Vice President Purchasing & Inventory

Golden Country — Chicagoland (on-site / relocation required)

Reports to:

[CEO]

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We import roughly 4,000 SKUs of Asian food from a dozen countries across dry, refrigerated, and frozen — short shelf lives, long transit times, seasonal supply, and vendor relationships that in some cases go back decades. Today those relationships and the buying judgment behind them live largely in two people's heads. We're hiring the person who will take that over, professionalize it, and grow it.

This is not a job writing purchase orders. We have people who do that, and we intend to keep it that way.

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Three things are converging.

A handoff. Our current purchasing leadership is planning a transition. That means a genuine overlap period — you will be taken to Thailand, Vietnam, and elsewhere and personally introduced to our top vendors by the person who built those relationships. That handoff is the single most important thing this role does in year one, and it is not something we're asking you to figure out alone.

Growth. We are actively evaluating acquisitions in our space and pursuing national retail distribution. Both change what purchasing has to be capable of. You'd be building the function, not inheriting a finished one.

Fragmentation. Category buying is currently spread across people whose primary job is sales. That made sense at one size. It doesn't at the next one. Part of your mandate is consolidating that — and you will help us define and hire the Asian category buyer who reports to you, rather than inheriting a hire we made without you.

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Vendor strategy and relationships. Our supplier base is our competitive position. You'll own it — including personally visiting our most strategic vendors at least twice a year, and expecting to be in Asia roughly quarterly. You'll also own what those relationships are worth in dollars: freight support, promotional allowances, new-item money, priority allocation when supply is tight.

Inventory and demand planning. What's our position on the top 50 items. What we carry versus what we need to carry. Where we're long on a slow mover and short on something constrained. Which items we can't sell more of because we can't
* get* more — and what you're going to do about that. You'll own turns, coverage, and dead stock as measured numbers, not impressions.

Landed cost and margin. Ocean freight contract negotiation, INCOterms, duty and tariff exposure, currency. You'll be at the table on carrier contracts.

Import compliance. FDA prior notice, FSVP, customs classification, supplier quality  you've never had a container detained, this role will find out.

New vendors, new markets, new categories. We know where we're strong. We also know we're underdeveloped in produce, meat, and dairy, and that our seafood buying needs rebuilding. You'll bring us opportunities we don't currently see.

The purchasing team. You'll lead the purchasing and inventory group, including hiring the Asian category buyer. You will not be writing POs or telling coordinators which POs to write.

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These are ranked. The first two are non-negotiable and cannot be taught. The rest matter, and we'd rather have someone at 80% across them than someone who misses the top two.