Rick Steele

Born in Virginia, Steele's family moved to Ohio when he was a young child. At 13, Steele first became an entrepreneur selling 1985 Topps trading cards. Combined with his own lawn care business, Steele supported himself through high school. Adopting a business model of selling things without holding any inventory proved successful in his early and future ventures.

After graduating, Steele briefly attended ITT Technical Institute in Dayton, Ohio. Steele entered the burgeoning real estate and finance market of the 1990s, founding Fidelity Mortgage in 1991 and then LowestMortgage.com in 1999, which generated $12B in mortgage leads for brokers nationwide. In June 2003, he switched gears and launched SelectBlinds.com.

Steele founded privately held Selectblinds.com in 2003, growing it from first-year revenues of $885K to over $65 million in just 10 years. Based in Tempe, Arizona, the company has been ranked on the Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies in America lists, landing at #815 in 2009 with a three-year growth rate of 362%. In 2008 it was ranked No. 287 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide with a 33% growth in sales credited to brand marketing efforts through partnerships engineered by Steele with popular television shows and networks such as ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Fox's Home Free (2015 TV series), Bravo's Top Design, Netflix, HGTV and the Discovery Channel.

Safe Kids Day — SelectBlinds.com sponsored 2014's Safe Kids Day through Safe Kids Worldwide, giving away window blind cord cleats to all attendees.

Feed My Starving Children — SelectBlinds.com employee volunteers pack meals for Feed My Starving Children several times a year. FMSC is a non-profit that provides nutritionally complete meals specifically formulated for malnourished children in more than 65 countries around the world.

Habitat for Humanity ReStores — Habitat for Humanity ReStores are nonprofit home improvement stores and donation centers that sell new and gently used furniture, appliances, home accessories, building materials and more to the public at a fraction of the retail price. Selectblinds.com donates any returned window coverings to local ReStores, which use the proceeds to build more Habitat for Humanity homes throughout the world.

College Scholarship Program — Selectblinds.com awards an annual $1,000 college scholarship to deserving students to help offset course-related expenses, books and supplies, housing, etc.

Free Cord Cleats Program - In 2015, the company announced its Free Cord Cleat program, open to both customers and non-customers. Through it, they distributed more than 82,000 window blind/shade cord cleats to families with small children.

Rick Steele is an American entrepreneur and founder and CMO of Selectblinds, LLC, an online retailer of independently branded window fashions. In 2016, Steele's company Selectblinds.com became the first retailer to stop selling corded custom window covering products, leading industry efforts to change manufacturer safety standards and prevent the deaths and injuries that result annually from children who become entangled in window covering cords. He is also a business speaker, philanthropist and author of business and children's books.

#GoCordless Movement — In 2016, SelectBlinds.com partnered with Parents for Window Blind Safety to promote the #GoCordless movement, with the goals of improving industry safety standards and educating the public on the dangers of corded window coverings. On June 15, 2016, Selectblinds.com CEO, Al Silverberg, spoke before the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to request a new window covering mandate that requires all related retailers to be cord-free by the beginning of 2018. [Update: In 2017, the Window Covering Manufacturers Association (WCMA) proposed revising the voluntary standard to require “stock” products be cordless or have inaccessible cords. This would apply to pre-made blinds purchased in stores or online. (Corded blinds would still be available in custom products.) The updated voluntary standard awaits final approval, but the WCMA said companies selling window coverings in the U.S. and Canada will likely be required to comply by the fourth quarter of 2018.] In recognition of Selectblinds.com's decision to only sell cordless window coverings, Steele was given the 2016 Humanitarian Award from Harvard Business School's Business Expert Forum.

Steele speaks regularly as a subject matter expert on internet traffic and conversion rates. Recent engagements have included presentations at Google (2018), Traffic Mastery Nashville (2017), Traffic and Conversion in Atlanta (2017), Spanx (2017) and numerous other ecommerce-related conferences worldwide. He is a member of the Forbes Communications Council and is a frequently quoted source for business articles including Entrepreneur.com and Rescue a CEO Blog Nation. He also writes on a variety of topics on Medium.com.

In addition, Steele donates time and financial resources to numerous organizations, including daughter Kylie's non-profit animal rescue, Rubicon Rescue. When his younger daughter, Izzie, contracted and recovered from Kawasaki disease, Steele wrote the children's book Izzie’s Lost Blanket, all proceeds from which have been donated to the Kawasaki Disease Foundation. He and wife Gina also support Banner Children's Hospital in Mesa, Arizona, along with the national Crohn's & Colitis Foundation and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinsons Research.

In 2019, Steele became the winning bidder on the #38 Ford Fusion NASCAR driven by David Ragan at the annual Barrett Jackson Car auction. Steele's mother had been treated by the healthcare system when she was a child and it was that inspiration that drove bidding to $300,000.