Director, Innovation

Overview

Purpose Built Brands, rooted in a legacy dating back to Weiman, stands as a pioneer in crafting top-tier products for specialty surfaces. Our beloved brands, including Weiman, Goo Gone, Green Gobbler, Biokleen, Gonzo, Magic, Wright’s, Stone Care International, Urnex, Five Star, and Micro-Scientific, are preferred choices among consumers and seasoned professionals alike. The Innovation Director is based in a hybrid role in Gurnee, Illinois.

The Innovation Director will own and deliver the value of the innovation pipeline across the company’s priority consumer brands. This role focuses on developing whitespace, category adjacencies, and new use opportunities and line extensions. The candidate must be comfortable leveraging trends, insights, and data from multiple sources to inform new product ideas and sizing opportunities, and to initiate and manage market research projects to gain insights.

The Innovation Director must improve the quality/impact of innovation, clarity of deliverables, speed-to-market, stakeholder accountability, and alignment of the product portfolio with brand strategy. To achieve this, the role will define tools, platforms, and resources to optimize communication and collaboration to achieve objectives of the innovation function and the organization overall. The Innovation Director and team will lead cross-functional teams to move projects from concept to execution, establishing strong partnerships with R&D, Supply Chain, Finance, Sales & Sales Strategy, Brand Marketing and Project Management to ensure alignment and buy-in from key stakeholders on new products and future innovation pipeline strategies.

This role requires strategic thinking, strong organizational skills, and the ability to transform data and insights into tangible ideas and product scopes. Deep consumer, customer, product, and financial understanding will be essential for success, as well as innovation experience.

• Own and deliver innovation pipeline across a portfolio of brands ensuring clear differentiation, strategic focus, and high impact growth.
• Owns the overall innovation pipeline including overall valuation, profitability, timing, and cadence.
• Effectively lead cross-functional teams through the new product development process to ensure new products are launched on time, with quality, at cost, and with appropriate margins.
• Leverage macro trends, consumer data and category insight to identify and evaluate new categories and product extensions that deliver on brand fit and opportunity size.
• Lead all aspects of concept/idea development, including insights and benefit development.
• Develop deep category knowledge across current and near neighbor categories and brands.
• Initiate and manage market research projects to deliver powerful consumer and shopper insights to facilitate continued brand growth.
• Engage with strategic partners (suppliers and manufacturers) to source and understand potential opportunities with new technologies, processes/capabilities, or materials.
• Collaborate closely with brand teams to ensure all new items in development fit with each brand’s purpose and priorities.
• Develop strong, collaborative relationships with cross-functional teams (Brand Teams, Operations, R&D, Finance) to ensure alignment of direction at all stages of development and launch.
• Prepare persuasive sales and internal communication materials to sell-in innovation pipeline strategy and new product ideas to key internal stakeholders.
• Manage Stage Gate process and cadence, including all internal approvals.
• Manage direct reports by providing coaching and direction to inspire employees to maximize results. Create a sense of team within the innovation group, the marketing team and overall organization.

• 8+ years of experience in brand or product management in a CPG environment
• Experience developing and leading the execution of an innovation pipeline from concept to launch.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams through new product development processes.
• Experience working with 3rd party innovation partners (i.e., suppliers, co-manufacturers, etc.) a plus.
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent…