•Steve Madden was born in 1958 in Lawrence New York

•Married his director of operations, Wendy Ballew, in 2005.

Madden attended the University of Miami in 1975-1977 but did not finish.

•Madden worked initially worked in a shoe store at age 16.

• He then held various positions with a company called L.J. Simone, which he left in 1988.

After leaving L.J. Simone, Madden went in on a business venture with a previous colleague called Souliers, which failed.

Still sticking to his dream Madden founded his company Steve Madden Ltd. 1990

•Madden received horrible grades in college and after two years his father refused to continue to pay tuition. He then headed back to New York where he fell into some bad habits. He battled substance-abuse and was arrested in 1988 for drunk driving soon after resigning from L.J. Simone. He then decided to enter a rehabilitation program.

•The first trouble Madden encountered was in 1997. The company’s stock was backed by a firm called Stratton Oakmont that declared bankruptcy.

•Madden took a quick fall from the top when in 2002 he was convicted on charges of fraud and money laundering. He entered a federal prison and was released in 2005.

•Currently Steve Madden is a very well known and widely known company that makes shoes, bedding, apparel, and handbags. In 2007 the company had a revenue of 431 million dollars.

•At the beginning Steve Madden Ltd. was a sole proprietorship. When he was starting off he literally sold shoes out of the back of his car and drove around to local stores in N.Y. to find buyers. After his company took off and expanded rapidly it became a corporation.

•Madden’s philosophy towards work and business changed greatly after his time in prison. He realized that he had been motivated by instant gratification, but that that need only came out of fear of the company not succeeding. After that he realized that it’s more important to just work hard and do what you love.

•Steve Madden named the company after himself when he founded it in 1990.

•There was a time when Steve Madden wasn’t allowed to hold an executive position or chair in his own company as consequence to the charges against him.

•Steve Madden proposed to his wife while he was jail.

Slate, . "Steve Madden Biography." Encyclopedia of World Biography. N.p., 10 06 2006. Web. 6 Apr 2010.

<http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007- Li-Pr/Madden-Steve.html>.

"Steve Madden." Wikipedia. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 03 29 2010. Web. 6 Apr 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Madden>.