Job description
As the Product Developer, you will use your operational and technical expertise to advance products from design to commercialization. By doing so, your efforts will have a direct effect on exceeding our brand, sales and marketing goals. Your soft goods and/or accessories expertise from the active lifestyle industry will support prototyping design concepts, construction, cost and quality engineering, rigorous testing and evaluation. Your keen ability to help manage projects and timelines successfully will be a key asset to the development team.
Key Responsibilities and Priorities
• Manages the development of new outdoor bags and luggage through soft-goods construction knowledge, hard goods development processes, and creation of product tech packs through detailed technical AI artwork, color-ups, material and component specification, material summaries, from design initiation through production hand-off.
• Creates and tracks the development schedule of assigned products to ensure a timely completion following the Go-To-Market calendar, utilizing time management and communications skills to meet deadlines. Understands, helps create and tracks tooling calendars, as needed.
• Manage the development process of products that meet company/corporate target margin goals, while maintaining design intent and quality.
• Ensures both the technical superiority and the product quality/integrity of all products falling under their responsibilities, coordinating with QA and design teams appropriately.
• Value-engineer products by analyzing BOM/FOB and recommending materials and construction techniques to impact cost throughout development.
• Organizes, publishes, and maintains all records, style files, and samples associated with the product and related programs.
• Partners with domestic and overseas Product/Material Sourcing and Manufacturers to develop new materials, construction techniques, processes, costing, and samples used to create innovative and technically superior products each season.
• Interacts with Product Director, Product Manager, Design, Marketing, Sales, and Quality Assurance to distribute product technical details and assures the accuracy, legality, and integrity of all product performance claims.
• Contributes to sustainability projects related to product materials, construction, function and manufacturing.
• Support photo reviews; assists with internal and external product presentations, as requested.
Position Requirements
• 2-5 years in bags, and accessories product development.
• Associate or higher degree in Industrial Design, Apparel Design; Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, Manufacturing, or related experience plus.
• Knowledge of soft-goods (sewn) and hard-goods (non-sewn) manufacturing construction techniques
• Advanced proficiency with Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Photoshop proficiency preferred.
• Able to independently manage product of moderate to high complexity.
• Advanced outdoor and industrial textile and materials knowledge
• Able to lead product review meetings with optional supervision.
• Business writing skills, strong ability to communicate cross-culturally
• Strong interpersonal skills, including the ability to create trust with cross functional teams.
• Problem-solving mentality, using sound judgement and diplomacy
• Highly organized; deadline driven with track record for delivering great results on time.
• Participates in goal setting. Drives results to achieve goals.
• Computer literate in Office: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint
Additional Responsibilities
• Domestic and International Travel by road, air and overnight, as required 15% of time
• Lifting and/or bending up to 30 pounds.
