ProspectBlue is partnered with a leading retail and athleisure client looking for a Production and Logistics Manager to join its team in Charlottesville, VA!
This position will be located in-person at our client's facility in Charlottesville, VA headquarters. Individual should be ready and energized to support our client's growth trajectory in the activewear market.
Responsibilities:
- Manage team and calendar deadlines to ensure both raw materials and production arrive on time.
- Manage cross-functional relationships to ensure our product meets quality and cost requirements.
- Manage factory partner relationships through regular visits to local domestic factories, and weekly video calls with import partners.
- Lead cross-functional Supply Chain planning projects focused on the delivery of solution that meet cost optimization and delivery experience
- Partner with PD and Design Managers to set seasonal handoff dates.
- Responsible for analyzing lead times and MOQs, sharing this information with Merchandising to affect seasonal buys.
- Create and manage season specific time and action production calendars with each vendor.
- Work to review seasonal projections alongside each factory’s capacity. Address concerns with Merchandising and share final numbers with factories.
- Serve as the primary communication point to our Merchandising team to ensure projections and orders are placed by calendar deadlines.
- Oversee Production team in ensuring that all material orders are placed on time and that logistics/freight is optimized for ocean vs. air.
- Serve as a primary liaison with factories.
- Work to ensure factories adhere to our compliance mandates and quality standards.
- Negotiate production costing in partnership with Product Development.
- Maintain master cost file for Core product utilized by Product Development, Merchandising, and Finance.
- Work with Product Development on new factory sourcing & compliance and help onboard new factories. Introduce new opportunities to diversify our client's vendor portfolio using their extensive knowledge of trade agreements, logistics, and specialty sewing/fabric production capabilities of each region and/or country.
- Ability to forecast challenges in sourcing and/or costing due to global current events and political climate and react strategically.
- Primary liaison/partner with accounting to ensure accuracy of pre-paid inventory balances, timely reconciliation and payment of invoices.
- Responsible for the on–time delivery for product and prioritization of orders to meet sometimes competing company needs.
- Provide a weekly ETA report to all relevant partners with up-to-date production status for all open orders.
- Oversee the materials and finished goods QC process and ensures damage rates are tracked and within acceptability guidelines; partner with our customer facing teams to monitor defects once products are in the market.
- Partner with PD to ensure any issues are remedied at the development stage.
- Serve as one of the primary relationship owners with our 3PL, embedding operational excellence into our ways of working.
- Manage financial, operational, and business performance analysis of 3PL and transportation segments to achieve annual commitments.
- Monitor and report on key operational metrics to drive continuous improvement in distribution and logistics networks.
- Develop innovative solutions to reduce costs and meet business goals, leveraging data accuracy and industry expertise.
- Serve as liaison between our internal teams and 3PL as it relates to volume forecasts and capacity constraints.
- Collaborate with 3PL and our internal teams to troubleshoot and resolve operating issues.
- Partner with wholesale and customer service teams to minimize chargebacks.
- Conduct audits of 3PL and Freight providers to ensure adherence to SLAs and rate cards.
Additional Responsibilities
- Provide weekly reporting on production status cross-functional partners for all active seasons. With high-level analysis and insights on the weekly production WIP that teams can quickly view and action.
- Provide a production hindsight to cross-functional partners at the end of each season.
- Desire to lead and grow a team, providing clear goals and actively contributing to building a collaborative team environment.
- Work on other relevant projects that may arise.
Qualifications:
- 8+ years experience in fashion apparel production and/or logistics, with experience managing a direct report.
- Domestic and Import production experience required; both accessories and apparel production experience strongly preferred.
- Strong understanding of incoterms and logistics.
- Experience in multi-channel fulfillment operations, including DTC and wholesale.
- Hands-on experience with sourcing, new vendor onboarding, customer/wear-testing/durability, proto sampling, quality control
- Strong knowledge of retail math: margin, cost optimizations, turn, forecasting techniques, operational systems, and contract negotiation techniques
- Strong analytical skillset with the ability & drive to improve processes
- Excellent oral & written communication skills with the ability to clearly communicate strategies across all channels and levels
- Exceptional ability to organize, pay attention to details, and prioritize workload to meet deadlines, while being flexible and adaptive to changing priorities
- Must be a strong leader and people manager, as well as a great communicator and cross-functional partner
- Advanced in Excel
