New Product Development Manager

We are launching three new products every quarter. You decide what they are. Our client makes fitness and sports accessories used by more than 250,000 athletes across powerlifting, CrossFit, climbing, golf, racket sports and calisthenics. We are the number one seller in our main Amazon US category, we sell across seven marketplaces, and we run a second brand in home and garden. We are now scaling product development into a proper function. The target is three new products launched per quarter across the portfolio, and that cadence only works if one person owns the funnel end to end. That is this role. You find the candidates, kill the weak ones with evidence, source the survivors, negotiate the tooling and the terms, and hand over a launch plan we can execute. We are not looking for someone to produce research for the founder to act on. We are looking for someone who makes the call and can defend it. This role owns new products A to Z, and that includes building the process itself. Today there is no dedicated product function here, so you are not stepping into a machine someone else built. You are building it: how ideas get found, how they get screened, how suppliers get sourced and negotiated, how tooling and samples get managed, and how a product gets launched once it lands. Then you run it. Find the candidates, kill the weak ones with evidence, source the survivors, negotiate the terms, and take each one through to a launched product that sells. We are not looking for someone to produce research for the founder to act on. We are looking for someone who builds the system, makes the calls, and can defend them.

What Winning Looks Like A year in, the pipeline runs at three launches a quarter without the founder driving it. Every product we put into market has a written case behind it: what it was measured against, what the economics said at the price we chose, and what we expected it to do. Every product that was rejected has its reason on record, so nobody researches the same dead end twice. You will have built the scoring model, the supplier bench and the launch playbook, and they will be good enough that someone else could run them. When we disagree with one of your picks, you will have the evidence to argue.

Your Playbook One Thing: Keep three good products moving through the funnel every quarter, and be able to prove why each one earned its place. One Thing: Own new product development end to end. Build the process, then run it at three launches a quarter.

Build the System: • Design the pipeline itself. How ideas enter, what data gets pulled on each, what the scoring criteria are, where candidates die and who decides. Write it down so it survives you being on holiday. • Build the supplier bench. A standing list of qualified manufacturers by category with known pricing, MOQs, tooling capability and lead times, so the next product does not start from a blank Alibaba search. • Standardise the negotiation. Quote templates, what we ask for, where we push, what terms we will and will not accept on tooling, MOQ, payment and quality. • Write the launch playbook, so launch number nine is faster and better than launch number one rather than a fresh improvisation.

Then Run It: • Run a continuous idea pipeline across fitness, sports, training and recovery: Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer, Helium 10, Keepa, competitor catalogues, supplier catalogues, review mining and adjacent categories. High volume in, ruthless filtering down. • Score every candidate against a defined framework: market size, price band, review barriers, competition depth, seasonality, differentiation, dealbreakers. No opinions without numbers behind them. • Kill things fast and on the record. Most ideas do not survive contact with the data. Doing that cheaply, early and in writing is most of the job. • Build the unit economics before anyone gets attached: real supplier quotes, tooling amortisation, freight, duty, FBA fees, referral fees, returns allowance, ad allowance, and contribution margin at a realistic price. • Clear the legal path: patent and IP screening, design-around options where a patent blocks the obvious approach, trademark availability on names, and category compliance requirements. • Source and qualify suppliers: Alibaba and direct outreach, sample rounds, tooling and mold quotes, MOQ and pricing negotiation, quality and specification control. • Write the launch plan: pricing ladder, review velocity, PPC structure with a budget, channel sequencing across Amazon and TikTok Shop, and a timeline from purchase order to launch. • Define the decision rules. Every launch ships with what result, by what date, means scale, hold or kill.

Daily and Weekly Hustle: • Move candidates through the funnel and keep the pipeline honest about where each one stands • Chase suppliers on quotes, samples, tooling timelines and specification changes • Maintain the scoring sheet and the rejection log so both stay usable by someone other than you • Report weekly: what advanced, what died and why, what needs a decision

Who You Are • You have launched physical products before, and can name them. We want specifics: what you launched, what it did, and what you got wrong. • You are fluent in the research stack. Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer, Helium 10 and Keepa should be tools you have opinions about, not tools you have heard of. • You can build unit economics without help and defend every line. If you cannot explain how an FBA fee is derived from dimensions and weight, this is not your role. • You have taken a product through custom tooling. Mold costs and amortisation, tooling lead times, sample iterations, and what you do when the first shot comes back wrong. • You have dealt with patents and trademarks in a product decision. Screened a category for existing patents, designed around one, cleared a brand name, or walked away from an idea because the IP position was bad. • You have said no to a product someone senior was excited about, and been right. Tell us about it. • You have worked directly with Chinese suppliers: quotes, samples, MOQs, specification changes, quality problems, and the conversations that follow when a shipment is not what you ordered. • You understand what makes a launch work beyond the listing: reviews, rank, price laddering, ad structure, deal timing. • You write clearly. Recommendations arrive as decisions with reasoning, not as options for someone else to choose between. • You use AI tools heavily and check their output. If a tool hands you a number, you verify it before it reaches us.

Bonus: • Background in fitness, sports, outdoor or recovery categories • TikTok Shop product selection experience, which is a different question from Amazon • Packaging design and print production experience • Experience working directly with founders or small teams

Work Setup • Remote, full-time (Philippines or Latin America preferred) • 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday • Overlap with US Pacific business hours required, exact window agreed at start • Full-time and exclusive: no concurrent clients or side projects • Start date: as soon as possible

Proven track record launching physical products with demonstrated expertise in Amazon FBA tools (Helium 10, Keepa, Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer), unit economics modeling, custom tooling and mold management, supplier negotiation with Chinese manufacturers, patent/IP screening, and ability to make and defend product decisions with data—located in Philippines or Latin America with US Pacific timezone overlap.

Background in fitness, sports, outdoor or recovery categories; TikTok Shop product selection experience; packaging design and print production knowledge; or direct experience working with founders and early-stage teams.

Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer, Helium 10, Keepa, Alibaba, patent/trademark screening tools, spreadsheet and documentation platforms for unit economics and decision logging, and PPC/marketing platforms for launch planning.