Eric Prosnitz

President and CEO Sports Basement

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Eric Prosnitz is co-founder, President and CEO of Sports Basement, the Bay Area outdoor and sporting goods retailer. He is credited with the idea behind it: applying the off-price formula of chains such as TJ Maxx and Ross to outdoor gear, buying discontinued and closed-out stock from strong brands and selling it in large, informal stores. From a weekend-only warehouse in San Francisco in 1998, the company has grown to 15 California locations with its own rentals, ski shops and bike shops, and has built its identity around community events and giving rather than conventional advertising.

Career Highlights

• Co-founder, President and CEO of Sports Basement, which opened in San Francisco in 1998 and now operates 15 California locations.
• Credited by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007 as the partner behind the company’s seed concept.
• Expanded from Mission Bay to a Presidio store and, by 2005, to Sunnyvale, before growing across California.
• Leads a retailer that redistributes ten percent of its earnings to local schools and non-profits through its Basementeers programme.
• Former consultant at Bain & Company; Stanford economics graduate and Harvard MBA.

Professional Journey

Prosnitz studied economics at Stanford, took an MBA at Harvard Business School and joined Bain & Company in Boston. There he noticed how off-price clothing retailers such as TJ Maxx and Ross succeeded, and wondered whether the same approach would work for outdoor gear. When his wife’s career brought the couple west, he tested the idea. As he later told the San Francisco Chronicle, business school teaches that retail is among the worst businesses to start, but once he found he could buy large volumes of discontinued, remaindered and closed-out goods from strong outdoor brands, he and his founding partners, including boyhood friend Tom Phillips, went ahead.

Sports Basement opened in 1998 in a 40,000-square-foot space in Mission Bay on a cheap lease, open only at weekends. The company later opened a store in the Presidio, bought one of the old Hamm’s buildings in 2005 for $6.5 million, and launched in Sunnyvale the same year. Prosnitz has said much of the business model was worked out on the fly, and that he credits its success less to price than to the shopping experience: exposed, ever-changing stores run by staff encouraged to use their own judgement. In 2007 he said his own pay was about six times the entry salary.

The company has since grown to 15 locations across California and added rentals and in-house ski and bike shops. It skips most traditional advertising in favour of community programmes. Its stores host local clubs and non-profits, and through the Basementeers programme it redistributes ten percent of its earnings to schools and charities; the company says the total given exceeds $13 million. Prosnitz remains President and CEO, and the company’s community pages quote him condemning racism and backing protesters across the Bay Area.

Education

Harvard Business School

MBA

Stanford University

Economics