Product Manager Furniture Solutions
Procurement Manager
At Häfele Canada, we are looking for a new product manager to take over the core items of our assortment for furniture and cabinet fittings.
One of our core values is how we 'WoW customers' - it's a mindset, philosophy, a call to action. This position is critical in ensuring our team and our customers are set up for success with the proper products, training, and knowledge base. You're a highly skilled business developer with a proven ability to strategize the full lifecycle of a product — from conception through release.
In this position, you will keep our customer needs at the heart of your decisions to bring to life the products and services to grow the core. But also opportunities to expand and diversify our business. You will be responsible for establishing product ranges and ensuring we meet project deadlines to optimize customer adoption, sales targets and profitability.
You are defined as a sales savvy, with a dominant customer-centric approach in your day-to-day process. Curious by nature, you are eager to learn what new solutions and trends will redefine our customers' way of building their products.
You will join a collaborative environment at the Marketing Department in Hafele Canada, and be part of a global organization. You will be driving new product and service initiatives, improving our team and customer knowledge, and playing a major role in the Canadian organization's engine growth.
Main Categories:
- Kitchen Accessories
- Drawers systems, runners, and slides
- Furniture Hinges
- Flap Fittings
- Connectors and Shelf Support
Duties & Responsibilities:
- Identify our customer needs, market trends, and product/service opportunities and translate them into new products and services
- Constantly monitor current competitor activities and offerings, seeking opportunities for differentiation
- Appraise new product ideas and strategize appropriate go-to-market plans
- Drive the execution of all product lifecycle processes for products, including product research, market research, competitive analysis, planning, product positioning, roadmap development, development requirements, and product launch
- Responsible for using the company business plan to create actions which will support the achievement of your product categories growth and margin targets
- Translate individual customer/market needs into detailed requirements for prototype construction and final product development by engineering teams when needed
- Create product strategy documents that describe business cases, high-level use cases, technical requirements, revenue projection, and ROI
- Analyze market and internal fact base data in developing product development strategies and define product objectives for effective marketing communications plans
- Reporting and analyzing sales development and margins of your product categories, developing strategies and action plans to improve sales, profitability, and business development
- Collaborate closely with sales, procurement, and marketing teams on the development and release of products and balance of resources to ensure success for the entire organization, focusing on revenue generation, market share growth, and operational excellence
- Provide technical support on product quality checks and audits
- Responsible for initiating training initiatives, guidelines, materials, and content to make sure key stakeholders receive the proper product knowledge
- Support inventory management initiatives, working closely with procurement to ensure proper stock levels of product categories of your responsibility
- Specify products and provide technical support for installing Häfele showroom initiatives and customer showrooms
Your Profile:
- College or university degree in Business, Marketing, Engineering, Design or related areas
- 10+ years of experience in product/category management
- Preferably familiarity with the kitchen, bath, and furniture industry
- Preferable background in furniture hardware and functional solutions
- Knowledge of cabinet construction and functionality
- Proven experience managing a high volume of SKU count, from multiple sources into multiple market channels
- Data-driven mindset and decision-making process
- Proven experience overseeing all elements of the product development lifecycle
- Previous experience delivering product marketing strategies
- Customer-centric mentality
- Strong ability to communicate with different stakeholders at all levels, both verbal and written
- Attention to detail to ensure all product information and pricing are complete and accurate in the system
- Exceptional time management and organization skills required to keep focus on your main objectives
- Strong analytical and research skills
- Strong experience using Microsoft applications, specifically Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook
- Experience working with ERP systems, preferably SAP
- Must be able to work in Canada legally
