Sourcing Category Lead

Job content

Description & Requirements

Sourcing Category Lead

Reporting to the Manager, Sourcing – Seamless, the Sourcing Category Lead will be the category expert in sourcing, costing and delivering margins against our Performance Knits (Seamless, Engineered Knits) products, which includes technologies such as Top 2/ Top 2 Terry/ TR. The Sourcing Category Lead will delivery category level sourcing strategy and translate long range strategies to drive seasonal costing priorities. They will ensure cost and margin for assigned category meets target. Sourcing Category Lead develops factory relationships aligned with their product category to commercialize products in a timely, consistent manner. They will develop plans and strategies that will address category specific margin goals.

Sourcing Department

We are the Sourcing Department. We manage the relationship with our apparel & accessories vendors & ensure that lululemon has best in the world manufacturers. We work cross-functionally across the entire product team to ensure product meets our business strategy, quality & cost goals. We then work with our vendors to make those products a reality.

A day in the life of a Sourcing Category Lead

• Deliver Category level sourcing strategy based on long range plans.
• Translate long range strategies to drive seasonal costing and allocation priorities.
• Build strong relationships with vendors and cross functional teams to help foster partnership and trust.
• Elevate opportunities and risks to influence strategy and support decision making.
• Ensure cost and margin for assigned category meets target.
• Analyze and monitor margins.
• Develop action plans to mitigate margin risk and proposals to reduce cost working closely with cross functional partners.
• Negotiate category vendor costing in partnership with Costing and LLO Merch team where applicable.
• Manage data analysis of product cost and margin, including data updates in costing systems where applicable
• Track all GTM Calendar by-whens and ensure that all sourcing seasonal calendar timelines are met
• Vendor Allocation data maintenance, validation and communication of projections to category vendor
• Support sourcing of and onboarding of new vendors successfully working closely with supply chain onboarding team
  

The finer print

• You have 3-5 years’ experience working closely & building relationships with off-shore manufacturers
• You have visited off-shore factories & are versed in the seamless finished goods/textile manufacturing process
• You have a strong understanding of fibre, yarn, knitting and dyeing techniques.
• You are a multi-task master & can handle multiple projects working with a variety of cross-functional partners
• You are confident in your strengths, always open to challenges and prefer negotiating face to face
• You love to travel
• You are an expert in Excel and generally tech savvy to learn new tools and systems.