Product Innovation Manager

PRODUCT INNOVATION LEAD

Greater St. Louis Area On-Site

THE MANDATE: Find the next meaningful product opportunities in our existing categories, turn them into compelling concepts quickly, and prove that they can win with consumers and make money.





The Opportunity

We are looking for a modern product builder—not a traditional product manager who primarily manages calendars, documentation, and stage gates. This person will bring an outside-in view of culture, retail, materials, aesthetics, and consumer behavior; translate those signals into fresh products for our existing categories; and use AI-enabled tools to move from insight to tangible concept at exceptional speed.

You will have room to explore, challenge assumptions, and create. You will also be accountable for the economics. A visually exciting idea is only valuable when it solves a real consumer problem, can be sourced and manufactured responsibly, earns the required margin, and has a credible path to meaningful sales.





What You Will Own


- Build a continuous pipeline of differentiated product ideas within our established categories, grounded in consumer needs, emerging trends, competitive gaps, retail signals, and marketplace data.
- Use ChatGPT and other generative-AI tools as an everyday product-development workspace—for research synthesis, concept generation, design iteration, visual briefs, quick product renderings, packaging directions, feature comparisons, and decision support.
- Move rapidly from a rough idea to a clear concept: consumer problem, target user, feature set, materials, dimensions, aesthetic direction, prototype visuals, target cost, target retail price, and reason to believe.
- Create and refine quick prototypes with AI, designers, engineers, suppliers, and sample makers. Know when a fast visual is enough to make a decision and when physical validation is required.
- Bring fresh design language, colors, materials, finishes, form factors, and use cases into existing product categories without chasing trends that lack commercial durability.
- Build the product economics early. Develop target landed cost, MSRP, channel margin, contribution margin, freight and duty assumptions, packaging impact, minimum order implications, and sensitivity scenarios before a concept advances.
- Evaluate opportunities for Amazon, DTC, social commerce, and retail channels, recognizing that the winning feature set, price architecture, and storytelling may differ by channel.
- Write sharp product briefs that give sourcing, design, packaging, content, and marketing partners what they need to act quickly.
- Work directly with domestic and international suppliers to assess feasibility, negotiate toward cost targets, improve prototypes, and resolve tradeoffs without diluting the core consumer benefit.
- Kill weak ideas early, learn quickly from failed concepts, and keep the strongest opportunities moving with urgency and ownership.
- Present a clear point of view to leadership: what we should build, why it can win, what it should cost, how it should look, and what must be true for us to proceed.






How You Will Work


- AI-native: You treat ChatGPT as a thought partner and prototyping engine, not merely a writing assistant. You can show how AI has compressed your cycle from research to concept to decision.
- Trend fluent, commercially selective: You notice what is changing across consumer behavior, design, materials, retail, social platforms, and adjacent categories—and distinguish an actionable signal from noise.
- Fast and iterative: You are comfortable sharing an 80% concept, gathering feedback, and improving it in hours or days rather than waiting weeks for perfection.
- Design-minded: You have strong taste, visual judgment, and empathy for how consumers experience a product, even if your background is not traditional industrial design.
- Economically rigorous: You understand that cost is a design input. You can make intelligent feature, material, packaging, and price tradeoffs while protecting the product's reason to exist.
- Hands-on and low-ego: You generate the idea, build the brief, create the first prototype, call the supplier, review the sample, and solve the problem.
- Decisive under ambiguity: You can move with incomplete information, identify the few unknowns that matter most, and design a fast way to answer them.






The Profile We Value

We care more about evidence of modern product-building ability than a conventional title sequence. Strong candidates may come from product innovation, industrial or consumer design, entrepreneurship, merchandising, sourcing, brand creation, e-commerce, category strategy, or another path that combines creativity with commercial accountability.


- A portfolio or concrete examples showing products, concepts, prototypes, or businesses you helped create—and the decisions you personally drove.
- Demonstrated use of ChatGPT, image-generation tools, or related AI workflows to improve research, ideation, design communication, prototyping, or speed to market.
- Strong understanding of consumer-product economics, including landed cost, margin, price positioning, MOQ, freight, duties, packaging, and channel fees.
- Ability to interpret marketplace data, reviews, competitive assortments, search behavior, social signals, and retail activity without allowing spreadsheets to replace judgment.
- Experience collaborating directly with designers, engineers, sourcing teams, manufacturers, or overseas suppliers.
- Clear written and visual communication, strong prioritization, and the resilience to manage multiple fast-moving concepts.
- Willingness to work on-site in the Greater St. Louis area and travel domestically or internationally when product discovery or supplier development requires it.






What This Role Is Not


- A coordinator role centered on maintaining trackers and scheduling meetings.
- A legacy stage-gate position where process substitutes for consumer insight and speed.
- A pure design role disconnected from sourcing, margin, sales potential, or operational reality.
- A trend-spotting role that stops at mood boards instead of producing decision-ready products.