Product Development Consultant – Bikes, Accessories and Wheeled Goods

What you'll do

The Bikes Product Development team’s mandate is to help build the equity of FGL's and CTR’s Retail Brands by improving the design and experience associated with our private label products. The Product Development Consultant role is to support the Product Development Manager in building processes and capabilities that help deliver a consistent, authentic, and customer-driven product experience through our retail brands.

• Under the guidance of the Product Development Manager, creates design and technical specification packages including any relevant product sketches and dimension details, colour and graphics, materials, and packaging, etc. to ensure performance, quality and user experience consistent with our Brand.

• Through ongoing analysis of the business categories and consumer foresight, partner with the category business and brand management team to align on business priorities and product assortment architecture.

• Perform research on key trends and innovation considering elements such as form, functionality, materials, and colour ways, including user experience and identifying customer pain points.

• Support the development, of multi-pronged product user centric design research exercises to learn about all aspects of the product experience (consideration to usage to disposal). Analyze and synthesize findings into insights that identify feature sets, functionalities, and innovation approaches.

• Engage with Merchandising and Brand stakeholders and present findings through presentations. Be a champion for the human centered design approach and provide guidance on new technology, product design, and manufacturing considerations.

• Work closely with Brand and direct art direction for packaging, marketing, etc. as needed ensure consistent presentation of the brand in all customer-facing vehicles.

• Lead review of competitive products to establish benchmarks and quality standards.

• Provides input and analysis where needed when working through the prototype/counter-sample and approval process; communicates to vendors any relevant changes.

• Work closely with the Global Sourcing, Quality, Brand, and Pacific Rim Office and vendors teams to identify new products and integrate the specifications into their work streams.

• Contributes to product recommendations by completing comp shops and presents findings to the PD Manager and relevant business partners.

• Travel (Domestic and International) to various vendor partners to participate in onsite engineering and manufacturing builds, tooling, and design reviews

• Work closely with the cross-functional teams at key touch points to execute the design work and get alignment and detail level consensus to drive results.

• Develops project plans that can deliver business requirements on the established timelines.

What you bring

• Undergraduate degree in Industrial Design with 2+ years of experience in product design and development.

• Strong familiarity with manufacturing processes that is typically found in products within this category (Injection Molding, Machining, Welding, 3D Printing etc.)

• Minimum 1 year of experience developing products in any of the following product industries – Bikes, skateboards, snowboards, electronics, hand tools, power tools or toys.

• A passion for bikes, scooters, electric mobility or personal mobility.

• Skilled in design tools such as Adobe CS and experience with 3D modeling tools such as Solidworks.

• Graphic design experience is an asset but not required.

• Understanding of the retail industry and product planning within retail.

• Hands-on ability to create product and packaging mock-ups, physically build and dissemble product samples to analyze and problem solve.

• Creative, driven by the possibilities ahead and are passionate about design, style, and personal mobility trends.

• Ability to work well cross-functionally; demonstrated ability to collaborate, influence and negotiate with colleagues.

• Outstanding communicator able to clearly translate strategy into design specs or direction.

• Ability to formulate and sell recommendations based upon robust research and assessment of risk/rewards.

• Strong presentation skills with demonstrated ability to adjust style and format as required to suit the audience.

• Experience in understanding consumer/market needs in the development of technical product requirements

• Experience with usa