Product Line Manager

Relocation Assistance: Available

Our client, a leading global sports and consumer products organization, is seeking a driven Product Line Manager II – Running to join its Southern California team.

As the Product Line Manager for Running
, you will serve as the consumer and product expert for your assigned categories. You will identify and translate meaningful consumer insights and marketplace opportunities across channels to build strategic range plans that support seasonal revenue, margin, and inventory goals.

This role is responsible for maintaining timely and relevant product, competitor, consumer, and market intelligence, enabling the broader Product organization to effectively manage the collection and business on a day-to-day basis.

The ideal candidate brings meaningful experience within the Running category
, with backgrounds in Running Footwear and/or Running Apparel particularly relevant.

• Become the global expert within your assigned Running categories, developing a strong understanding of North American and international markets, including the consumer, competition, and retail landscape.
• Drive product strategy through 1–3 year strategic plans incorporating global market analysis, key business drivers by region, historical performance, retail opportunities and challenges, new business opportunities, emerging technologies, and the competitive landscape.
• Create seasonal product briefs defining product positioning, pricing, product and packaging attributes, consumer insights, competitive analysis, regional relevance, brand relevance, and margin objectives.
• Create advanced development and design briefs that lead to new product and innovation initiatives.
• Analyze and develop market segmentation strategies to deliver unique and relevant products that meet the needs of individual consumer segments while achieving company revenue and margin goals.
• Work within established product calendars to ensure on-time completion of all major milestones, dates, and gates.
• Partner closely with cross-functional teams including Design, Development, Operations, Finance, Sales, and Planning.
• Conduct ongoing consumer, athlete, marketplace, and trade research to identify product and technology trends and develop a deep understanding of the target consumer.
• Participate in the planning and delivery of presentations for key customers, brand partners, senior management, sales meetings, and trade shows.
• Drive product awareness and optimize sell-through by developing marketing and packaging briefs, catalogs, showroom merchandising standards, and in-store displays.
• Develop product training tools for Sales teams, including technical sheets, videos, and other materials that clearly communicate product strengths and positioning.
• Own forecasting for new and existing product assortments, including 24-month forecasting at the category, style, and SKU level by region and key customer.
• Drive cross-functional forecasting coordination with Finance, Sales, Operations, and Planning teams.
• Provide regular, accurate, and rigorous reporting on the existing business to identify opportunities for incremental sales and growth.
• Participate in athlete testing, wear/fit testing, consumer research, and other product-validation initiatives as appropriate.

• 6+ years of relevant product, consumer, brand, and/or sporting goods experience
  , with a proven track record of delivering results in a fast-paced, high-performance, entrepreneurial environment.
• Meaningful experience within the Running category strongly preferred
  , particularly Running Footwear and/or Running Apparel.
• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or a related field.
• Strong understanding of product lifecycle management and the end-to-end product creation…