Sourcing Manager

The Sourcing Manager is responsible for developing and executing global sourcing strategies across a diverse portfolio of educational products, toys, classroom materials, and furniture
. This role will build and manage a competitive global supplier network with particular emphasis on Asia and South America
, while identifying additional opportunities to diversify manufacturing, reduce supply-chain risk, improve speed to market, and optimize product costs.

The Sourcing Manager will partner closely with Product Development, Merchandising, Purchasing, Inventory, Quality/Compliance, and Operations to identify new suppliers, resource existing products, support new product development, and negotiate costs and terms.

This is a highly hands-on role requiring strong knowledge of factory-direct sourcing, manufacturing processes, product costing, supplier negotiation, and landed-cost optimization
. The successful candidate will be equally comfortable developing long-term sourcing strategies and working directly with factories to solve day-to-day cost, quality, capacity, lead-time, and production challenges.

The Sourcing Manager will also be expected to embrace AI and emerging technologies to improve sourcing intelligence, accelerate analysis, identify opportunities, and create more efficient sourcing and product development processes.

• Develop and execute global sourcing strategies for educational products, toys, classroom materials, and furniture that support company sales, margin, inventory, quality, and product-development objectives.
• Develop and maintain a strong factory-direct supplier network
  , with particular emphasis on Asia and South America
  , while continually evaluating additional manufacturing regions and nearshoring opportunities.
• Identify, qualify, and onboard new manufacturers with the appropriate capabilities, capacity, quality systems, compliance standards, and cost structures.
• Lead resourcing initiatives for existing products to improve product cost, quality, lead time, capacity, or supply-chain resiliency.
• Partner closely with Product Development and Merchandising during new product development to identify optimal suppliers, manufacturing processes, materials, construction methods, and target costs.
• Develop detailed product cost understanding, including raw materials, labor, packaging, tooling, freight, duties/tariffs, and other landed-cost components
  , to identify negotiation and value-engineering opportunities.
• Negotiate product costs, payment terms, MOQs, tooling, rebates, lead times, capacity commitments, and other commercial terms with domestic and international suppliers.
• Identify and execute cost-reduction and value-engineering opportunities through alternative materials, manufacturing efficiencies, product redesign, supplier consolidation, volume leverage, and resourcing.
• Evaluate total landed cost
  , rather than unit cost alone, when making sourcing recommendations, including freight, tariffs/duties, packaging, lead times, inventory implications, and supply-chain risk.
• Build category and supplier sourcing pipelines using company sales, purchasing, inventory, cost, and market data to prioritize the highest-value sourcing opportunities.
• Develop and maintain a strategic supplier matrix by product category, manufacturing capability, country of origin, capacity, cost competitiveness, quality performance, and risk.
• Identify opportunities to consolidate products with suppliers that have similar manufacturing capabilities to increase purchasing leverage and improve costs.
• Drive country-of-origin diversification and nearshoring strategies
  , particularly opportunities to transition appropriate manufacturing from China to Mexico or other competitive regions.
• Maintain strong relationships with existing suppliers and develop new supplier partnerships through regular communication, business reviews, factory visits, negotiations, and joint improvement initiatives.
• Lead cross-functional resolution of sourcing, production, quality, capacity, and delivery issues that could impact targeted inventory and service levels.
• Partner with Quality/Compliance teams to ensure suppliers meet applicable U.S. product safety, testing, labeling, and regulatory requirements
  , particularly those applicable to children's products, toys, educational materials, and furniture.
• Partner with Operations and Quality teams to maintain production and quality standards and resolve supplier exceptions.
• Monitor global manufacturing,…