Supply Growth Lead

Forum Ventures; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 100,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Hybrid work

Learning budget

Job summary

Calico is seeking a strategic, hands-on leader to own the onboarding and growth of apparel suppliers for its product creation engine. You will close factories, mills, and trim suppliers, shape the supplier data model, and partner with product and engineering to scale the network.

You’ll design onboarding processes, run outbound campaigns, and travel to supplier hubs to build trust and gather the data that makes the network valuable. You’ll write the playbook as you go.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in marketplace growth, sourcing, or related field.
• Proven ability to close suppliers and manage outbound outreach.
• Experience defining supplier onboarding processes.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Identify and close apparel suppliers and partners.
• Define supplier profiles and data requirements for the network.
• Design onboarding processes and data capture workflows.
• Collaborate with product/engineering to scale the supplier network.
• Travel to supplier hubs to build relationships and gather on-site data.

Skills

Marketplace growth

Business development

Sourcing

Analytical thinking

Cross-cultural fluency

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

CRM systems

Excel

Data analytics

Job description

Location Toronto (hybrid) with regular travel to sourcing hubs

About Calico

Calico is a product creation engine that deploys specialty AI to solve for the hardest parts of the creation process. Apparel and accessories brands use Calico to turn a design concept into a production-ready spec in seconds, keep costing and supply chain status visible in real time, and automate the coordination overhead that normally eats a product calendar. Teams at Everlane, Sønderhaus, Mission and beyond run on it.

Everything Calico does for a brand depends on the other half of the market: the factories, mills, and suppliers who actually make the goods. Today that network spans 150+ vetted factories across 10+ countries. We know it needs to be far bigger, far deeper in its data, and far more impactful for the suppliers themselves. That's this job.

The role

You will be the first dedicated hire on the supply side of the marketplace, and you will own it end to end for apparel and clothing: which suppliers we bring on, how we bring them on, what we learn from them will be owned by you.

This is deliberately two jobs braided together. Half of it is business development: finding and closing factories, mills, and trim and fabric suppliers, mostly through outbound, referrals, trade shows, and sourcing agents who already have the relationships. The other half is discovery: figuring out what supply-side product-market fit actually looks like for Calico. What do factories need badly enough to change their workflow for? What data do we need from them to make brand-side matching and costing genuinely good? Which categories and countries should we go deep in first?

You’ll be operating well before the playbook exists. The right person treats that as the appeal, not the risk: you’ll be writing the playbook, and the thesis you land on will shape a large part of what Calico becomes. We are looking for someone who excels at creative problem solving, high ownership environments and quick pivots/experimentation to get to a desired outcome.

Recruit and close apparel suppliers

• Build the target map. Segment the apparel manufacturing landscape by category, country, tier, and capability, and decide where we build density first rather than spreading thin.

• Run outbound end to end. Source, pitch, negotiate, and close factories and mills, from cold contact through signed agreements, to first live order.

• Work the channels that scale. Sourcing agents, buying offices, industry associations, trade shows, and existing brand customers’ vendor lists are all faster paths to supply than one-by-one outbound. Test them and double down on what works.

• Be on the ground. Visit factories, sit through capability audits, and build the kind of trust that a video call doesnt produce. Expect some travel to help us better get to know the factories and build relationships.

Collect the data that makes the network valuable

• Define the supplier profile. Decide what we need to know about a factory - MOQs, lead times, machinery, certifications, compliance, price bands, category strengths - for our matching and costing to be trustworthy.

• Get that data in, reliably. Design an onboarding process suppliers will actually complete, and work with product and engineering to make the capture less manual over time.

• Keep it honest. Build the verification and refresh loop that stops the network from quietly rotting into stale listings.

Find supply-side product-market fit

• Run structured discovery. Interview suppliers systematically and turn what you hear into a clear, written point of view on where the value is.

• Test offers. Prototype what we give suppliers, order flow, faster spec clarity, fewer revision cycles, better forecasting, tooling of their own and measure what actually changes their behaviour.

• Define the metrics. Establish what a healthy supply side looks like for us: activation, time-to-first-order, repeat rate, coverage by category, quote responsiveness. Then own the numbers.

• Close the loop with product. You’ll be the clearest voice inside the company on what suppliers need, and youre expected to translate that into a roadmap, not just a report.

First 90 days

• Days 1-30: Learn the platform and the brand side deeply. Talk to suppliers already in the network and brand customers about how sourcing actually works for them. Come back with a written map of the apparel supply landscape and an initial target segments.

• Days 31-60: Run outbound against that segment. Land the first cohort of new suppliers and take them all the way through onboarding yourself, documenting every point of friction.

• Days 61-90: Present a supply-side thesis: which categories and geographies we win first, what the supplier offer is, what data model supports it, and what you need to scale it in the following two quarters.

What we're looking for

We care much more about judgment and drive than about a specific resume shape. That said, most people who succeed here will have some version of the following:

• 5+ years in marketplace supply growth, business development, sourcing, or apparel production, ideally with real time spent on the manufacturing side, not only the brand side.

• Genuine closing ability. You’ve personally opened and closed relationships with businesses that had no prior reason to trust you or your company.

• Comfort with ambiguity. You’ve worked somewhere without an established playbook and produced one. You can tell the difference between a real signal and a polite meeting.

• An analytical habit. You instrument what you do, argue from evidence, and are as comfortable in a spreadsheet as in a factory.

• Cross-cultural fluency. Apparel manufacturing is global. You work well across time zones, languages, and business norms, and you travel willingly.

• Clear writing. Much of your output here is a written argument that changes what the company does next.

Nice to have

• Existing relationships with apparel factories, mills, or sourcing agents in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Turkey, Portugal, or Central America.
• Experience at an early-stage marketplace during its supply build-out.
• Working knowledge of tech packs, BOMs, grading, or costing.
• A second language relevant to a major sourcing region.

Why this role

• Real ownership. You’re the first supply hire. The strategy is yours to define, and the team that eventually builds out this function is likely yours to lead.

• An industry that hasn’t been solved yet. Apparel sourcing still runs on spreadsheets, WhatsApp, and email chains. The gap between how it works and how it should work is enormous. You should want to operate with that uncertainty and thrive in a role that brings structure to the market.

• Demand already exists. Brands are on the platform and pulling for supply. You’re not selling into a vacuum.

• Proximity to the decisions. Small team, direct line to the founders, short distance between what you learn and what gets built.

Compensation and logistics

• Competitive base salary plus meaningful early-stage equity.

• Performance-linked upside tied to supply growth and activation.

• Toronto-based, hybrid. Partial time spent in office to collaborate with the team and some travel as the marketplace develops.

• A complete benefits package and resources dedicated to learning.

Calico is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of every background and are happy to provide accommodations at any stage of the hiring process - just let us know what you need.