Steve Madden

2012 Review #287:
This store location is sort of cursed. It was a Banana Republic, a L’Occitane, a «Life is Good» store, probably a Tibetan/​Nepalese goods store at some point. Then, it became this Steve Madden. I’m not sure how long it’s been here but definitely over a year. I walked by, knowing what Steve Madden was generally like and not feeling a need to go in. But lately I really wanted some fall boots, and passed Steve Madden’s window display of all types of boots, and decided to go in.
The few pairs of Steve Madden shoes I have all have one thing in common: they are uncomfortable. Extremely and unreasonable uncomfortable. Even my pair of converse-​knockoff sneakers is uncomfortable. But, they can look nice and that certainly accounts for a lot of the appeal. I came in and saw several pairs of boots that appealed to me. I turned them over to have a look at price. Every single one cost a minimum of $ 325 – 400. Now, Steve Madden has never been cheap to me, but I don’t think I ever paid more than $ 50 for a pair of shoes here. Looking on their website, I see they do have some boots in the $ 100 range but none appealed to me. Also, they sell knockoff Tom’s for $ 100 (Tom’s are $ 40 – 50) but the Steve Madden ones don’t benefit children or charity in anyway, which bugs me.
When I was in this specific store, I was never greeted, despite walking in front of two saleswomen by the front door who were doing nothing but greeting people as they walked in. Everyone but me apparently. I walked around the whole store and was never acknowledged by anyone. There were hundreds of pairs of nearly identical boots (very few other types of shoes or men’s shoes at all) and nowhere in the store were there any sale or clearance items. I know that Boulder is one of the few places that can get away with selling chain shoes at $ 400/​pair but it just seems like such a ridiculous store for this area, and the service is not helping them stay competitive at all.