Head of Production
Head of Production APPLY NOW
Overview
The Head of Production works with company leadership, sales, and design to adhere to all global deadlines. This role is directly accountable for balancing efficiency with brand standards to deliver Attersee Product seamlessly from the manufacturer to the warehouse. The ideal candidate will balance three core pillars - maintaining quality control standards, protecting company margin goals, while working seamlessly with vendors to meet seasonal deadlines.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Planning
- Establish and manage Production team timelines across all categories - setting target delivery dates while synchronizing schedules cross-functionally with global merchandising and wholesale partners to ensure complete alignment with product launch and delivery goals.
- Proactively plan contingencies around delays and bottlenecks while continuously optimizing operational workflows to maximize productivity and efficiency internally and with all external partners.
- Oversee end-to-end production processes to ensure brand integrity and premium quality standards are maintained across all categories, while proactively resolving factory issues to maintain brand integrity in the final product.
- Partner with external vendors to monitor and maintain company margin goals throughout the season, building efficiencies in the production lifecycle from raw material ordering to yield efficiencies and logistics optimization to protect profitability.
- Oversight of seasonal financial planning to assess priorities based on active production needs.
Production Lifecycle Management
- Own the collection lifespan from PD hand-off to final shipment, ensuring absolute design integrity, quality execution, and timeline adherence throughout the production process.
- Partner with external vendors to maximize production costing and yields.
- Create, establish, and maintain techpacks including initial garment specs, and fit notes at all stages, while coordinating all production fittings against company milestone dates.
- Oversee approved production patterns to grading, verify cutters' musts, and coordinate the delivery of final markers to manufacturers.
- Capacity Planning & Allocations: Build factory capacity plans prior to each season, collaborating with Design and the PD Lead on any necessary factory reallocations and confirming final production pricing post-allocation.
- Co-develop and execute a Core Replenishment Program Protocol and Cadence with the Head of Merchandising and COO for all carry-forward styles and recuts.
- Track final garment costing while maintaining accurate, up-to-date BOMs, POs, and final landed factory pricing within Zedonk.
- Oversee and manage entry into PLM system, issuing all necessary cut tickets in Zedonk, while updating and owning live updates for sales orders, cut tickets and receivings.
Quality Control & Compliance
- Collaborate closely with Sales and Product Development teams to synthesize development and sales feedback while effectively resolving design, construction, or materials callouts in preproduction to final production stages of manufacturing without sacrificing design integrity.
- Oversee the end-to-end fit-approval process to ensure that quality standards are upheld in all stages of production categories.
- Ensure garment tags, label placement, and packaging guidelines are aligned with company and external vendor requirements.
- Effectively work with logistics partners to ensure proper classification of HTS codes while ensuring communication to internal/external partners.
Raw Materials Management
- Partner closely with Product Development and Design to establish seasonal standards for production, while managing all production submits of materials and trims.
- Strategic Counter-Sourcing of textiles when necessary to optimize product margins, improve quality benchmarks, or mitigate supply chain disruptions.
- Manage procurement and ordering of all bulk materials and trims while managing inventory internally and with each manufacturer.
- Curate and maintain internal fabric archive - creating check-in systems, maintaining inventory levels while seamlessly distributing textiles to cross-functional partners for active re-use.
- Manage the strategic liquidation and sell-off of unneeded surplus materials.
- Curate and maintain the internal fabric library, collaborating with the design and production teams to maximize material re-use, archive historical textiles, or release deadstock back into the active development cycle.
Logistics and Shipping
- Manage seasonal financials by overseeing seasonal payables while assessing priorities based on business needs.
- Oversee the creation of Advanced Shipping Notices (ASNs) while orchestrating weekly shipments to the warehouse and receiving schedules to streamline inventory.
- Manage and oversee both international and domestic freight carriers, manage trucking logistics, securing strategic DC deliveries to optimize the shipping pipeline for finished goods.
- Coordinate the end-to-end transportation of finished garments, managing the secure collection from manufacturing hubs and ensuring timely delivery to final distribution centers.
Budget and Vendor Management
- Architect and execute seasonal production budgets for both raw materials and finished goods based on final seasonal buy plans, ensuring full alignment with the larger company strategy.
- Calculate and actualize all final costs for all styles across all categories to determine the final margin.
- Manage and audit active production budgets against target gross margins; synthesize this data to engineer final lifecycle costing documentation for strategic review alongside the COO and Founder.
- Serve as the primary operational point of contact for international and domestic manufacturing partners regarding fiscal compliance; manage the invoice reconciliation, approval updating, and end-to-end routing process to the Accounts Payable team.
Team Leadership
- This role will be responsible for managing a production assistant, delegating tasks, overseeing daily workload, and responsible for developing their skills over time.
- Serve as a cross-functional partner to design, production, merchandising, sales, and e-commerce — ensuring PD timelines and decisions support broader business goals.
Qualifications
- Possesses 5-8 years of experience working in WRTW and Accessories Production, and has experience with both domestic and overseas production.
- Strong communication skills and a positive attitude
- Highly organized and motivated; capable of managing multiple deadlines simultaneously and can problem-solve.
- Proven ability to work collaboratively and cross-functionally with design and production teams to achieve best results
- Self-motivator who is proactive and constantly looking for more efficient and effective ways to execute a process
- Is highly proficient in MS Office, Zedonk experience is a bonus.