Product Director – Footwear Center of Excellence Full Time

Who We Are

Elevate Outdoor Collective is an alliance of iconic outdoor and winter sports brands with a specialized focus on skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing. With each unique brand maintaining its own individual points of view and driving independent innovation, the Collective is fueled with the strength of world-class development facilities and engineers, global distribution channels and committed outdoor lifestyle enthusiasts and experts. Our brands include K2 Skis, K2 Snowboards, Marker, Dalbello, Völkl, RIDE Snowboards, LINE Skis, Backcountry Access, Atlas Snow Shoe Co., Tubbs Snowshoes, Madshus and K2 Skates.

With an international portfolio of world-renowned brands recognized as trailblazers in innovation, performance and, most importantly, fun times by active lifestyle enthusiasts across the globe, Elevate Outdoor Collective will continue its mission to progress the culture of each and every outdoor endeavor it represents. As “One Team” backed by world-class development facilities and product engineers, incredibly talented athletes and ambassadors and a top-notch crew of employees who live and breathe the outdoor active lifestyle, Elevate Outdoor Collective is eager to take things to the next level.

Position Overview

The Product Director – Footwear Center of Excellence is responsible for managing the people and processes to innovate and industrialize new footwear across the Elevate portfolio of brands. This position works closely with engineering leads for each footwear product category to deploy innovation that advances performance, sustainability, value, aesthetic appeal, and other areas of improvement. This person also oversees research, concepting, prototyping, and evaluation of new innovations and assists in the industrialization at the factory level.

Responsibilities

• Research materials, constructions, processes, and other emerging technologies related to footwear innovation
• Research consumer trends to understand future needs for our footwear categories
• Develop concepts for innovation and build estimates of the cost/value of the improvement to prioritize and resource projects
• Lead the Elevate Footwear Innovation Council to discover, evaluate, prioritize, and resource innovation projects that advance the performance, sustainability, value, and aesthetic appeal of our footwear.
• Build detailed project plans and resource allocations to allow on-time project execution. Track work completion against deadlines and take corrective action to keep work on time.
• Lead the prototyping and industrialization teams to deliver industry leading results
• Assist engineering teams in transitioning long-term innovation projects into the seasonal development plans to ensure successful product launches
• Collaborate with suppliers and manufacturing partners to source equipment and materials to enhance footwear quality and performance
• Build and successfully control Operational and Capital expense budgets
• Recruit, train, mentor, and motivate direct reports
• Communicate the status and direction of the innovation team’s work during executive and team strategic reviews.
• Support the marketing and selling functions as required
• Maintain a collaborative and strong working relationship with our factories

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience managing the innovation and engineering of technical footwear
• Strong track record of delivering successful innovations to market
• Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering (or equivalent)
• Strong product development and project management skills
• Strong leadership and communication skills
• Strong English written and verbal language skills
• Ability to adapt to changing and challenging business environments
• Proficiency in business and scheduling software

Tagged as: director, elevate outdoor, product, product director, seattle, USA, washington