The ideal candidate has a passion for creating, refining, and redefining consumer products that focus on family fun, togetherness, and making memories for young and old. IRC distributes Intex branded products, including air mattresses, above ground pools, pool floats, boats, and toys, in the United States and Canada and is regarded as the best in each category. Being the best means delivering great quality products with outstanding value to our customers. Customers' needs are constantly evolving, and new needs arising, and so must our product lines. Intex product development is a collaboration between factory engineers and designers and the various sales and marketing associates throughout the world, of which Intex Recreation is the largest, and dare we say, the most influential. We are looking to expand our team to bring more horsepower to bear on product innovation. We are looking for that special person who loves products, thrives on innovating, revels in selling their vision, is not afraid to swing for the fence, and is proud to think outside, inside, under and anywhere around, the box. Check out the Intex line of products: are you excited about the possibilities? If so, please read on.
Responsibilities:
Get down and dirty with the product line to learn and analyze strengths and weaknesses.
Conduct market research and competition analysis and help identify and ideate product opportunities.
Gather wish lists from the US sales teams, as well as international associates and distributors, and distill the information for management and factory engineering.
Collaborate with factory engineering and assist in developing product plans and specifications.
Create and pitch the product story that will serve as the bones of product retail packaging, dotcom enhanced content, photography, videos, social media posts, and marketing materials.
Present new products and strategy at sales meetings, select major customer presentations, and tradeshows.
Review and test prototypes and models providing feedback on what works, needs a tweak or two, or doesn't work at all.
Work closely with the product compliance team to ensure the product meets or exceeds all relevant safety regulations, rules and standards.
Work together with marketing/creative teams to ensure accurate and compliant product presentation and market promotion.
Participate on various product safety standard development committees.
Become a member of the Intex intellectual property team, adding further technical expertise in respecting other's property and protecting the hard work of the product development team.
While this position is based in Long Beach, California, you can expect to travel to China a few times per year for 2-week visits and travel to Europe at least once per year. Seattle, Minneapolis and Bentonville are likely to be visited occasionally for sales presentations.
Qualifications:
Around 10 years of experience with managing product lines in a dynamic cross-functional environment that includes identifying and analyzing target market trends, consumer/customer needs, assessing competition and successfully creating or assisting creation of product strategies.
Experience with project management from research and planning to ideation, creating product requirements, work with product development and engineering teams as well as marketing teams with track-record of successful product launch.
Experience with consumer packaged goods/hard lines, and familiarity with customer base comparable to Intex's are a plus.
Bachelor's degree, preferably in product design and engineering.