Shopping Experience Blog

Laura's Sybels

Dear Laura:

Thanks for writing.  We are in fact planning to offer smaller sizes and larger sizes on a make to order basis.  We believe that by offering this service we are light years ahead of our competitors.  The $5 cost is a small fraction of what it would cost us to be able to actually make these shoes to order.  We would be happy to dialogue this issue with you by way of the telephone if you would be willing.  We are here to please our customers and look forward to hearing from you.  Of course if you want the Sybel and you are sure of the size, please write back and we will make this one at no extra cost.  Enjoy your evening.

Sincerely,

The Steve Madden Shopping Experience Team

Made for Jackie

Jackie:

Happy New Year and thanks for writing and visiting www.stevemadden.com.  We are going to make you a pair of this shoe in black.  Simply write back and advise that you are sure you want them.  Black, size 7.5.  Our special "made for you" program is just beginning but we would love for you to be one of the first to own this boot.  It will take us about 10 days to get them to you but they will be in your hands within ten days.  The "made for you" feature is an extra $5 so we hope this is ok.  Please write back.  Any other shoes we can make for you?

Enjoy your New Year Weekend.

Steve

Progress and the Holiday Shopping Experience

Thanks to everyone for visiting stevemadden.com, for visiting my blog and for shopping with us.  First the good news..... our daily visitors have doubled to 40,000 a day from 20,000 a day.  This increase is over the last 4 weeks.  stevemadden.com has more styles available and ready to ship today than ever before.  This is in direct response to thousands of emails and phone calls we received from customers literally begging us to help them find a shoe.  In order to help as many customers as possible we began shipping some internet orders from our retail stores.  This allowed us to make the large number of shoes in our stores available to purchase by visitors to stevemadden.com.  The ship from store program is less than 4 weeks old and it has worked very well.  This is not to say there have not been some glitches... we are working day and night to resolve all issues that have come up.  The good news is we are serving many more customers well than every before AND we have created a program that will give us the ability to create the best on line shopping experience in the world.. the bad news is that the experience is work in progress... well over 95% of our customers have been satisfied and others have had delays in replies as well as in shipping.  We want to thank you for encouraging us to make more styles available and for buying more of our shoes and for providing feedback both good and bad.  Please rest assured we will not rest until the program is without glitches. Thanks for suggesting (or shall we say demanding) we serve you better by making more shoes available.  Thanks for all the feedback.  Happy Holidays!

Steve Madden Exclusive!

 

The styles above are brand new, never seen by the public. Some will eventually be sold in retail stores, others will never be sold anywhere but on stevemadden.com. Click below to buy the newest, trendiest Steve Madden footwear. Delivery will be 2 weeks from purchase.

Jen's Sybels

Jen:

Thanks for the note.  We have changed the prices to remove the price range we spoke about on the post earlier.  The shoes may still may be a little more expensive than the stores but this is consistent with what our customers have asked. Find us the shoes we want!!! This is the call we are responding to.  We have also sent you an e-mail on this same topic to further explain and to further thank you for taking the time to write and for visiting stevemadden.com. 

Happy Holidays and please send us a picture of yourself with the Sybels on so we can show all our readers how great you look in the shoes.

Bren's Boots

Dear Bren:

Thanks for writing and sharing your thoughts.  We appreciate your input.  First off we want to explain the change in prices of the boots you are speaking about.  Our prices reflected the prices of our shoes in our retail stores during the first couple of days of December.  Many of the shoes were on sale and still are.  Once we determined that our supply was limited and demand was larger than we could meet, we took the shoes from on sale to regular prices.  This decision reflected the input of our online customers who "just want the shoes they want".  The response has been tremendous. 

In fact, if you check again at around 9 this am; you will see that the range of the prices based on different prices from color to color has been eliminated to one price for all colors.  We believe this will solve your problem and get you the boots of your choice at your hoped price. 

As to your concerns about emails not being replied to- we answer every one within 12 hours and most within 6 hours.  If you did not get an answer this was an oversight of some type but not our standard practice to any extent.  Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Finally, please let us know if and when you decide to purchase the boots and I will autograph the boots for you before they are sent to you as my way of saying thanks for reaching out.

Enjoy your day and Happy Holidays.

"Find my Style" - A new concept at SteveMadden.com

Hello and thanks again for reading my blog and for visiting www.stevemadden.com.  The comments from all of you are really appreciated.  I love hearing from you and hope you spread the word to your friends.  This week’s post is about a new idea that we are working on in which we would like all of you to participate.  The idea is all about finding the shoes you really want.  So many people see shoes on other people’s feet, in stores, in magazines or of course all over the internet.  All of a sudden the need to have a certain shoe begins.  At times you know exactly what you want because you saw it or at times you saw   a few things and wish you could find a combination of them.  For starters we will be launching FIND MY SHOE which will assist you in finding the Steve Madden style you want.  You will be able to not only find the style you want but also hunt it down in your style color and size, buy it and have it shipped to you BUT also to submit styles or style ideas you wish that Steve Madden made. 

So tell us what you think about the above and about the button that will soon appear on our website.  In closing and before I go, thanks to Lan for doing her work on STEVE MADDEN in college.  We would all love to read what you write.  Your input on the web site is actually great to hear.  You are totally right as well.  Think of our plans for the web as a new house.  Your old house was a little cluttered, not very well organized and not that easy to find but cool.  We built a new house with white walls and plan to add color, furniture (so to speak) and attitude little by little once we see how all of you like to live.  So the more input the better. 

Jail Over, A Designer Steps Up

Chastened by a 31-month prison stint, STEVE MADDEN returns to the scene - with new footwear, a new fiancé and some hard-earned wisdom.

  As the founder of a $338 million shoe empire, Steve Madden had grown accustomed to traveling in style, whether jetting to the famed golf course at Pebble Beach or to his stores in Miami. But the private plane he boarded on Sept. 18, 2002, was for a trip Madden wished he didn't have to take: After pleading guilty to two counts of securities fraud and money laundering, the shoe designer was off to a Florida correctional facility, where he would spend the next 31 months locked up. "It was unbelievably mind-blowing," says Madden, who was also ordered to pay $5 million in restitution. "I checked myself in, and the next day, I was cleaning bathrooms and picking up cigarette butts out in the rain."

  As humbling as the experience may have been - Madden's prison job was to operate and repair the sprinkler system, and he slept in a cubicle with another inmate - Madden says it also gave him "a lot of time to think" about what had led him, back in '94 and '95, to get involved with two brokerage firms in manipulating IPO prices. "Fear of losing my talent, letting my family down and greed - that's how I got in trouble," he says, "I regret the mistakes I made and I don't blame anybody else. I took responsibility and did my time like a man."

   Now Madden, 48, who was released from prison last April, is working to rehabilitate his reputation as the driven head of Steve Madden Ltd., which he founded in '90 with $1,100. The company itself wasn't implicated in the scandal and continued to thrive during Madden's incarceration, expanding to 93 stores and beating out Nike and Adidas as favorite footwear among 12- to 29-year-olds in a recent survey. "I don't think Steve Madden the person is as important as Steve Madden the brand," says consumer expert Michael Berland, who conducted the poll. "That there is Steve Madden would be a real shock to some people."

   There is, of course, and while he was out, his moderately priced label continued to tempt both celebs (Beyonce, Hilary Duff) and less affluent shoppers with stylish shoes. (Some critics charged they were akin to knockoffs.) "Not everyone can buy Chloe," says Carmen Electra, who owns Madden gold flats. "But you can get the closest thing at Steve Madden."

   For his part, Madden, who was allowed to receive his $700,000 salary throughout because his crimes didn’t involve his company, says he "wasn't that interested in shoes while I was away." What he did miss was "being able to take a shower without shower shoes, walking down the street on a fall day in Manhattan, Getting up in the morning and reading the newspaper."

   He found some solace in reading books, from David McCollough's bio of John Adams to The Devil Wears Prada - and from a course he taught fellow inmates about how to start a business. He says he also "got in touch with the prayer thing." Madden, who says he used alcohol and drugs in the '80s and relapsed during his legal troubles, also underwent court-ordered rehab. Sobriety, he says, "is not a struggle, but it's not something I take lightly."

  If there was an upside to his forced time off, it was that Madden, who says he used to "work seven days a week and sneak a round of golf in," fell in love. Wendy Ballew, 34, his Director of Operations who says she used to view Madden "like a brother," visited him often in the prison. They would talk, watched by guards, in the cafeteria and, recalls Madden, "I would hold her hand. [One day] I kissed her. Obviously there was no sexual intimacy until I came home, but it was very romantic."

   Two months before his release. Madden proposed, and he spent his first weekend as a free man with Ballew in Montauk, shopping and enjoying a spa. "It was just so nice," she says, "being out."

   No doubt her fiancé would agree. But Madden isn't trying to forget the past three years entirely. Faced with challenges now, Madden says he thinks back to prison. "There's a quote from Winston Churchill I put up on the wall," he says, " 'If you're going through hell, keep going.' That's what I've done. I've kept going."