Product Development and Merchandising Manager

ABOUT: Luminous Optical Company is a Grand Rapids-based eyewear company developing and growing a portfolio of products across optical eyewear, sunglasses, readers, POP/displays, and emerging categories. We serve consumers, independent optical practices, and major retail partners across direct-to-consumer, business-to-business, and retail channels. We are entering an exciting period of growth, with more products, retail programs, and cross-functional initiatives moving at the same time. As our portfolio grows, we are building the systems and team needed to move quickly while maintaining strong visibility, accountability, and discipline throughout product development. SUMMARY: We are looking for a highly organized, analytical Product Development & Merchandising Manager to own the processes, information, and project management behind our growing product portfolio, encompassing both frame developments and POP/display solutions. This role sits at the intersection of product development, merchandising, sales, account management, supply chain, finance, manufacturing, leadership, and product marketing. At its core, this role will own the process and the information while helping influence product decisions. You will create visibility and accountability across the product development pipeline, manage timelines and deliverables, organize critical product information, analyze product and assortment performance, and ensure the right stakeholders are involved at the right points in the process. This is not primarily a product design role. We are looking for an exceptional project manager who is comfortable with data, creates structure, follows through, and can turn cross-functional input into clear next steps. Product Marketing will own product positioning, messaging, launch strategy, and go-to-market execution; this role will own the product development process, product information, merchandising analysis, and product launch readiness. ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS: Project Management: Own and maintain the master product development calendar, roadmap, and project trackers across frames, POP/displays, brands, categories, collections, and customer-specific programs. Project Execution: Manage multiple product initiatives—covering frames as well as POP/display development—from initial concept through sampling, revisions, costing, approvals, production readiness, and launch readiness, with clear milestones, owners, dependencies, and deadlines. Visibility & Accountability: Maintain clear visibility into where every active product initiative stands; proactively identify blockers, missed deadlines, unanswered questions, and decisions needed to keep work moving. Product Information: Maintain a reliable source of truth for product specifications, samples, revisions, approvals, costing, pricing inputs, MOQs, timelines, and other key development information. Data & Merchandising Analysis: Analyze product performance across brands, collections, SKUs, customers, channels, price points, and other relevant dimensions to identify trends, opportunities, and potential issues. Assortment Planning: Maintain seasonal and ongoing line plans and assortment information, using sales performance, inventory, customer feedback, margin considerations, and business priorities to support planning. Recommendations: Translate data and cross-functional input into clear recommendations around SKU additions, extensions, replenishment, refreshes, discontinuations, and future development priorities. Cross-Functional Decision Support: Bring together input from Sales, Account Management, Finance, Supply Chain, Product Marketing, and Leadership; clarify decisions, document outcomes, and translate decisions into executable next steps. Manufacturer & Vendor Coordination: Serve as a key day-to-day contact for manufacturing and development partners, clearly communicating requirements, feedback, revisions, priorities, and timelines. Samples & Approvals: Coordinate sample requests, tracking, feedback, revisions, approvals, and production-readiness activities; maintain organized sample records and development documentation. Costing & Commercial Inputs: Partner with Finance and Supply Chain to understand product costs, target margins, MOQs, lead times, and commercial requirements, and surface issues early in the development process. Product Marketing Partnership: Provide Product Marketing with accurate product information, approved samples, assortment details, specifications, key dates, and readiness updates needed to support positioning, messaging, sales tools, and go-to-market execution. Meetings & Communication: Coordinate product development meetings, provide concise status updates, and ensure decisions, action items, owners, and follow-up are clearly documented. Process Improvement: Build and continuously improve the systems, dashboards, reporting, and processes that make product development more organized, visible, data driven, and scalable. QUALIFICATIONS AND COMPETENCIES: 4+ years of relevant experience in product development, merchandising, product operations, project management, sourcing, category management, or a related consumer-products role. Exceptional project-management and organizational skills, with the ability to manage a high volume of products, projects, information, and deadlines simultaneously. Strong analytical skills and proficiency with Excel or Google Sheets; comfortable analyzing SKU, assortment, sales, inventory, margin, and other product-performance data. Demonstrated ability to turn data and business inputs into clear observations, recommendations, and action plans. Experience working with physical consumer products (including frames and/or POP and retail displays) strongly preferred; experience with manufacturers, suppliers, or vendors is a plus. Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the confidence to work across multiple functions and drive follow-up and accountability. High attention to detail with an ability to identify missing information, risks, and potential problems before they become larger issues. Self-motivated, solutions oriented, and comfortable creating structure in a fast-moving environment where priorities may evolve quickly. Strong product judgment and an interest in consumer products; able to contribute thoughtfully to product and assortment discussions without needing to be the primary designer or creative lead. Comfort using project-management and organizational systems; experience with Monday.com or similar tools is a plus. Bachelor’s degree in business, merchandising, supply chain, product development, or a related field preferred, or equivalent professional experience. Previous eyewear experience is a plus. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE: Success in this role means our product development organization is organized, visible, accountable, and increasingly data driven across all product lines, including frames and POP/displays. At any given time, the team should have a clear answer to what is in development, why it is being developed, where each project stands, what is at risk, what decisions are outstanding, what the data is telling us, and what needs to happen next. This person does not own every product decision. They own the system that ensures the right information and stakeholders are brought into those decisions, the outcome is documented, and the work moves forward. WORKING ENVIRONMENT: This role is based in our Grand Rapids office with flexibility for occasional hybrid work as needed. Close collaboration with cross-functional teams including Sales, Account Management, Finance, Supply Chain, Product Marketing, and Leadership. Regular interaction with domestic and international manufacturing and vendor partners. Fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment with multiple product initiatives and retail programs moving simultaneously.