Thirty years ago is when you founded this company, in 1990, with $1,100 and a car trunk full of shoes. But we always think about how we can be different in our stores. Everything's on the phone and everything's on the internet, so we knew about this. It's pushed it 4x, but there was nothing that we didn't think of before. I mean, COVID has just accelerated the digital explosion. Has anything over 2020 made you believe that Steve Madden may rethink the ways in which it operates stores going forward? We have a great internet business, which we're partners with, but there's nothing like a great store where people can smell it and touch it and feel it. There's a lot of slagging stores off these days-it's clicks, not bricks. Unfortunately, less people are in the malls, and there's capacity requirements. Madden: It's a very tough time, but there's no replacement for a great store where you put your merchandise in and people come in and touch and feel it. What does Steve Madden need from its stores right now to weather this storm? Stores right now are obviously giving companies fits in some ways because they cost quite a bit of money to run, and for a little while longer still they're simply not pulling near the volume they used to. Steve Madden has more than 220 stores worldwide, and most of them are back open now-at least in some capacity. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.) “For the first month, you're floating in the air." “First of all, getting out of prison-it's the greatest feeling,” he says. For as much as the world knows about Madden’s landmark contributions over 30 years in fashion, it knows just as well about the former CEO’s perils-his drug use, his financial crimes, and his comeback bid in 2005 to make it all right.įrom his home in Manhattan, Madden discusses why there will never be a replacement for retail stores, what he thinks of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the famous Leonardo DiCaprio movie that features the story that led to his downfall, and his return from addiction and 31 months behind bars. There is simply no one quite like the bombastic footwear mogul, whose name adorns a few hundred shoe stores across the globe, and whose infamy precedes him. Steve Madden does not suffer from this affliction. There may exist a compulsion, when you are the face of a billion-dollar public company, to grow reserved-to speak in careful, measured statements so as to never put the business you represent at risk.
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