Following days of tariff news whiplash, Steve Madden chairman and chief executive officer Edward Rosenfeld is starting to accept another year ahead of uncertainty in the matter.
In fact, the CEO told analysts in the company’s fourth quarter 2025 earnings call on Wednesday that the team was planning on giving guidance for the coming fiscal year, but President Trump’s immediate actions following the Supreme Court’s decision last week signaled more rough seas ahead.
“Over the last few days, there’s been an enormous amount that’s changed,” Rosenfeld told analysts when addressing the ever-changing tariff headlines. “And a number of important questions remain unanswered. And there’s genuine uncertainty about where things go from here. Obviously, we’re talking about tariffs, which are a factor that have a significant impact on our earnings. So given that level of uncertainty, we just don’t think it’d be responsible to put out earnings guidance right now.”
Indeed, Madden elected not to release full earnings guidance for fiscal 2026 after posting its fourth quarter 2025 results on Wednesday. Instead, the company noted that it expects revenue in fiscal 2026 to increase between 9 percent and 11 percent compared to 2025. For the first quarter of 2026, the company expects revenue to increase between 15 percent and 17 percent.
“We view guidance as a commitment to the investment community,” Rosenfeld added. “And we only want to provide it when we have the information clarity necessary to stand behind it. And at this moment, we just don’t have that.”
And after calling 2025 “a challenging year,” driven largely by the disruption and negative impacts resulting from new tariffs on goods imported into the United States, the CEO remains “encouraged” for what’s to come in 2026.
“Consumers are responding favorably to our new spring products, and we expect high single-digit revenue growth in Dolce Vita for the year,” he said. “All three of our lead brands are poised for growth. And as we look ahead to 2026, we are particularly encouraged by the momentum building in Steve Madden and the opportunity for growth in Kurt Geiger London.”
On the other hand, Rosenfeld expressed concerns over the company’s private label business, which is primarily conducted in the mass and value channels. “We believe the negative impact of tariffs on revenue has been most severe here, where price sensitivity is highest, and we don’t have the benefit of brand leverage for pricing actions,” he noted. “[Private label is] clearly the biggest challenge that we’re facing right now.”
Private label revenue decreased 15 percent in 2025, and the company said it expects a further decline of nearly 20 percent in 2026. For context, the CEO explained that the business segment generated about $415 million in fiscal 2024. This was followed by a “pretty significant” decline in 2025, with private label revenues down to about $355 million, so around about a $60 million decline.
“Where we sit today, we see an even bigger decline in 2026,” Rosenfeld said. “I think that could approach $70 million decline. So that’s why I think we articulated approaching 20 percent decline in 2026. And again, that’s very different from what we’re seeing in the branded business, where we are seeing a nice recovery from the hit that we took in 2025.”
Explaining further, Rosenfeld added that since pricing actions, like discounting, are out of the company’s control when it comes to private label, there’s fewer ways to turn the segment around quickly.
“We have seen some of those customers pull back from us on a temporary basis,” the CEO admitted. “But we’re confident that we’ll be able to build that back over time. We still have good relationships with those customers. We still feel that we bring something very compelling to them in terms of our styling, our fashion and the information that we have about what’s working in other channels. but it’s clearly a headwind for 2026.”
