Director, Sourcing & Inventory Management

Core Responsibilities

• Strategic Sourcing
• Lead the development of a Sourcing vision and roadmap that supports Caribou’s growth objectives and sourcing-related ESG commitments.
• Oversee the management of Caribou’s supplier matrix to ensure the company maintains reliable, cost-effective access to all inventory, store supplies, and store equipment required to deliver sales, profit, and quality objectives in all business channels.
• Partner with Culinary R&D, Category Management, and Supply Chain teams to develop and enable sourcing solutions that fully integrate into the company’s Product Lifecycle processes.
• Foster the creation and maintenance of efficient processes for supplier identification, qualification, approval, contracting, onboarding, and item specification management.
• Lead the contract management process and oversee the negotiation and implementation of new/renewing purchasing contracts for relevant product, supplies, and equipment categories.
• Maintain an item cost management model that provides visibility to all item cost components – as inputs to related and dependent processes – and supports ongoing cost monitoring with suppliers and Caribou’s distribution partners.
• Champion item data management to ensure all purchasing- and logistics-related item attributes are maintained in the system(s) of record to enable an accurate view on the company’s inventory assets.
• Lead Demand Planning
• Lead the development of annual planning inputs for COGS and profit based on sourcing strategies and in coordination with product category sales and store operations plans.
• Oversee processes to collect, validate and aggregate multi-channel demand forecasts to support Product Lifecycle processes, inbound supply planning, efficient inventory flow, reliable outbound replenishment, and optimized store inventory levels.
• Enable the integration of store segmentation into demand and supply planning to support store-level inventory optimization.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to enable the creation of inventory forecasting and efficiency KPIs and metrics that directly support financial objectives and resource utilization targets.
• Lead Inventory Management
• Oversee inventory purchasing and movement through the supply chain to support replenishment, new item launches, promotions, limited time offerings and new store openings.
• Enable inventory management tactics that are directly connected to sales and demand plans, ensuring the complete integration of the inventory management capability into Caribou’s business planning processes.
• Oversee processes and systems to create orders, track and manage purchase order logistics, and troubleshoot replenishment and forecast metrics in order maintain optimized inventory levels within our distribution centers.

Skills and Requirements

• Lead a high-functioning team by consistently demonstrating and championing Caribou’s culture and core values: Support One Another, Take Ownership, Make Fun Happen, Serve with Love, Be Yourself.
• Strong business and financial acumen - prioritize guest and team when establishing plans and decision frameworks.
• Strategic vision – establish clear roadmap and vision for success and impact to the organization.
• Decision making – demonstrate confidence to make strong decisions, ensuring rationale, decisions, and outcomes are transparently communicated and admit mistakes while instilling confidence in overall abilities and capabilities.
• Build teams – foster and explore diverse perspectives to ensure voices are heard and ideas are evaluated on their merit and rationale.
• Drive results and manage performance - foster a results-oriented mindset that drives continuous improvement in team and business performance. Elevate Caribou’s talent and culture through transparent performance management.
• Develop strong relationships - build and maintain productive, trusted relationships with leaders, peers, and cross-functional partners.
• Influence others - create buy-in and excitement through ability to influence internal and external partners.
• Organizational agility and flexibility - create structure in ambiguous situations to enable forward progress while preserving flexibility.