We’re looking for an experienced Product Development Manager to lead the apparel product development process from development through pre-production. This person will drive executional excellence, quality, cost discipline, and on-time delivery across every stage of development.
Role Overview:
You’ll partner closely with Design, Merchandising, Technical Design, Production, Compliance, and vendors to ensure products are delivered in line with design intent, margin targets, production requirements, and timelines.
This is a highly data-driven, metrics-heavy environment. You should be comfortable analyzing data, drawing meaningful business insights, and clearly communicating recommendations and rationale.
The team operates in a non-seasonal, weekly-drop model averaging approximately 160–200 SKUs per week. Experience managing product development at this pace and volume is essential.
What You’ll Be Doing:
- Lead, coach, and develop the Product Development team, including direct people management.
- Own the product development process from development through pre-production.
- Manage the team against the development calendar to ensure on-time delivery.
- Drive team performance against KPIs and OKRs, including lead-time, margin, and allocation targets.
- Maintain execution discipline to improve development speed, accuracy, and on-time delivery.
- Identify risks, dependencies, and timing issues early, bringing clear solutions and recommendations.
- Drive product engineering that supports design intent, margin goals, and production readiness.
- Oversee day-to-day execution of the development calendar across assigned categories.
- Maintain accurate BOMs, product data, and supporting documentation throughout the development lifecycle.
- Manage sample development, approvals, and vendor communication.
- Ensure development data is complete, current, and reliable for cross-functional partners.
- Partner with Design, Merchandising, Technical Design, Production, Compliance, and suppliers.
- Support vendor accountability through clear communication, calendar adherence, and issue escalation.
- Use data and metrics to identify business insights and drive decisions.
- Lead effectively in a high-velocity, weekly-drop environment.
What You’ll Need:
- 5+ years of apparel Product Development experience.
- Proven people-management experience with at least 1–2 direct reports.
- True leadership experience; this is not an individual contributor role.
- Strong knowledge of apparel development and production processes.
- Experience owning the end-to-end product development process independently.
- Experience working in a high-volume, fast-paced product environment.
- Experience with non-seasonal and/or weekly-drop business models strongly preferred.
- Strong analytical skills and the ability to turn metrics into actionable recommendations.
- Confidence explaining and defending data-driven decisions.
- Excellent attention to detail, organization, efficiency, and follow-through.
- Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills.
- A proactive, solutions-oriented approach to problem-solving.
What Makes Someone a Strong Fit:
- 5+ years of apparel Product Development experience with direct people-management responsibility.
- Experience leading a Product Development team, not solely working as an individual contributor.
- A strong ability to turn data into business insights and recommendations.
- Experience operating at significant SKU volume and development speed.
- Comfort working within a non-seasonal, weekly-drop model.
- A track record of holding teams accountable to KPIs, timelines, and business goals.
- A proactive approach to identifying risks and bringing solutions.
- Strong cross-functional influence through expertise, data, and collaboration.
