Compensation: 150.000 - 200.000
Your Job
The Senior Footwear Product Line Manager oversees end-to‑end seasonal direction and execution of owned Brooks footwear products across portals, platforms and pillars. The role provides vision and thought leadership for the product teams as the consumer, market and business expert during the footwear creation process, from brief to commercialization. Responsibilities include guiding a PLM to become a global expert on runners, identifying target personas, and leading story crafting across the value chain.
Your Responsibilities
Strategic Planning and Execution
- 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 input from the PLM team and category experts.
- Partner with Manager, Footwear PLM to translate multiyear strategies and innovation pipelines into executable seasonal plans and inline briefs.
- Ensure seasonal product assortments are competitive, consumer‑relevant, and aligned to business objectives.
Innovation
- Identify future innovation and advanced concepts that are instrumental to consumer and cross‑category growth.
- Create one‑page innovation requests grounded in consumer latent needs, insights, and springboards, with the ask of a ground‑breaking innovation in H2 or H1.
Consumer, Insights, Briefing and Product Execution
Consumer and Insights
- 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 one‑on‑one interviews, shop‑alongs and rapid prototyping—and maintaining regular interactions with retailers to identify additional insights and opportunities and anticipate future trends.
Briefs
- Begin with the ‘Why’ and the ‘Key consumer problem to solve.’
- 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 story crafting, key consumer benefits, KPIs, development toolbox and design concepts.
Product Execution
- Work cross functionally within the 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 ensure the team executes at the highest level.
- Maintain a level of understanding in Biomechanics to facilitate in‑depth dialogue with Engineering while translating technical verbiage into stories for the layman.
- Ensure market and consumer readiness of all products managed within your season of focus at 75% at Spam 1 and 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.
Collaboration
- 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 covering consumer, engineering, costing and design considerations throughout the product creation process.
Story Crafting, Presentations and Cross‑Functional Support
- 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 it 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 for Pre‑lines, Calibration meetings, GTM meetings and media events.
People Management
- May manage up to 1 direct report.
- Mentor PLM-I and PLM-II on market intelligence, product briefing and story crafting.
- Act as a 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.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, or a related field.
- 7+ years of experience in a relevant product management role.
- Effective presentation and interpersonal communication skills.
- Demonstrated ability to conceive and create new ideas, products and processes.
- 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 Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Proven leadership capability, with ability to motivate and mentor others.
- Ability to travel up to 30% of the time, including internationally.
- Excellent listening skills with concise verbal and written communication.
- Excellent interpersonal skills that inspire and build trust, fostering effective relationships across the company.
- Keen attention to detail in planning, organization and execution while seeing the big picture.
- Ability to anticipate how a decision can impact customers, partners, products or other departments and connect the dots.
- Demonstration of innovation and initiative—always looking to improve products and processes, while diving into details and helping wherever necessary.
- Passionate participation in Brooks’ sports activities is a plus, overridden by the ability to understand and empathize with runners and build loyal, engaging relationships with customers and the Brooks community.
- Embraces and lives the Brooks values.
Compensation
The pay range for this position, based out of the Brooks Seattle HQ, is $124,234 – $186,404 per year. Base pay offered will vary depending on job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience.
Benefits
Benefits include medical, dental, vision, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance, HSA and employer contribution, FSA, family & fertility assistance, 401(k) savings plan with match, employee assistance program, and transportation assistance. Paid time off: five weeks of paid time off, eleven paid holidays, and paid sick and parental leave. Bonus: potential annual bonus based on company performance. Perks: product discounts, employee recognition, fitness discounts, volunteer and donation benefits.
Location
You will spend 4 days per week in our Seattle offices, as we believe our organization flourishes when connections, collaboration, creativity, problem‑solving, and celebrations happen in person.
EEO Statement
At Brooks, we celebrate diversity & equity. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment, and encourage people of all backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and skills to apply. Brooks is an equal‑employment‑opportunity employer. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, two‑spirit identity, sexual orientation, genetic information, the presence of a physical, mental, or sensory disability, marital status, pregnancy, caste, citizenship or immigration status, honorably discharged veteran or military status, actual or perceived victims of domestic violence, harassment, sexual assault or stalking, HIV or hepatitis C, political ideology, use of a trained service animal by a person with a disability, or on any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law or any other non‑merit‑based factors.
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