Director of Sourcing

Vee Friends is an intellectual property company built around characters, storytelling, community, and collecting. We bring our IP to life across content, experiences, and a growing portfolio of physical consumer products — including trading cards, comics, collectible coins, stickers, apparel, and other emerging categories.

As we scale, we are building the infrastructure to become a world-class developer and operator of collectible consumer products. We are looking for a Director of Sourcing to lead the supplier, manufacturing, costing, production, and quality functions that turn our creative ideas into exceptional physical products.

The Director of Sourcing will own Vee Friends’ global sourcing, manufacturing, supplier management, product costing, production execution, and quality assurance across our physical product portfolio.

Sitting at the intersection of Product Development, Creative, Commercial, and Operations, this person will take products from finalized concepts and specifications through sourcing, sampling, manufacturing, quality assurance, and production completion.

This role is intentionally focused on the front half of the product supply chain. While working closely with the teams responsible for inventory planning, warehousing, 3PL management, and fulfillment, the primary mandate is:

Make exceptional products, with exceptional partners, at the right cost, at the right quality, and on increasingly competitive timelines.

The ideal candidate combines deep sourcing and manufacturing expertise with the urgency and commercial mindset of a high-growth consumer business. They should be equally comfortable negotiating with major manufacturing partners, troubleshooting production issues, evaluating vendors, reviewing samples, and developing sourcing strategies for entirely new product categories.

• Own global sourcing and manufacturing strategy across Vee Friends’ product portfolio, including trading cards, comics, collectible coins, stickers, apparel, accessories, and future categories.
• Translate product concepts and specifications into executable manufacturing plans and identify the right processes, materials, suppliers, and geographies.
• Lead RFQs/RFPs, supplier selection, sampling, prototyping, production negotiations, and manufacturing awards.
• Build a resilient supplier network with alternative and backup manufacturers while evaluating opportunities for nearshoring, dual sourcing, supplier consolidation, and other strategies that improve economics and resiliency.
• Develop sourcing capabilities to support expansion into entirely new consumer-product categories.
• Own senior relationships with key manufacturers and establish accountability around cost, quality, lead times, capacity, service levels, and continuous improvement.
• Negotiate pricing, MOQs, payment terms, tooling, freight terms, production capacity, lead times, and other commercial terms.
• Continuously pursue COGS and lead-time improvements through competitive bidding, should-cost analysis, volume leverage, specification optimization, and supplier negotiations.
• Create supplier scorecards and maintain competitive tension through an active pipeline of prospective vendors.
• Partner with Technology and Finance to implement tools and systems that make sourcing and purchasing processes more efficient, including platforms such as Ramp and in-house software development.

• Own manufacturing timelines from approved specifications through finished production and ensure milestones align with launch dates, wholesale commitments, and commercial plans.
• Identify production risks early, drive suppliers toward shorter development and manufacturing lead times, and develop actionable solutions when issues arise.
• Establish rigorous, category-specific QA/QC standards, inspection protocols, tolerances, and acceptance criteria.
• Ensure consistency across color, print registration, cutting, centering, surface quality, materials, finishing, packaging, and other attributes that impact collectible condition.
• Oversee controls for limited editions, numbered products, chase items, mystery variants, randomized…