Provallar Executive Search
Senior Product & Sourcing Manager – Innerwear
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Senior Product & Sourcing Manager – Innerwear
We are recruiting a Senior Product & Sourcing Manager – Innerwear to help build and develop a significant new category across a portfolio of international brands.
This is a senior, hands-on category role for someone with deep experience in underwear, lingerie, loungewear and sleepwear who understands not only how to develop product, but how to build an entire commercially viable collection from the ground up.
The successful candidate will bring the product, sourcing and commercial expertise needed to take a brand opportunity and turn it into a clear product architecture, range plan, pricing structure and executable sourcing strategy.
The Role
You will take ownership of the product and sourcing strategy for Innerwear across a multi-brand portfolio, working on both existing brand opportunities and the potential launch of the category within new brands.
A central responsibility will be determining what the collection should actually look like. You will build the product architecture and range hierarchy, defining the appropriate mix of:
- Women’s lingerie and underwear
- Bras and coordinated sets
- Knickers and briefs
- Men’s underwear and multipacks
- Loungewear
- Sleepwear
- Core and continuity products
- Fashion and seasonal product
- Entry, mid and premium price points
You will determine the appropriate number of options, product segmentation, price points and balance of the range, ensuring that each collection reflects the positioning, target consumer and commercial potential of the individual brand.
This requires someone who understands the innerwear market sufficiently well to identify what sells, where the opportunities are and how a successful category should be structured.
Product Architecture & Range Planning
You will translate individual brand positioning into a clear and commercially viable product and range architecture.
This will include establishing the range hierarchy, identifying core volume-driving products, determining where fashion and seasonal product should sit, creating appropriate good/better/best pricing structures and ensuring the collection has the right breadth and depth.
You will work closely with commercial and sales teams to ensure that proposed ranges are appropriate for the target distribution and capable of delivering the required volumes and margins.
You will also contribute product and sourcing expertise when the business is evaluating new category or licensing opportunities, helping establish what can realistically be developed, sourced and commercialised.
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Pricing, Costing & Margin
You will be expected to understand the relationship between product, factory cost, wholesale price, retail price and margin, and use this knowledge from the beginning of the development process rather than treating costing as a final-stage exercise. You will:
- Establish appropriate retail and product price architecture
- Work backwards from target retail prices and margins
- Understand detailed product costings
- Challenge and negotiate factory prices
- Identify opportunities for cost engineering
- Balance quality, construction and materials against commercial targets
- Ensure ranges can deliver the required margin without compromising brand positioning
Sourcing & Supplier Management
You will identify and work with the right manufacturing partners for each product category, considering technical capability, quality, price, MOQ, capacity and lead times.
You will be confident dealing directly with factories and suppliers, negotiating costs and commercial terms and understanding how different materials, constructions and manufacturing methods affect both product quality and price.
An established network and strong knowledge of the specialist innerwear supply base would be highly valuable.
You will manage the sourcing and development process through to production, ensuring that critical paths, quality standards, commercial objectives and delivery requirements are achieved.
Product Development
You will oversee development from initial product concept through sampling, costing, approvals and production, working with internal design, technical and commercial resources as appropriate.
You should have sufficient technical understanding of innerwear construction, fit, fabrics, trims and manufacturing to challenge suppliers, identify potential problems and make informed product decisions.
The role does not require the successful candidate to personally perform every technical function. What is essential is the experience and judgement to own the product and ensure that the complete collection is successfully delivered.
Building the Category
The business already has substantial expertise and infrastructure across branded apparel. Innerwear represents an opportunity to build an additional category across multiple brands.
The Senior Product & Sourcing Manager will provide the specialist category knowledge required to make those opportunities executable.
You may therefore be involved from a very early stage – assessing a potential opportunity, understanding the competitive market, establishing the proposed range and price architecture, determining sourcing feasibility and ultimately taking the proposition through development and production.
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This is consequently a role for somebody who can build, rather than simply inherit and maintain, an established range.
Candidate Profile
We are looking for an experienced innerwear product and sourcing specialist who has previously built and managed commercially successful collections.
You are likely to have worked within a significant underwear, lingerie or innerwear brand, licensee, supplier or manufacturer and have substantial experience across:
- Underwear / lingerie / innerwear
- Product architecture and range hierarchy
- Range planning and collection building
- Product segmentation and option planning
- Retail and wholesale price architecture
- Costing and margin management
- Factory negotiation and cost engineering
- Fabric, trim and construction knowledge
- Supplier and factory sourcing
- Product development from concept to production
- Critical-path management
- Commercial product decision-making
- Working across different brands, customers or market positions
Experience across both women’s and men’s innerwear would be particularly valuable, although candidates with exceptional category expertise in one area combined with broader exposure will also be considered.
Above all, we are looking for somebody who has done this before – someone who can look at a brand and a commercial opportunity and confidently determine:
- What should we make?
- How should we structure the collection?
- What should it retail for?
- What should it cost?
- Where should we source it?
- And how do we deliver it successfully?
What You Get
- Excellent salary
- Annual bonus
- Opportunity to take significant ownership of a developing category
- Exposure to a portfolio of international brands
- Opportunity to help build new categories and commercial opportunities
- Fast-paced, entrepreneurial working environment
- 25 days' annual leave plus bank holidays
- Additional holiday between Christmas and New Year if the Directors decide to close the business
- One day WFH following probation and training, at the company's sole discretion (non-contractual)
- Workplace Pension Scheme
- 60% discount on products available through the company's eCommerce channels
- Sample sales 2+ times per year
- Short Leave – with prior Line Manager approval, up to two hours without deduction from holiday allowance
- Sick pay
- Annual pay review
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