Product Manager

Sauder•Archbold, OH

12d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Product Manager serves as the business owner for an assigned product line or portfolio, leading its strategy and performance throughout the lifecycle and remaining accountable for the roadmap, productivity, value, and consumer satisfaction. This role works closely with Business Unit leaders and cross-functional partners to drive profitable growth and continuous product improvement. The Product Manager maintains a deep understanding of consumer and customer needs, market trends, competitors, and how assigned products are manufactured or sourced. This role offers a hybrid arrangement, with an agreed-upon portion of work time spent at our office in Archbold, Ohio.

Requirements

Strategic and forward-thinking, with the ability to anticipate evolving consumer, customer, market, and product needs beyond today’s requests and assortment.
Naturally curious and committed to building knowledge of consumers, customers, competitors, products, markets, manufacturing, and sourcing.
Able to synthesize consumer, customer, competitive, market, and business insights into a clear product strategy and prioritized roadmap.
Sound judgment and comfort making recommendations, evaluating tradeoffs, and prioritizing opportunities with incomplete information.
Strong financial and analytical acumen, including revenue, margin, cost, pricing, inventory, SKU productivity, and business-case development.
Business ownership mindset with accountability for measurable product results and the communication, facilitation, and influencing skills to align stakeholders across functions and organizational levels.
Bachelor's degree from four-year college or university is preferred.
Minimum of 5-7 years related experience.
Working knowledge of product development, Stage-Gate, and commercialization processes.
Demonstrated experience developing and managing product, category, customer, or portfolio roadmaps across the full lifecycle, from opportunity identification and development through commercialization, continuous improvement, rationalization, and exit.
Experience leading cross-functional teams, influencing decisions without direct authority.

Responsibilities

Owns the overall health and productivity of the assigned product line or portfolio, including margin, cost, velocity, SKU productivity, inventory turns, complexity, quality, and lifecycle performance.
Continuously identifies opportunities to improve product economics and ensures cross-functional action is taken until measurable results are achieved.
Uses financial, operational, consumer, and market data to prioritize actions and measure results.
Owns and continuously manages the product roadmap as the primary planning tool for the assigned product line or portfolio.
Integrates current product performance, lifecycle, consumer/customer needs, competitive position, product value, productivity, and future opportunities into a clear multi-year roadmap.
Uses the roadmap to identify and prioritize where to invest, improve, extend, maintain, rationalize, or exit products.
Maintains a forward-looking pipeline of product, assortment, customer, channel, and innovation opportunities aligned with Business Unit and enterprise strategy.
Uses the roadmap to drive cross-functional priorities and Product Review Management (PRM) decisions.
Partners with Business Unit leaders, who own the business unit, to align product-line strategy and priorities with customer, channel, growth, and financial objectives.
Brings the product-line perspective to Business Unit decisions and works through tradeoffs between long-term product health and immediate customer or business needs.
Partners with Marketing/VOC and Sales to translate consumer, customer, installer, competitive, and market insights into product priorities and actions.
Maintains a strong understanding of competitors, market dynamics, customer assortments, and emerging trends and uses that knowledge to identify opportunities and risks.
For domestic products, maintains hands-on knowledge of how products are made and works directly with Operations and Engineering on the shop floor to improve labor, process, quality, material utilization, cost, and productivity.
For imported products, develops deep knowledge of our global partner factories, capabilities, processes, costs, quality, capacity, and lead times; works with Global Sourcing team and factories throughout development and ongoing product management.
Actively drives sourcing and factory productivity, including cost reduction, quotation and pricing discussions, supplier/factory alternatives, and production shifts or consolidation when appropriate.
Mobilizes Engineering, Operations, Global Sourcing, Purchasing, Sourcing, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Planning, Quality, and other functions to solve product-business problems and achieve required outcomes.
Sets clear priorities and expected results, challenges assumptions, drives decisions, follows actions to completion, and escalates barriers when needed.
Owns the product-business outcome while functional teams retain ownership of their technical expertise and execution.
Leads cross-functional teams through influence and business accountability.
Develops and presents product business cases and product briefs that define the opportunity, consumer/customer need, value proposition, target economics, strategic fit, and expected business outcome.
Defines the business need, product requirements, positioning, target economics, priority, and expected outcome for new product and product-improvement work.
Develops pricing and product-economics recommendations with Business Unit leadership, Sales, and Finance to support revenue, margin, and value objectives.
Partners with Project Management/NPD, Global Sourcing, and functional teams as appropriate to execute approved projects through commercialization while remaining the product-business decision owner.
Owns successful product commercialization from a product-business perspective, ensuring the launched product meets the intended consumer/customer need, value proposition, economics, and business objectives.
Remains accountable after launch for product performance, economics, consumer satisfaction, sourcing/manufacturing productivity, and lifecycle results.
Other duties may be assigned.