Senior Product & Retail Operations Manager

Senior Product & Retail Operations Manager

How to Cake it

About Us

At How To Cake It, we provide our community of over 13+ million baking and sweets enthusiasts with everything they need to become better bakers. From leading educational resources such as online tutorials, interactive video courses and live workshops taught by world-class experts, to consumer goods such as cookbooks, baking tools, cookie decorating supplies, kitchenware, and other useful sweet-related merchandise that helps make baking more fun and memorable.

We have a passionate team of people working remotely around the world and at our production studio/headquarters in Toronto.

About the Role

How To Cake It now has a growing product portfolio that includes consumer goods - from sprinkles to spatulas - that we currently sell exclusively on our ecommerce store and ship around the world from our third-party logistics in Florida and our in-house fulfillment centre in Toronto. We also have two new branded Amazon Stores (US and Canada) where we sell a limited number of our products that are fulfilled by FBA (fulfillment by Amazon).

With the goal to rapidly expand the physical product and retail side of the business, we need to build a strong operations team and processes to effectively and profitably service the new platforms and sales channels we have identified as part of our sales expansion strategy, including online, livestream shopping, retailTV (HSN/QVC) and traditional retail/brick-and-mortar initiatives.

The Senior Product & Retail Operations Manager is central to how the consumer goods department operates and will be responsible for the management and expansion of our physical product line and sales channels. The manager will be responsible for integrating and improving operational systems (related to the consumer goods side of our business), optimizing margins and resources, creating and tracking the measurements needed to get the right outcomes, and managing all logistics related to distributing physical products to our B2B and B2C customers (wholesale, retail and direct-to-consumer).

While this role is part of the Consumer Goods department, you will work closely with our Third-party Logistics, Marketing, Content, Design, Customer Service and Business Operations teams to create a 360-degree view of the execution and needs for each new initiative.

Duties and Responsibilities

Cross-Functional Communications

• Drive effective and efficient teamwork, communication and commitment across cross-functional teams with competing priorities
• Facilitate the process for each team to share regular updates
• Communicate timely product and sales channel status updates, issues and risks in a concise, accurate and data-driven manner across internal teams and to executives
• Maintain transparent communication of all product development activities, including product and packaging design, sales and inventory analytics, product margins and pricing, etc.
• Maintain transparent communication of all sales channel expansion and product fulfillment/delivery activities, including fulfillment, inventory, distribution, etc.
• Facilitate quarterly product & business review presentations to standardize select areas and share the key messages on performance, execution and planning by project/initiative

Planning

• Drive the department’s quarterly and annual planning processes, from format and execution through follow-up
• Collaborate on department and organization-wide goals, including KPIs and resourcing, to ensure we’re driving toward results and set up for success

Process Improvement

• Implement both critical and routine product development and sales channel expansion/fulfillment process improvements and their measures of success by partnering with our Fulfillment teams (third party logistics & in-house), Business Operations, Customer Service, Marketing and Content teams and Contractors
• Develop, manage and continue to optimize the processes and communication specific to new B2B clients (wholesale/retail) and new sales channels (ie. Amazon, Range Me, Liveshopping)
• Optimize the product release process to collect, quantify, curate and communicate actionable product enhancement feedback from internal and external stakeholders and our customers/community
• Define a product sunset process, with cross-functional collaboration and appropriate decision-making oversight
• Maintain an eye towards continuous expansion and improvement of products, acknowledging that each product is unique
• Manage and develop an ongoing department budget and maintenance program for the department’s tools and resources, ensuring best practices of use

Program Management

• Partner with product, engineering, design, marketing, analytics, operations, integrations, finance, sales and partner success to launch new products and features
• Manage sales channel expansion plan including but not limited to: wholesales, traditional retail, retail TV accounts, specialty stores etc.
• Grow existing sales platforms, ensuring proper distribution of inventory
• Track progress across teams in delivering on the goals
• Manage third party logistics teams and in-house fulfillments, ensuring profitability, efficiency and delivery of the best customer experience
• Plan and lead program meetings, driving the execution of complex projects, creating and maintaining schedules and status updates
• Partner with Engineering team on all resource capacity and alignment needs
• Anticipate program roadblocks and bottlenecks, as well as adapt quickly to schedule shifts and resource constraints
• Own the development and maintenance of product documentation to ensure continuous alignment across team members and between departments
• Oversee staff/contractors for live events, pop up shops and brick and mortar retail stores

Working at How to Cake it

This is a remote, full-time permanent position. We value and invest in professional development, and as a high-growth company, offer significant opportunities to learn new skills, participate in new business initiatives, and grow your influence and role in the company over time.

We’re focused, driven, and passionate about our work – if you live and feel the same way, you’ll fit right in.

There is tremendous opportunity for growth and success here, as we continue to expand, and we can’t wait for you to be a part of it.

Requirements

What We’re Looking For

• Exceptional communication skills -- you cultivate an environment where team members respect each other and work together to deliver high quality products
• 7+ years of project or program management in the consumer goods industry
• Experience on the operations/distribution side of an ecommerce, retail or consumer goods organization
• Process obsessed with a bias toward action
• Strong budgeting/forecasting, product pricing and inventory management experience and skills
• A focus on how well an organization scales and how efficiently each team member and contractor operates to achieve the desired customer and business results
• Experienced in partnering with and bringing multiple departments and stakeholders into alignment
• Proven track record of leading operations and product teams, and servicing new sales channels including traditional retail and online platforms (ex. Amazon, Range Me)
• Solid understanding and experience with ecommerce fulfillment processes and platforms including Amazon, Shiphero, Rangeme and liveshopping (optional)
• Solid understanding and experience with supply chain and distribution of consumer goods and systems (EDI, VPM, etc.)
• Bonus- experience and understanding of distribution related to RetailTV (HSN/QVC)

How to Cake it strives to build diverse teams that reflect the communities we work in, and encourages applications from traditionally underrepresented groups including women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, people identifying as LGBTQ+, veterans, and people with disabilities.