Steven Madden, Ltd.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2025 Steve Madden Limited Learnings Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Danielle McCoy, VP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2025 earnings call and webcast. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that our remarks that follow, including answers to your questions, contain statements that we believe to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risk that could cause actual results to materially differ from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our press release issued earlier today and filings that we make with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly earnings conference call, if at all. The financial results discussed on today's call are on an adjusted basis unless otherwise noted. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable gap, financial measure, and other associated disclosures are contained in our earnings release. Joining me on the call today is Ed Rosenfeld, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Zane Mazzuzzi, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Operations. With that, I'll turn the call over to you, Ed.

Thanks, Danielle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review Steve Madden's second quarter 2025 results. As anticipated, the second quarter was extremely challenging. driven largely by the impact of new tariffs on goods imported into the United States. As we highlighted on the last earnings call, our team moved swiftly to adapt to the changing landscape, sharply diversifying our sourcing out of China, negotiating meaningful discounts with suppliers, and implementing surgical price increases. That said, wholesale customers canceled orders and reduced open to buys. Shipment delays led to lost sales and pushed deliveries to later periods. and organic gross margins declined due to the significant increase in our landed costs, resulting in substantial pressure on both revenue and earnings. Since the last call, our team has remained focused on mitigating near-term impacts while positioning the company for long-term growth. We've continued to move forward with our sourcing diversification efforts, although due to the agreement reached with the Chinese government to temporarily reduce the new tariff on Chinese imports from 145% to 30%, We have moved certain production for fall back to China, where we felt it would be difficult to ensure on-time delivery, appropriate product quality, and or reasonable pricing in an alternative country. For fall 2025, we currently expect to source approximately 30% of our U.S. imports from China, down from 71% for the full year 2024. We are also selectively raising prices to wholesale customers and consumers. So far, we've been pleased overall with consumer acceptance of the price increases, particularly on new fashion, but it's still early. We will continue to monitor the elasticity of demand carefully and react accordingly. While these short-term mitigating actions are important, our team's primary focus remains on positioning the company for long-term growth by executing our strategy to deepen consumer connections through the combination of compelling product and effective marketing. Our design teams are delivering strong assortments and we're seeing positive consumer response to new fashion offerings, particularly in the dress shoe and boot categories across both DTC and wholesale channels, including very strong performance in the Nordstrom anniversary event. And we are amplifying these assortments with marketing campaigns and initiatives designed to drive sustained brand heat and cultural relevance. In the flagship brand, We are capitalizing on Steve's appearance on fashion podcast, The Cutting Room Floor, which sparked viral interest on TikTok by continuing to rebalance our marketing spend across the funnel, increasing our investment in top and mid-funnel tactics, and diversify our spend by channel, expanding our investment in YouTube, Pinterest, and Snapchat. And these efforts are driving results with measurable increases in awareness and consideration for the brand with our key Gen Z and millennial consumers. Another key priority is integrating our new acquisition, Kirk Geiger, which closed May 6th. The Kirk Geiger London brand continues to have strong momentum, and we are more confident than ever in its potential to be a significant driver of growth for the company in the years ahead. The integration is proceeding smoothly, and our teams are making strong progress on work streams related to revenue synergies, including expanding Kirk Geiger in international markets through the Steve Madden Network and growing Steve Madden in the UK through the Kirk Geiger platform, as well as cost savings opportunities in areas like freight and logistics. So in sum, our financial performance in the second quarter was not up to our usual standards as we grappled with the impact of tariffs. And we know the path forward will continue to be bumpy in the near term. But as we look out further, we believe our core strengths, powerful brands, a robust balance sheet, and a proven business model, supplemented by a powerful new growth engine in Kirk Geiger, positioned us well to navigate the current disruption and deliver sustainable growth over time. And now I'll turn it over to Zeen to review our second quarter 2025 financial results in more detail.