rick and Art found themselves once again entrenched in Eastbay just as it was shuttered. At the urging of their family members, they sat down and started their latest project: a memoir. The two friends soon realized that the story was bigger than themselves, so they sought out interviews, recollections and chats with former employees and business partners from over the years. With the help of writer Brandon Sneed, they tackled the full story in “The Book of Eastbay: Two Friends and the Catalogue that Changed Sneaker Business Forever,” a book that charts the success of the catalog, from their humble beginnings, to its star-studded growth in the 1980s and 1990s.
“Going back with these people and sitting in the rooms talking about what went on, you remember it was an amazing culture,” Rick said. “When Art and I left we struggled mightily to find anything to do because we found it hard to want to do anything without those people to come along with us. It was such a warm and inviting but hectic and fast-paced culture. It was just really a unique thing for us.”
“The Book of Eastbay,” released April 14, marking the first time Art and Rick have told the full story of Eastbay’s rise, challenges and impact on sports culture. The book focuses as much on friendship and people as it does on business lessons and an entrepreneurial story. All proceeds from the book are donated to the Little Warriors Foundation, which supports research and innovative treatments for Ewing sarcoma, a childhood cancer.
“So many of the kids get diagnosed with it when they are out playing sports and they break something and go in to the doctor,” Art said. “That’s where the diagnosis comes from ... We sure would like to donate something back to help the early diagnosis and the cure. One of the things we’ve learned is that almost 97% of research money goes to cancers for older people ... We grew up with kids, that was Eastbay’s business, and so that’s where we’re going. So many of our customers lived their life by who scored the most points when they played the game and these kids would just love to play the game.”
The book is available at Jahnke Book Store, where the two hosted a book signing this past weekend. They decided to celebrate the release of the book with Wausau as a thank you to the city that raised both them and their business. That hometown pride is well-earned, considering the national phenomenon that started in a Wausau basement. Yet, despite their massive success, the founders admit they didn’t fully grasp their own cultural legacy until the catalog’s final days.
“It probably really hit us when Eastbay closed the catalog and LeBron James and Steph Curry and Shaq and all these guys were writing how much they loved getting the catalog, how they couldn’t wait to get it,” Rick said. “We put a lot of work into it and we had to be pretty happy that out of little Wausau, Wisconsin, we had created this thing that so many people around the nation couldn’t wait to get.”
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