Do vendor negotiations give you a thrill? Do you love leading a team of passionate supply chain professionals? Do you happen to be a car enthusiast who wants to help bring some really cool motorsport parts to market? If so, then keep reading because Apex is seeking an experienced, confident, and proactive Supply Chain Manager.

Who are we?

Apex is a leading provider of high-performance automotive wheels and accessories, catering to the motorsport and performance car enthusiast community. We have a strong vision for the future, a powerful narrative about our products, and an enthusiastic team to execute our plans. We’ve been in business for over 17 years and our team of 40+ staff are spread out remotely across the USA. 

Objective

Take ownership of our supply chain operations, and achieve department goals to ensure there is a continuous flow of quality products that are on time and in the right quantities. This department needs an experienced manager that can provide support and guidance to our demand planning and purchasing staff while taking full ownership of the relationship and negotiations with each of our suppliers. Your success will be measured by how well our vendors perform, what concessions you can get out of them, and how successful you are at reducing quality control issues, delays, and price increases.

Job Summary

Reporting to the CFO, you’ll have a small but growing team under you, requiring you to get your hands dirty and lead others.  Our Inventory & Demand Manager will continue handling forecasting and inventory responsibilities while our incoming Purchasing Coordinator will be responsible for handling purchase orders, tracking shipments, and providing assistance.

This role will work remotely from your home anywhere in the contiguous USA, with a few trips a year to our Pleasanton, CA headquarters and a few trips overseas to visit vendors along with our engineering team. 

You’ll be leading the relationships with our suppliers.  Your tactful relationship management skills will help find a good balance between celebrating wins and addressing areas of opportunity with our existing vendors, overall ensuring a positive and long-lasting relationship. You need to anticipate their mistakes, implement safeguards and penalties, and hold them accountable. They love to surprise us with new and unique issues. It will require consistent and proactive communication, organization and follow-up to keep our overseas suppliers on track and in check. We only work with a few key suppliers so your negotiation skills and contract experience will be used to set new rules and standards and negotiate through problems so we aren’t stuck eating the costs of their mistakes.

Although our suppliers speak and write English, it’s their second language. You’ll need to get your point across in just a few concise emails and through daily check-ins to ensure there are no misunderstandings. You need strong project management skills so you can keep the status of various deliverables organized, prioritized, and on time. Completing your tasks and projects will depend on others getting back to you, so you must also be comfortable checking in often with other departments and keeping colleagues and vendors accountable for the commitments they’ve made.

You will also be responsible for elevating the team that handles inventory planning and purchasing. Our team has a basic process for forecasting demand and submitting purchase orders, Your experience needs to bring our team up to the next level so we can successfully reduce inventory on hand while keeping popular inventory in stock.  We have underutilized tools that need to be reconsidered and inventory management practices that warrant evaluation. For quality control issues you’ll need to work with our engineering and customer service teams to find the root cause, adapt and get the factory to implement solutions. 

Our existing team has held down the fort, now we need someone to take our processes, practices, and people to the next level. As a leader, you’ll mentor and develop our newly reorganized procurement team, fostering a positive work environment rooted in Radical Candor. By setting clear expectations, providing constructive feedback, and driving operational excellence, you’ll play a key role in delivering exceptional products to our customers. If you’re ready to lead with confidence and make an impact, we’d love to hear from you.

Who are you?

• Communication is your superpower - you can clearly articulate expectations and ensure understanding, even across language barriers. 
• You care about having genuine, friendly relationships with our vendors, because you know they have the potential to lead to great business outcomes when treated well instead of just beating them up on price and complaining at them.
• Your motivation to work isn’t dependent on being in an office around others. You can concentrate and avoid distractions when working from home.
• You’re not bothered by early-morning or late-night calls.
• You like to use presentations to get your message across.
• You naturally want to use tools to keep projects well organized and it won’t take pressure from a manager to do so.
• Proactive and adaptable, you anticipate problems before they arise and implement innovative solutions to keep operations running smoothly.
• Improving the efficiency of a process or automating it all together puts a huge smile on your face.
• You can simultaneously manage your own contributions (Vendor Management, in this case) while also supporting a team of professionals.
• You care about your people and that shows in the interest, support, feedback and kindness you show them. You foster a culture of transparency, collaboration, and accountability.
• Organized and methodical, you excel at managing competing priorities, keeping projects on track, and ensuring deliverables are met on time.
• Doing something over or doing it the hard way is your preferred method if it’s in the customer’s and company’s best interest.
• You have natural sales skills, and you can convince vendors to make investments and concessions on our behalf.

How to Apply:

When submitting your application please include a cover letter that answers the following question: Tell us about the most challenging, complex, or frustrating contract negotiation you’ve actively managed or led. Mention some of the specific challenges you faced and how the experience changed how you handled negotiations going forward.

Responsibilities

• Supply Chain Management: Directly oversee all aspects of Supply Chain management, including sourcing, production, warehousing, shipping, and distribution. Drive efficiency, quality and productivity within the department.
• Vendor Relationship Management: Lead morning or early evening group calls to check in with vendors and solve problems. Maintain timely, clear, and thorough communication with all suppliers, tracking all deliverables due for both sides. Own vendor relationships and consistently and proactively follow up with suppliers for their deliverables to ensure production objectives are not delayed by any supplier-side disorganization.
• People-Management: Actively participate in people-management from hiring to termination. Conduct performance evaluations and provide consistent and regular feedback both verbally and through Employee Engagement software. Provide coaching and mentoring to team members in pursuit of their Objectives and Key Results, and help them course correct when necessary. 
• Quality Management: Hold vendors accountable by improving our contract language and following up on all issues and credits until they’re resolved/paid.  Reduce product issues by pushing each vendor to improve quality control. Own each problem and work with vendors and various department heads to catch issues and find solutions. Chase vendors down for compensation for errors and implement solutions to prevent repeats.
• Negotiation: Manage supplier contracts and pricing negotiations. Help onboard new suppliers and improve contracts and standards with existing suppliers.
• Purchasing and Production: Oversee all purchasing and production planning functions. Significantly improve the team’s demand planning methodology. Implement best practices for purchase order review, submission and followup. Oversee and improve the process for container quoting and scheduling shipments. Oversee Communication with our broker as needed for each shipment. 
• Continuous Improvement: Improve our current processes and results using APICS or another similar methodology. Establish department-level KPIs in alignment with organizational goals.
• Project Management: Project manage team’s deliverables for better clarity and delegation. Use software tools to stay well organized. Prioritize projects and issues in line with Apex's goals and strategy.

• Collaboration: Act as a liaison to Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and fulfillment teams to ensure that information is being disseminated to relevant team members and the factory. Support engineering by keeping your finger on the pulse around run-rates of molds and provide for future projects.

Requirements

• A bachelors degree in Supply Chain Management, Materials Management, Business or another relevant area is highly preferred.
• APICS certification is required.
• 5+ years experience in purchasing, production and manufacturing with significant responsibilities related to vendor management.
• 3+ years experience working with overseas contract manufacturers is preferred.
• 5+ years in direct end-to-end people management - from hiring to termination and everything in between.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Detail-oriented and a proclivity towards analytical and critical thinking.
• Proficiency in ERP systems (such as Netsuite).
• Proficiency in BlueRidge or another forecasting software suite.
• Slack, Gmail experience preferred.
• Mandarin as a second language is a plus.
• Project Management experience and the use of PM software is a plus (Click-Up).

Benefits

• Full-time position $100K - 130K depending on experience.
• Employee Medical, dental and vision benefits.
• Spouse and dependent Medical benefits.
• 401k with employer matching.
• Vacation and Holiday pay.
• Fully remote telecommuting is supported from anywhere in the contiguous USA.
• Support your track addiction with reimbursements for HPDE and autocross event registration fees.
• Casual in-office dress environment where T-shirts, jeans, and shorts are welcome.
• Get employee discounts and freebies on Apex products and schwag.
• Participate in company activities including karting, spectating at races, track days, and more.