The Product Manager is responsible for managing product throughout the lifecycle process. This includes driving effective market research to identify customer needs, analyzing return on investment, recommending worthwhile product investments and working with global teams to drive the timely development of new and existing product lines.
Critical Success Factors:
• Strong market research to identify winning concepts that meet or exceed sales projections and contribute to the company’s overall growth strategy.
• Manage new product development milestones and effective indirect leadership of global resources to meet product rollout deadlines.
• Successful management of design and engineering resources to meet deadlines, design quality, and required productivity.
• Solid decision making ability and cost management skills to ensure ROI on every new product investment.
Responsibilities:
• Identify market needs for new products and existing product improvements by obtaining industry and technology intel and overseeing involvement of Marketing and Sales resources.
• Develop cutting edge products to meet customer expectations and achieve sales targets by identifying technology leveraging opportunities.
• Forecast Sales and determine pricing of new products from the design specifications phase to IOQ phase by working with Marketing and Sales to secure their buy in and commitment to product specs, pricing, and sales volume.
• Analyzes ROI and makes recommendations on products worth moving forward. Presents team’s product designs and specifications for Executive approval.
• Drive new product development & line extensions by utilizing global engineering resources, and coordinating with other product managers.
• Drive new custom product and projects to meet the needs of the customers.
• Oversee product lifecycle and product SKUs to effectively support business needs and enhance efficiencies.
• Work with engineering teams in the US and China to develop new product proposals including design sketches, design engineering, line drawings, and new technology recommendations.
• Manage design review between the product department and manufacturing facility and oversee deadlines to ensure on time introductions of new products.
• Manage the ETL or UL Listing process.
• Collaborate with Engineering/Product Development and Marketing to manage the product launch process, including: market research, product needs, design review, sample evaluation, BOM/product hierarchy, spec sheet/ies files/instruction sheet/catalog review, pricing, rep samples/sample cases, initial orders, and product training for sales. Collect appropriate technical materials in a timely fashion from engineers in US and China including product design story, specifications, photometrics, etc. to support effective product launches and assist the sales & marketing team in achieving sales targets.
• Work with the Marketing team to create market strategy and market positioning statement. Help coordinate photo shoots, sales kits and trade show samples inline with your teams products target market.
• Measures ongoing success of each product line developed by the team. Work with internal resources to develop strategy/provide tools where necessary to increase sales.
• Coordinate Product Development team to set preliminary schedules for production including pilot run, product and finish review, label production, and initial order quantities (IOQ)
• Manage product revision process to ensure proper batch break in communication with operations, inventory purge, updated spec sheets/ies files, with changes properly communicated to sales.
• Co-develop with China product management team to evaluate whether China new products should be tooled and launched for US market.
• Work with quality engineering to understand customer quality concerns and provide commercial corrective actions responses and product enhancements.
• Provide technical support to contractors, distributors, specifiers and sales personnel.
• This position will require some travel to visit clients, reps, factory and participate in trade shows.
Requirements:
• 25% international travel to China manufacturing facility (minimum 2 weeks per trip).
• Degree in Business Management, Marketing or Engineering.
• Minimum of 7-10 years project management experience.
• Highly organized and able to function in a fast paced work environment.
• Excellent analytical and communication skills with the ability to communicate complex technical issues in an easy to understand manner.
• Process-oriented and creative problem solver.
• Strong organization and project management skills.
• Ability to meet tight and changing deadlines.
• Ability to travel internationally for a several weeks at a time, as needed.
• Strong interpersonal, analytical, verbal and written communication skills.
• Effective presentation skills and the ability to communicate with individuals at all levels of the organization.
• Attention to detail in composing materials, establishing priorities and meeting deadlines.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, multiple time zoned environment with demonstrated ability to juggle multiple competing tasks/demands.
• Solid computer skills including SAP (only preferred) and MS Office Suite.
If interested in the above please contact Jonathan Reetz at [email protected]