Director of Sourcing

Job description

The Role The Director of Sourcing will own VeeFriends’ global sourcing, manufacturing, supplier management, product costing, production execution, and quality assurance across our physical product portfolio. Sitting at the intersection of Product Development, Creative, Commercial, and Operations, this person will take products from finalized concepts and specifications through sourcing, sampling, manufacturing, quality assurance, and production completion. This role is intentionally focused on the front half of the product supply chain. While working closely with the teams responsible for inventory planning, warehousing, 3PL management, and fulfillment, the primary mandate is: Make exceptional products, with exceptional partners, at the right cost, at the right quality, and on increasingly competitive timelines. The ideal candidate combines deep sourcing and manufacturing expertise with the urgency and commercial mindset of a high-growth consumer business. They should be equally comfortable negotiating with major manufacturing partners, troubleshooting production issues, evaluating vendors, reviewing samples, and developing sourcing strategies for entirely new product categories. Key Responsibilities Sourcing & Manufacturing Own global sourcing and manufacturing strategy across VeeFriends’ product portfolio, including trading cards, comics, collectible coins, stickers, apparel, accessories, and future categories. Translate product concepts and specifications into executable manufacturing plans and identify the right processes, materials, suppliers, and geographies. Lead RFQs/RFPs, supplier selection, sampling, prototyping, production negotiations, and manufacturing awards. Build a resilient supplier network with alternative and backup manufacturers while evaluating opportunities for nearshoring, dual sourcing, supplier consolidation, and other strategies that improve economics and resiliency. Develop sourcing capabilities to support expansion into entirely new consumer-product categories. Supplier Management & Cost Own senior relationships with key manufacturers and establish accountability around cost, quality, lead times, capacity, service levels, and continuous improvement. Negotiate pricing, MOQs, payment terms, tooling, freight terms, production capacity, lead times, and other commercial terms. Continuously pursue COGS and lead-time improvements through competitive bidding, should-cost analysis, volume leverage, specification optimization, and supplier negotiations. Create supplier scorecards and maintain competitive tension through an active pipeline of prospective vendors. Partner with Technology and Finance to implement tools and systems that make sourcing and purchasing processes more efficient, including platforms such as Ramp and in-house software development. Production & Quality Own manufacturing timelines from approved specifications through finished production and ensure milestones align with launch dates, wholesale commitments, and commercial plans. Identify production risks early, drive suppliers toward shorter development and manufacturing lead times, and develop actionable solutions when issues arise. Establish rigorous, category-specific QA/QC standards, inspection protocols, tolerances, and acceptance criteria. Ensure consistency across color, print registration, cutting, centering, surface quality, materials, finishing, packaging, and other attributes that impact collectible condition. Oversee controls for limited editions, numbered products, chase items, mystery variants, randomized assortments, serial numbering, rarity tiers, and other scarcity-based mechanics. Develop processes to protect against unauthorized overruns, leakage, substitution, duplication, and premature disclosure of sensitive products. Lead root-cause analysis and corrective actions when defects or quality failures occur and establish standards for supplier remediation, rework, credits, or replacement. Product Development & Costing Serve as the primary sourcing and manufacturing partner to Product Development and Creative, bringing manufacturing expertise into the development process early enough to influence materials, construction, specifications, packaging, and cost. Help teams balance creative ambition, manufacturability, cost, quality, and timing. Build rapid prototyping and sampling capabilities that allow VeeFriends to move quickly from idea to physical product. Own accurate product costing throughout the development and manufacturing lifecycle and ensure product economics support target gross margins. Identify opportunities for value engineering without diminishing perceived quality or collectible appeal. Track purchase-price variance and measurable sourcing savings. Systems & Scale Build scalable sourcing and manufacturing processes across RFQs, vendor onboarding, costing, purchase orders, sampling, approvals, quality control, and production tracking. Maintain accurate supplier, product, costing, specification, and production documentation. Establish dashboards and KPIs around supplier performance, COGS, savings, lead times, on-time production, defect rates, and quality. Build the sourcing function, processes, and eventual team required to support VeeFriends’ next stage of scale. Qualifications 8+ years of progressive experience in sourcing, manufacturing, product development, procurement, or supply chain, ideally within consumer products. Significant experience managing domestic and international manufacturers and suppliers. Demonstrated success negotiating manufacturing costs and commercial terms and delivering measurable COGS improvements. Deep understanding of product development and manufacturing from concept through finished goods. Strong experience with supplier qualification, factory evaluation, quality assurance, inspection, and corrective-action programs. Experience managing multiple concurrent production programs with aggressive launch timelines. Strong understanding of manufacturing economics, MOQs, tooling, capacity planning, payment terms, and production lead times. Experience sourcing across multiple product categories strongly preferred. Experience in collectibles, trading cards, toys, games, publishing, premium print, promotional products, or adjacent categories is highly valuable. Familiarity with collectible quality standards, grading considerations, limited-edition manufacturing, serialization, randomized products, or mystery/chase mechanics is a major plus. Experience in an entrepreneurial, high-growth, or founder-led consumer business strongly preferred. Comfortable traveling domestically and internationally as needed. What Success Looks Like Success means VeeFriends can launch more products, across more categories, faster and at better economics — while raising the bar on quality. You will have: Built a world-class network of manufacturing partners with meaningful competitive tension and backup capacity. Shortened development and production cycles while improving visibility and accountability across the supply base. Improved gross margins and reduced COGS without compromising product quality or consumer experience. Established rigorous quality and collectible-integrity standards across our product portfolio. Built scalable sourcing processes, systems, and capabilities that support VeeFriends’ growth into new categories. Created a sourcing organization that gives VeeFriends a competitive advantage: the ability to take ambitious creative ideas and reliably turn them into high-quality physical products that fans are excited to collect. About VeeFriends VeeFriends is an intellectual property company built around characters, storytelling, community, and collecting. We bring our IP to life across content, experiences, and a growing portfolio of physical consumer products — including trading cards, comics, collectible coins, stickers, apparel, and other emerging categories. As we scale, we are building the infrastructure to become a world-class developer and operator of collectible consumer products. We are looking for a Director of Sourcing to lead the supplier, manufacturing, costing, production, and quality functions that turn our creative ideas into exceptional physical products.