Product Line Manager II, Footwear

Brooks Running • Seattle, WA

22h • Hybrid

About The Position

The Product Line Management and BlueLine teams are responsible for being the voice of the consumer in the product creation process, setting product benefit expectations, and ensuring this vision is maintained from brief to market. The primary goal is to bring Brooks’ complete and competitive footwear product lines to market in a timely and profitable manner and to identify the products, technologies, experiences, and processes that will shape the future of running in innovative ways. The Footwear Product Line Manager II (PLM II) plays a critical role in delivering successful seasonal footwear assortments at Brooks. In this role, you are responsible for the execution of assigned seasonal footwear projects, ensuring consumer wants and needs, product intent, and business objectives come together from brief through commercialization. As a PLM II, your primary focus is owning and executing within a season, translating consumer insights and springboards into strong consumer-centric product briefs and guiding the product team through the product creation process.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, Business or a related field preferred or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Proven experience and success in bringing a footwear product line to market (preferred)
• 5+ years prior experience working in a footwear running product related job.
• 3+ years experience in a relevant product management related role.
• Working knowledge of the footwear product management process, retail environment and consumer buying habits.
• Business orientation preferred with demonstrated financial ability in managing gross margins, inventory, and costing.
• Excellent oral and written communications skills – skilled presenter (using MS Presentation tools).
• Strong analytical skills and experience.
• Proven ability to influence, persuade and negotiate to achieve progress toward goals – skilled communicator.
• Results-oriented person with the ability to balance numerous tasks and utilize all available resources with a high sense of urgency and self-motivation.
• Demonstrated ability to conceive/create new thinking and ideas pertaining to the consumer and the product line – skilled “product eye.”
• Ability to work professionally and efficiently within the team and across departments.
• A passion for the running enthusiast and active lifestyle.

Responsibilities

• Be the expert on the evolution of the line plan for your season of focus.
• Partner with Manager, Footwear PLM to translate multi year strategies, innovation pipelines, and line plan evolution into executable inline briefs.
• Ensure seasonal product assortments are competitive, consumer‑relevant, and aligned to business objectives.
• Serve as the seasonal consumer and marketplace expert, staying ahead of trends, competitive moves, and evolving runner needs.
• Participate in insights latent and expressed needs research projects in conjunction with RSL and/or other PLMs that are then leveraged as springboards within the consumer briefs for each season.
• Mentor PLM-I through this process to grow their knowledge to participate in future projects.
• Curate time in market with key footwear team members, analyzing and interpreting data, interacting directly with consumers including but not limited to leading consumer on-on-one interviews, shop-alongs and rapid prototyping.
• Maintain regular interactions with retailers to identify additional insights and opportunities and anticipate future trends.
• Combine consumer insights (latent and/or expressed) and springboards, biomechanics POV, and new or future innovation capabilities to articulate a crafted story that comes to life in a product brief.
• Lead the cross functional and collaborative brief creation process that includes the story crafting, key consumer benefits, KPIs, development toolbox and design concepts.
• Work cross functionally within footwear team to drive product execution and be accountable for product readiness at key milestones - design review, triad scorecard and calibration presentations, sales meeting, etc.
• Hold continuous optimal experience and knowledge of technical execution across materials, upper construction, foams, midsole and outsole parts (2D, 3D and wood models) to be able to ensure the team is executing at the highest level for the consumer and product readiness.
• Maintain a level of understanding in Biomechanics to facilitate in depth dialogue with Engineering while translating technical verbiage into stories that resonate with the laymen.
• Ensure market and consumer readiness of all products managed within your season of focus at a level of 75% at Spam 1 and at a level of 95% at Spam 2.
• Travel at least twice a year to Asia development centers to work with footwear colleagues to finalize changes for Spam product creation milestones.
• Partner closely with cross functional colleagues in design and development to create a productive, collaborative environment to cover all the consumer, engineering, costing and design considerations and areas of focus throughout the product creation process.
• Be an exceptional story crafter by building stories that are informed by consumer insights.
• Present line architecture, products, concepts and new technologies to internal and external stakeholders.
• Provide product expertise to Merchandining, Product Marketing, PR, Sales and Marketing to assist in the creation of product presentations and videos to be used for Pre-lines, Calibration meetings, GTM meetings and media events.

Benefits

• medical, dental, vision, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance, HSA and employer contribution, FSA, family & fertility assistance, 401K Savings Plan and match, employee assistance program, and transportation assistance.
• generous time off, including five weeks of paid time off, eleven paid holidays, and paid sick and parental leave.
• annual bonus based on company performance.
• product discounts, employee recognition, fitness discounts, volunteer and donation benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees