I remember when getting a new catalog in the mail made for an exciting day. My favorite catalog had to be Things You Never Knew Existed, but most of the ones I got were focused on baseball or fishing. I don’t know why I remember this, but I was always jealous of a friend who got the Eastbay catalog. It was filled with all kind of sporting goods and apparel, and for some reason I never thought to sign up to get it. While Eastbay, which is based in Wausau, WI, still has a catalog business, they’ve unsurprisingly moved a lot of what they do online. To me the coolest thing about Eastbay is their story. According to Wikipedia, they were founded in 1980 to “to meet the performance needs of local high school and college athletes within Central Wisconsin.” By 1995 they had grown big enough to go public. A few years later they were bought out by Woolworth’s, which became Foot Locker, Inc. It just shows how big a company can get even if they start by serving a small niche market.

Head to Eastbay

Eastbay is obviously in a tough spot considering that they have to compete with behemoths like Zappos and Amazon for customer orders. While Eastbay doesn’t provide a lot of information about their business besides a simple About page, but you can tell that their competitive advantage is their very strong focus on sports. They also seem to do a lot of work directly with teams. The best way to get a feel for Eastbay is just to browse through their product selection, and maybe even try buying something. If you like what you see, take a look at Eastbay’s Jobs page. Right now they have a number of opportunities that seem suitable for a new or recent grad including:

• Associate Buyer – Football/Baseball/Lacrosse
• Associate Buyer – Running
• Call Center Supervisor
• Cross Channel Merchandising Specialist
• Customer Service Associate
• Financial Forecast Analyst
• Forecasting Analyst
• Graphic Designer – Running
• Internet Merchandising Planner
• Payment Verification Specialist
• Print Production Assistant

If those don’t work for you, you can also apply to be a model.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• Eastbay.com
• Jobs at Eastbay
• About Eastbay

Did you ever get the Eastbay catalog?

We've identified Eastbay as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• analyst
• apparel
• buyer
• customer service
• design
• e-commerce
• footwear
• graphic design
• marketing
• merchandising
• online marketing
• planner
• shoes
• sports
• Wisconsin

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