Embroidery Studio Manager

POSITION: Embroidery Studio Manager, Full Time

OVERSEES: Embroiderers

REPORTS TO: Design Director

The Embroidery Studio Manager is responsible for the overall creative standards of our hand embroidery department. In this role, you will support and manage our embroidery team while communicating with sales and design departments to ensure timeliness and quality of all embroidery projects. Exceptional interpersonal skills and a positive attitude are of paramount importance to success in this role.

We are looking for positive energy and a “can-do” attitude, someone who can wear multiple hats and who knows their individual strengths and weaknesses. We are a small (but quickly growing) company committed to fair trade, ethical labor practices, and the highest environmental standards. We are proud to use our brand as a platform to inspire change and aim to fill this role with an individual who is excited to grow with us!

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage all embroidery projects from initial concept to final completion for DTC, B2B, wholesale and design departments.
• Own and facilitate workflow of the embroidery department, manage day to day operations, and work with the sales and design team leads to articulate best practices on embroidery-related projects
• Create and implement deadlines, project goals, expectations and workflows to ensure smooth production process and on-time deliveries.
• Daily monitoring and troubleshooting of Brightpearl system to ensure all incoming and outgoing orders are tracked and managed in an efficient manner
• Manage all daily communication with embroiderers including but not limited to scheduling pick ups and drop offs, scheduling embroidery classes and events, and advising on specific project needs and requirements.
• Liaise with sales, customer service, and design teams to understand project needs and review embroidery details before work is passed to embroiderers.
• Assess and clarify embroidery details for embroiderers and clearly communicate customer order and project needs to embroidery team members.
• Lead recruitment and hiring decisions related to the embroidery team, including but not limited to onboarding new hires for seasonal work and scheduling embroiders for classes and events
• Keep all embroidery materials, tools, components inventoried and organized properly to ensure stock levels and timely delivery of orders.
• Build and maintain organizational systems to ensure all product and inventory within the embroidery studio is properly managed and accounted for.
• Maintaining image libraries, technical files, and other reference materials, ensuring embroiderers have access to files as needed.
• Ensure embroiderer invoices are completed in a timely manner, communicate with Payroll Department as needed to ensure invoicing is accurate
• Efficiently manage studio time and embroidery team, in accordance with production budgets and margins.
• Manage project budgets and costs: Determine profitability of embroidery projects/styles; track damages, revisions, and overall labor costs in order to identify where workflow processes can be improved; create recommendations for optimizing costs for future projects.
• Build and maintain systems to oversee quality control and ensure all embroidered goods meet design standards before passing to the fulfillment/logistics team.
• Carry out QC checks on all hand embroidered items and communicate issues with embroiderers, coordinate redos.
• Participate in Design & Development meetings providing creative and logistical input as it relates to the embroidery department

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Calm under pressure, highly organized and methodical and able to make informed decisions rapidly and accurately.
• Knowledge of hand embroidery processes, techniques and tools preferred
• Excellent written, verbal and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to improve and evaluate the operations of a team.
• Flexible in managing multiple projects, deadlines and budgets.
• Proven ability to prioritize and organize work assignments; ability to multi-task and react to shifting priorities while adhering to deadlines.
• Superb verbal, written, and digital communication skills.
• Excellent leadership and teamwork skills that are adaptable and predicated on mutual respect.
• Comfortable and flexible within a dynamic “roll up your sleeves” start-up environment, with a desire to develop and scale the role as the business grows.
• Experience managing a design studio and/or atelier a plus
• Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite a plus.