Senior Product Line Manager, Footwear

Brooks Running•Seattle, WA

21h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Mission of the Product Line Management and BlueLine teams are to be the voice of the consumer in the product creation process, set the product benefit expectations, and ensure that this vision is maintained from brief to market. The primary goal is to bring Brooksâ€™ 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. As the Senior Footwear Product Line Manager, you are responsible for the end-to-end seasonal direction and execution of owned Brooks footwear products across portals, platforms and pillars. You will provide vision and thought leadership for the product teams as the consumer, market and business expert during the footwear creation process. From brief to commercialization, you will provide product, consumer, business and market expertise with a comprehensive understanding of the competitive landscape, trends and innovation. You will report to and work closely with your Manager, Product Line Management to execute against the 5-year footwear strategy to hit business goals and financial targets with Horizons 1 (1-3 years) and 2 (3-5 years) in mind. You may manage up to one PLM, guiding them to become a global expert on runners, to identify target personas, and to anticipate their wants and needs 1.5+ years in advance. You will lead this individual to be one of the best story crafters in the industry, that works cross functionally weaving the stories from innovation to market.

Requirements

Bachelorâ€™s degree in business, Marketing, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
7+ years of experience in a relevant product management related role.
Effective presentation abilities and interpersonal communication skills.
Demonstrated ability to conceive/create new ideas pertaining to product and process.
Strong functional and biomechanical skills and thorough understanding of the product process.
Strong business orientation, analytical aptitude and computer skills.
Creativity and passion for product.
Proficiency in Microsoft applications, including Microsoft Word, Excel & PowerPoint.
Proven leadership capability, including ability to motivate and mentor others
Ability to travel up to 30% of time, including internationally.
Demonstrate effective listening through concise, clear verbal and written communication.
Excellent interpersonal skills that inspire and build trust resulting in effective working relationships across the company.
Keen attention to detail in planning, organization and execution of tasks, while still seeing the big picture and understanding how all the pieces fit together and affect one another.
Ability to anticipate how a decision made can affect our customers, our partners, our products or other departmentsâ€™ operations and/or morale; â€œconnecting the dots.â€
Demonstration of innovation and initiative â€“ always looking at improving our products and processes while also displaying a willingness to dive into the details and help wherever necessary.
Embraces and lives the Brooks values!

Nice To Haves

Passionate participation in Brooksâ€™ sports activities a plus, overridden by the ability to understand and empathize with the runner in order to develop loyal, engaging relationships with our customers and the Brooks community.

Responsibilities

Be the expert on the evolution of the Brooks product line for your season of focus.
Work closely with footwear PLM Leadership to chart the 5-year roadmap of your season with additional input of the rest of the PLM team and individual category experts.
Partner with Manager, Footwear PLM to translate multiyear strategies, innovation pipelines, and product evolution into executable seasonal plans and inline briefs.
Ensure seasonal product assortments are competitive, consumerâ€‘relevant, and aligned to business objectives.
Identify future innovation and advanced concepts that are instrumental to future consumer and cross-category growth.
Create one page innovation requests that are grounded in the consumer's latent needs, insights and springboards with the ask of a ground breaking innovation in H2 or H1
Serve as the seasonal consumer and marketplace expert, staying ahead of trends, competitive moves, and evolving runner needs.
Partner with Run-Sights Lab or lead the undertaking of consumer immersion, research synthesis, and insight springboards and translation for your season and the consumer briefs within each season
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.
Begin with the â€˜Whyâ€™ and the â€˜Key consumer problem to solveâ€™
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, sale meeting, etc.
Provide expert 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 2+ times a year to Asia development centers to work with footwear colleagues to finalize changes for Spam product creation milestones.
Work alongside Manager, PLM to ensure the PLM function deliverables are completed at key 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.
Work with product marketing, merchandising and sales to bring the product story to life and present them with confidence at brief handoff, SPAM/Calibration, Sales Meetings, and vendor visits.
Present line architecture, products, concepts and new technologies to internal and external stakeholders.
Provide product expertise to Merchandising, 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.
May manage up to 1 direct report.
Mentor PLM-Is and PLM-IIs on using market intelligence, product briefing and story crafting.
Acts as role model across triads and cross functional footwear teams, to create a culture of collaboration and camaraderie.
See beyond the footwear team, understand the impact across functions within the company and connect the dots to create alignment and ensure efficiencies.