Chad Hartvigson

Founder & CEO Prep Sportswear

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Chad Hartvigson is the founder and chief executive of Prep Sportswear, the Seattle direct-to-consumer business he started in 2003 and which operates as the flagship brand of Sportswear, Inc. The idea was a straightforward inversion of how licensed apparel had always worked: rather than manufacturing inventory for institutions large enough to justify a print run, build a print-on-demand platform where anyone can create and buy customised merchandise for the school, team, club or place they actually care about. That model scales to institutions no traditional licensee would ever serve — a specific high school, a particular golf course, a state park — and Prep Sportswear now runs more than a million online stores covering high schools, colleges, professional sports, vintage teams, Greek life, military, government, events, destinations and national and state parks. It made the Inc. 5000 six years running from 2009 to 2014, peaking at 87th in the country. Hartvigson came to it by an unusual route: a college baseball career at the University of Washington that produced two Pac-10 championships and a move into professional baseball, followed by a spell founding an independent financial advisory firm. He has since co-founded two further ventures, Vintage Brand and FanFund.org, both of which sit close to the same intersection of sport, fandom and commerce.

Career Highlights

• Founded Prep Sportswear in 2003 and has led it as chief executive for more than two decades.
• Built it into a direct-to-consumer marketplace running over one million online school and team stores, spanning high school, college, professional sports, vintage teams, golf courses, Greek life, military, government, active lifestyle events, destinations and national and state parks.
• Six-time Inc. 5000 honoree with the company across 2009 to 2014, peaking at #87 nationally in 2009.
• Founded Rainier Financial Group, an independent financial advisory firm subsequently acquired by Beacon Pointe Advisors.
• Co-founded Vintage Brand in September 2017, a digital sports apparel and merchandise business built around the history of American sporting culture.
• Co-founded FanFund.org, a free digital fundraising platform.
• Won two Pac-10 baseball championships at the University of Washington and went on to play professional baseball.

Professional Journey

Hartvigson’s first career was athletic. He enrolled at the University of Notre Dame in 1989, spending two years associated with the Mendoza College of Business, then transferred to the University of Washington in 1991, where he studied business economics and played baseball through 1994. The Washington years were the significant ones: he won two Pac-10 championships and went on to play professional baseball, with sources naming the Colorado Rockies, Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants organisations, and attributing his draft to the Giants.

Professional baseball below the major-league level is, commercially speaking, an education in a particular thing: the enormous emotional and financial attachment that people have to teams and institutions that are, in market terms, tiny. That observation is the thread connecting everything he has built since.

His first business after baseball was not in apparel at all. He founded Rainier Financial Group, an independent financial advisory firm in Seattle, where he was founder and partner. The firm was later acquired by Beacon Pointe Advisors, one of the larger independent registered investment advisers in the United States — an exit that gave him capital and an operator’s grounding in running a regulated business.

Prep Sportswear followed in 2003, as the flagship brand of Sportswear, Inc. The premise was that the licensed apparel industry served only the top of the market. A major university or professional franchise can support manufactured inventory; the other 99% of institutions people identify with — individual high schools, amateur clubs, small colleges — cannot, because no manufacturer will hold stock for a market of a few hundred people. Print-on-demand and a self-service storefront model removed the inventory problem entirely and made the long tail addressable. The company grew fast enough to make the Inc. 5000 in six consecutive years from 2009 to 2014, reaching 87th nationally in 2009, and expanded well beyond schools into golf courses, Greek organisations, military and government bodies, endurance events, travel destinations and the national and state park systems. It remains a private Seattle company, with directory data as of August 2026 putting it at 11 to 50 employees and estimated annual revenue in the $10-25 million range.

Two further ventures followed, both adjacent. FanFund.org is a free digital fundraising platform, which applies the same infrastructure — custom merchandise produced on demand — to the problem of teams and schools raising money. Vintage Brand, co-founded in September 2017, goes in the other direction: a digital apparel business built around the archival history of American sporting culture, reproducing historic team marks, programme art and ticket designs. Where Prep Sportswear monetises present-day affiliation, Vintage Brand monetises historical memory, and both depend on the same on-demand production model Hartvigson built the first company around.

Education

University of Washington

Business Economics (1991-1994)

University of Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business

Attended 1989 to 1991 before transferring to the University of Washington. No source reviewed records a degree from Notre Dame, and none is asserted here.