The Cooper/Captiva Product Line Manager is responsible for the overall strategy, performance, and growth of the company’s door and stair product lines. This role partners closely with Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain to ensure products are competitively positioned, efficiently produced, and well supported from quoting through delivery. The Product Line Manager leads pricing and go-to-market initiatives, improves estimating and order execution processes, supports manufacturing and supplier optimization, and identifies innovation opportunities that enhance product performance, customer satisfaction, and profitability across both product categories.
Essential Functions & Responsibilities
Leadership: Optimizes team structure in a manner that facilitates the team’s performance towards its objectives, while focusing on the growth and development opportunities for team members. Develop into the key contact for our sales teams and other significant Archtectural Products users or specifiers to answer questions and provide detailed and high-level information on the product line including construction fire rating offerings, performance rating capabilities, and code considerations of the product category.
Estimating/Ordering: Understands and improves internal process required to increase product sales opportunities and order close rates across both of the Architectural product lines. Driven to improve responsiveness and speed to market with new proposals generation and awarded orders processed and into production per target times established. Become an expert user of the Captiva Build Quote Software as well as the Cooper custom curved stair quoting tool. Gain a strong understanding of the CAD process aimed at improving accuracy and minimizing revisions along with the time involved in moving quotes through the process to shop orders. Maintain our quote lead times to less than 48 hours on 95% plus of our opportunities. Monitor daily dept. quote & order processing activity to assure productivity expectations are being achieved. Fill in as needed when estimating team is on vacation or intake of bid requests spike in order to achieve a quick turn around to our sales team.
Product Line Manufacturing: Obtain hands-on knowledge of manufacturing techniques/processes required to build Captiva wood and MDF products, as well as Cooper stair systems and components. Seek ways to increase product line use capabilities and production capacity via existing and or new equipment and production layouts.
Supply Chain: Understand the supply chain ecosystem for the Architectural product lines. Develop written specifications and performance expectations for current raw materials used in products production. Establish working relationships with current raw materials suppliers and communicate our expectations of them. If needed, pursue new supply chain relationships that will improve the product offering.
Distribution: Defines the best practices for post-manufacturing and pre-delivery activities surrounding the product from pre-hanging, to pre-finishing, to product packaging/handling.
Go to Market: Based on competitive intelligence gained, set product pricing for various customer types accordingly in the market areas we serve. Collaborate with NAC Marketing & Sales leadership to develop selling approach, marketing assets, training guides, etc. PLM must execute on increased sales in the product category.
Competitive Analysis: Understand our product positioning in the market areas served relative to the competing product brands. Considers pricing, product features, warranty language, service offerings, and customer feedback, wants and needs.
Innovation: Identifies and implements product innovation opportunities that align with the (performance) needs of the markets served in superior ways to that of competitive brand products.
