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2026-02-06T15:41:26.469Z

Eddie Bauer faces potential store closures and a looming bankruptcy filing.
The outdoor apparel retailer dates back more than a century.
The brand was founded in 1920 by outdoorsman Eddie Bauer.

For more than a century, Eddie Bauer has been synonymous with American outdoor adventure apparel. Now the iconic brand is facing the possible collapse of most of its brick-and-mortar business as a bankruptcy filing looms.

The retailer’s roughly 180 stores across the United States and Canada could soon be shuttered amid plans for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing tied to the brand’s North American store operations.

Eddie Bauer, one of the oldest brands in American outdoor apparel, has a storied history. It’s also faced bankruptcy twice before.

The brand was founded in Seattle in 1920 by outdoorsman Eddie Bauer, who two decades later patented the first quilted goose-down jacket in the country.

At its height, Eddie Bauer had more than 500 stores worldwide, including hundreds across North America and additional locations in Japan and Germany.

Today, Eddie Bauer’s retail footprint has shrunk to roughly 200 stores — most of which could soon be on the chopping block as the entity operating the retailer’s stores in the US and Canada prepares a bankruptcy filing, sources familiar with the situation have told Business Insider.

Here’s a look back at the Eddie Bauer brand through the years:

Eddie Bauer, an outdoorsman and businessman

Eddie Bauer.

Associated Press

The late Bauer patented the iconic water-resistant, bomber-style “Skyliner” jacket in 1940. He was inspired to create the coat after a near-fatal experience with hypothermia during a winter fishing trip in Washington state.

”I was climbing a very steep hill when I started to get sleepy,” Bauer said in a 1981 interview with The New York Times while describing the encounter. ”I reached to touch my back and it was ice. I realized I was freezing to death.”

Apparel built for harsh conditions

Black and white photo showing two people in front of an Eddie Bauer store. — An Eddie Bauer storefront in 1990.

Dave Buresh/Denver Post via Getty Images

Over the years, the Eddie Bauer brand cemented its place in the outdoor apparel industry through durable, innovative gear and clothing designed to withstand extreme conditions.

Eddie Bauer outfitted the first American ascent of Mount Everest

Climber Peter Whittaker in an Eddie Bauer coat. — Climber Peter Whittaker wore Eddie Bauer gear to the summit of Mount Everest.

Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Eddie Bauer gear has long been used by adventurers.

In 1953, Bauer created his first mountaineering parka for the American team attempting the first ascent of K2 mountain in Pakistan.

In the decades that followed, the Eddie Bauer brand continued outfitting elite climbing teams with parkas and other cold-weather gear, including the first American team to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1963.

General Mills once owned Eddie Bauer

A cereal box showing General Mills. — General Mills played a role in Eddie Bauer’s history.

Al Drago/Getty Images

General Mills Inc. is a big part of Eddie Bauer’s history.

The cereal maker and food conglomerate owned the outdoor apparel brand from 1971 to 1988.

General Mills built up Eddie Bauer into a prominent retail brand, expanding it to about 60 stores before selling it to Spiegel Inc. for $260 million.

A longtime partnership with Ford

Eddie Bauer Ford Expedition. — Eddie Bauer partnered with Ford.

Scott J. Ferrell/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Eddie Bauer and Ford Motor Company partnered in the early 1980s to launch special edition Eddie Bauer vehicles. That collaboration lasted for nearly three decades.

Under the partnership, models like the Ford Explorer, Expedition, and F-150 featured Eddie Bauer trim branding and upgrades, including leather interiors and two-tone exteriors.

The Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer was particularly popular.

“Customers come in and ask to see the Eddie Bauer version, and it’s almost sold on sight,” a general manager of an Ohio car dealership told The Plain Dealer newspaper in 1991.

Eddie Bauer’s environmental advocacy

Alec Baldwin & Billy Baldwin. — Brothers Alec Baldwin and Billy Baldwin didn’t stay dry at the event.

Evan Agostini/Getty Images

In 2000, Eddie Bauer partnered with the environmental organization Riverkeeper on the Eddie Bauer-Riverkeeper Kayak Challenge held on the Hudson River near Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers.

Actor brothers Alec Baldwin and Billy Baldwin were among the participants at the event. Photos from the challenge show that the Baldwin brothers got soaked.

Two bankruptcy filings

Eddie Bauer store with a store closing sign. — Nearly 200 Eddie Bauer stores may soon face closure.

Tim Boyle/Getty Images

Eddie Bauer has previously been through two Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructurings.

The first time was in 2003 when its then-parent company, Spiegel, filed for bankruptcy. Eddie Bauer emerged from that bankruptcy two years later as a stand-alone company.

Facing mounting debt, the retailer filed for Chapter 11 in 2009 and was acquired by private equity firm Golden Gate Capital later that year through a bankruptcy auction.

The brand was later acquired by Authentic Brands Group, in partnership with SPARC Group (which has since become Catalyst Brands), in 2021.

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Nothing has been more earthshaking than the meteoric rise of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss in the health industry — except perhaps one woman: Oprah Winfrey.

Just when we thought weight loss meds had hit Peak Hype, Winfrey has entered the chat, releasing her latest book, “Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It’s Like To Be Free,” cowritten with Dr. Ania Jastreboff. The book catalogs her seemingly on-again, off-again, now committed relationship to the medication, starting in 2023.

It also comes after her full-throated endorsement of the medications. Winfrey’s embrace of GLP-1s signals a decisive shift away from willpower-based weight loss and toward a medical model that is defining the American wellness zeitgeist.

“She’s giving people permission to talk about it,” said Dr. Holly Wyatt, an endocrinologist who specializes in weight management and metabolism. “It validates what the doctors and scientists have been saying for years, but Oprah brought it to the public in a way that people really heard it.”

How Oprah remains a weight loss icon

Winfrey secured her status as a health authority from early in her career with a unique empathy toward personal weight loss stories.

Her eponymous talk show provided a rare safe space for overweight people to open up about their experiences, said Sabrina Strings, author of “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia.”

“It was probably the only place you could go in public and not be shamed as long as you were repentant,” she told Business Insider.

A key part of the weight-loss narratives on her show — including Winfrey’s own experience — is the redemption arc, Strings said, offering a vulnerable perspective on how people felt about gaining and losing weight.

That’s particularly poignant in a time when celebs like Serena Williams, Lizzo, and Queen Latifah once pushed back against body shaming — but have lately been called out for promoting weight loss products or routines. Black women have been a particular audience for this new era of marketing, Strings wrote in her blog.

Winfrey has spent decades leveraging her business savvy to make her personal struggle a source of strength and profit.

“She’s open in saying ‘I want to be thin and I have a path to do that,'” Strings said. “That’s why she remains an icon for weight loss in the age of Ozempic.”

Driving the ‘Wagon of Fat’

Three moments explain why Winfrey still moves the weight-loss market. It started with a little red wagon.

In 1988, Winfrey made TV history by sharing her recent weight loss, represented by 67 pounds of animal fat in a Radio Flyer, in the most-watched episode of the already hit show (even beating out later career-highlight interviews with Michael Jackson and Meghan Markle).

In response, liquid diets saw unprecedented success as viewers reached for the products Winfrey credited for helping her shed the pounds. It was an early instance of the “Oprah Effect” that appearing on her show or among her recommendations could lead to almost overnight success.

Decades later, Oprah said the wagon of fat was one of her biggest regrets, and apologized for what she described as her role in shame-centered diet culture.

Dr. Oz makes the mainstream

Starting around 2004, a charismatic heart surgeon, Dr. Mehmet Oz, began appearing on Oprah’s show.

Across more than 50 episodes (and later his own show backed by Oprah’s production company), Oz solidified the “Ask a Doctor” era of TV as audiences clamored for the MD’s advice on everything from supplements to cancer risk.

He also courted controversy over the years through lucrative partnerships with questionable weight-loss products and through hotly criticized statements about COVID-19.

Dr. Oz, a former staple of Oprah’s talk show through the 2000s, now works for the Trump Administration alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

Oz is now the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, appointed to the position by President Donald Trump shortly after the 2024 election.

‘I Love Bread:’ the WeightWatchers era (and breakup)

In the mid-2010s, Winfrey took on a new role as defender of our right to enjoy carbs.

As keto and Atkins diets were exploding in popularity, she backed WeightWatchers, snapping up 10% of shares and becoming the face of the company in an ad proclaiming her love of bread.

Oprah Winfrey speaks during Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus Tour presented by WW (Weight Watchers Reimagined) at Chase Center on February 22, 2020

Steve Jennings/Getty Images

SNL and other internet parodies had a field day, but WeightWatchers, then struggling to compete in an increasingly competitive industry, increased its value by 1200% over the subsequent three years.

It wasn’t happily ever after, however. Winfrey announced she was leaving WeightWatchers in 2024. Stocks immediately tumbled by 25%.

It seemed to signal a dramatic pivot from old-school American weight loss plans full of calorie-counting and color-coding — ushering in the new Age of GLP-1s.

A messy situationship turned into a commitment with GLP-1s

Even while she was with WeightWatchers, Winfrey was already starting her next big love affair in the health industry.

In 2023, she announced publicly that she had used GLP-1s to lose weight and spoke out about the misconception that medication is somehow a shortcut or easy way out.

The moment coincided with widespread acceptance of Wegovy, Zepound, and their cohort in the mainstream. As many as one in eight Americans had tried the drugs at some point, embracing the idea that biological “food noise” and processed food — not a lack of discipline — can drive us to overeat.

A new generation of weight loss drugs could follow up on the success of Wegovy and Ozempic with more powerful medications that are faster, longer-lasting, and even in pill form.

Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Since then, Winfrey has wrestled with the notion that weight loss or maintenance is about willpower. Late last year, she shared her experience quitting medication through 2025, to see if she could keep her weight stable with lifestyle changes. She said she regained 20 pounds.

Now 71, Winfrey is back on the drugs and considers them a lifelong routine similar to high-blood pressure medication. Her one regret, she said, is not finding GLP-1s sooner.

Now that the Oprah Effect and GLP-1s have converged, the world will be watching for Version 2.0 — the next generation of GLP-1s in pill form or with even more benefits not just for weight but potentially longevity and brain health, too.

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Eddie Bauer through the years, from outdoor apparel icon to bankruptcy watch