The Product Manager leads the strategy, development, and performance of assigned product categories. This role owns the category roadmap, product requirements, business cases, and development milestones, aligning product decisions with company growth and profitability goals.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
This list of duties and responsibilities is not all inclusive and may be expanded to include other duties and responsibilities as management may deem necessary.
- Develop and maintain category roadmaps using market trends, competitive research, customer feedback, and product performance data.
- Manage the product lifecycle from concept through discontinuation, including new product development, assortment planning, and SKU rationalization.
- Own stage-gate deliverables, project schedules, product requirements, specifications, costing, and development milestones; communicate progress and resolve barriers to launch.
- Approve product samples and, with assistance from Category Managers, coordinate testing, packaging development, and assembly instructions to support launch readiness.
- Partner with Sourcing, Category Managers, and Purchasing to identify and evaluate new suppliers, support existing supplier relationships, and drive product development and continuous improvement.
- Develop business cases for new products, including landed cost, pricing recommendations, gross margin, and sales projections; evaluate performance after launch.
- Analyze category sales, margins, and SKU performance to recommend pricing, assortment, and profitability improvements.
- Collaborate with Marketing to plan and execute new product launches, define compelling product positioning and messaging, and develop accurate product content and sales materials. Use customer feedback and performance insights to improve existing products and their marketing.
- Serve as the category knowledge leader, supporting Sales across all channels with product expertise and customer presentations, and providing training for internal teams, sales representatives, and customers.
- Partner with Purchasing to forecast products, review demand and inventory needs, and support inventory planning.
- Partner with Customer Service to resolve product inquiries and identify opportunities to improve product quality and customer experience.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Finance, Engineering, or a related field; MBA preferred.
- At least five years of relevant product management or new product development experience, with demonstrated experience bringing physical products from concept to launch and managing a product category or portfolio.
- Knowledge of physical consumer products and international sourcing.
- Ability to develop business cases, analyze landed cost and gross margin, recommend pricing, and evaluate SKU and category performance.
- Strong Excel skills and experience with ERP and product information management systems. NetSuite and Salsify experience is helpful but not mandatory.
- Strong project management, personal organization, and follow-through, with the ability to manage multiple development projects and deadlines.
- Effective communication and presentation skills, including collaboration with suppliers and cross-functional teams.
- Self-motivation and a high level of accountability.
- Ability to travel approximately 10% of the time, including at least one trip to Asia per year.
Physical Demands
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to handle or feel objects, tools or controls; reach with hands and arms; climb stairs; balance; stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl; talk and hear. The employee may occasionally lift and/or move up to 40 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by the job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and the ability to adjust focus.
This role is performed primarily in a professional office setting with a hybrid work arrangement. The office noise level is generally low.