unrealistically competitive, but can be fun - Anonymous employee Steven Madden Employee Review

3.0
Jun 3, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

free shoes every fall and winter. working can be fun at times if its not too packed and manager lets you play your own music. manager was encouraging and helped out a LOT. didnt just hide in the back like many other retail stores. commission based so if you get a good shift by yourself, you make a lot of money. as long as you keep the store organized throughout the day, theres little to be done after closing so you do get to go home when promises, unlike many retail stores that can keep you much later. overall typical experience found in most sales-based retail job. not much greater not much worse. youll have the fun days with easy sales and fun coworkers, and the rough days with the aggressive coworkers and rude customers.

Cons

the part time employees got as little as 4-8 hours a week. the given hour difference between employees were unfair and many people had to quit when management couldnt adjust. some got 28 hours, others only 4. there was no explanation provided when asked why this was the case. shoes themselves are not the greatest quality so lots of sales/commission lost on returned items. scheduling consisted of an outdated manual system so any submission for scheduling requests or changes were often overlooked or messed up. pay was minimum wage plus only one percent commission, so having work hours during peak shopping hours was crucial. if you didnt have that your paycheck was grim. therefore, your experience at this job will depend heavily on how many and which hours you have. some workers were fun and considerate to share sales. others were catty and immature and deliberately attempted to sabotage or steal sales. youre typically only paired with one or two people per shift so your shift experience will differ depend what sort of people you end up with. not an uncommon situation in the sales environment.

Explore other reviews about Steven Madden

5.0
Apr 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Inclusive company culture, opportunities to grow within the organization with tenure, work/life balance

Cons

Low starting pay, low commission

1.0
Jul 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A lot of free shoes. Decent employee discount. Good starter/beginner job. But if you can work somewhere else, do that instead.

Cons

Please read if you’re considering employment with this brand! This company is extremely TOXIC. They do not care about their employees at all. The training at any level is awful. There is no structured training system or operations and it creates lack of confidence and more issues and creates failure. The pay is poverty wages. For many years this company let amazing talent go due to wages. This company will not pay you well. And they nickel and dime pay raises IF THERE EVEN ARE ANY! This company does very well financially to be able to give raises and they don’t. There is a lot of favoritism amongst management so if they favor someone, they will take their word rather than look into the issue. The workload is absolutely insane. So much extra/unnecessary busy work that creates constant chaos. I’ve never seen a brand waste so much energy on unnecessary nonsense and they cannot execute anything seamlessly or timely. It’s like you are always running in a circle. They have no methodology to training or operations. In summary, you can make so much more money hourly/salary at most other retailers, so don’t even waste your time here. You won’t be able to pay your bills and survive. There is minimal work/life balance. The corporate office is all white girls, so zero diversity. HR department is low intelligence and does not care about people.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All