Owned Brands Lead

Why This Role Exists

Grove's owned brands — Grove Co., Grab Green, and 8Greens — are the highest-margin, highest-control part of our assortment and the clearest expression of our human health point of view. They are also where the hardest problems live: contract manufacturers who need managing, packaging that has to survive a supply chain, claims that have to hold up to a third-party lab, and launch dates that are set by retail partners and don't move.

This role owns those brands end to end — the margin math, the vendor relationships, the product development calendar, the claims and compliance work that gates our sales channels, and the quality problems that surface after launch. It is a small-team, wide-aperture job: you are the single point of accountability for a domain that touches inventory planning, marketing, creative, quality, finance, and our fulfillment centers, and you do the work yourself rather than routing it to a team.

What You'll Own

Owned brand product development and packaging

• Own the development calendar for Grove Co., Grab Green, and 8Greens — new items, seasonal and limited-edition programs, line extensions, and format changes from brief through first production run.
• Own packaging decisions and their consequences: substrate and format selection, die lines, master case specification, compatibility of formula to package, and cost per unit.
• Build and maintain the specification and briefing standards these programs run on, so a new item moves through development the same way every time rather than being reinvented per launch.
• Direct external design and artwork partners and a small bench of specialist contractors; manage revision cycles against launch dates.

Contract manufacturers and supplier partnerships

• Serve as the primary relationship owner for our contract manufacturers and co-packers (gummy, liquid, paper, and personal care) plus the packaging and component suppliers behind them.
• Negotiate cost, payment terms, MOQs, and lead times. Run RFPs and dual-source evaluations when the current partner is the constraint rather than the solution.
• Manage supply agreements and quality agreements alongside Legal and Finance, and own vendor onboarding through NetSuite and Tropic.

Product quality and problem resolution

• Run root-cause investigation and resolution yourself when a product fails in the field — seal integrity, cap and closure defects, formula-to-lining compatibility, freight damage — coordinating the manufacturer, third-party labs, our fulfillment centers, and Customer Happiness.
• Build the evidence: pull the complaint data, size the exposure, recommend whether to fix, re-spec, or discontinue, and bring a clear recommendation rather than a list of options.
• Define how we investigate: establish the triage thresholds, the escalation path, and the documentation trail so the same defect class doesn't get worked from scratch twice.

Retail and channel program execution

• Deliver owned brand programs into retail and marketplace partners on their calendars — QVC TSV builds, Amazon assortment transitions, retailer-specific packaging and pack sizes — including the inbound freight and delivery-window coordination that determines whether revenue lands in the quarter.

How This Role Operates

You will work with high independence. Your VP will review outcomes and major trade-offs — the assortment recommendation, the sourcing decision, the call on a quality exposure — not your method or your day-to-day sequencing. There is no team beneath this role and no internal quality or regulatory desk to hand work to; you set your own priorities across four workstreams and hold your own dates. Where you need capacity, you get it from external partners and contractors you direct.

Because there is no formal authority attached to this role, most of what you accomplish cross-functionally will come from being the person who has the data, saw the risk first, and put it in writing.

What Success Looks Like In The First Year

• First 60 days: You have inherited a live book of work — a packaging quality investigation, a gummy manufacturer evaluation, a claims and artwork refresh across a full brand, and a seasonal development calendar. You know the status, the owner, and the next date on each, and nothing has quietly slipped.
• First 6 months: You have a point of view on our owned brand assortment and packaging architecture — what to invest behind, what to re-spec, and what to sunset — and you bring it to your VP with the margin math behind it. The claims and testing calendar is running on a cadence rather than reacting to deadlines.
• First year: Owned brand launches hit their dates and their cost targets. Quality issues get caught in development rather than in customer complaints. Vendor terms have improved measurably. The processes you built for spec, investigation, and substantiation are the ones the business runs on, and they hold up without you in the room.

Who You Are

Required

• 6+ years in CPG brand management, product development, or category management, with direct ownership of a product line's cost, margin, and development calendar. Brand or buyer-side experience matters more here than pure supply chain or operations background.
• You have managed contract manufacturers and packaging suppliers directly — negotiated the terms, sat through the plant call, and pushed a supplier to fix something they didn't want to fix.
• Strong commercial instincts: you read a COGS build, understand what a change does to gross margin, and can tell the difference between a cost problem worth solving and one that isn't.
• You have built the process, not just worked inside one. Somewhere in your history is a specification standard, launch process, or quality workflow that existed because you created it.
• Genuine problem-solving range. This job hands you technical problems you have not seen before — a detergent eating through a carton lining, a rejection from a marketplace with no explanation attached — and expects you to organize the right people and land on a root cause.
• Comfortable as a generalist with no support underneath you. You will move between a packaging spec, a vendor negotiation, a lab result, and a freight booking in the same day, and all of it is yours to do.
• Excellent written communication and stakeholder management. Cross-functional partners should learn about risks from you, early, in writing.

Preferred

• Experience in home care, personal care, supplements, or another regulated or claims-sensitive category.
• Experience launching into retail or marketplace channels (Amazon, mass, or televised retail) with their packaging and compliance requirements.
• Exposure to sustainability-driven or ingredient-standard-driven product work.
• Working knowledge of NetSuite and comfort building your own analysis rather than waiting on a report.

How To Think About This Role

This is a hands-on, generalist owned brands job at a company that is actively getting smaller and sharper, not a large operations organization with a team beneath it. The scope is broad and the ownership is real — you are the person accountable for these brands — but the volumes are modest, there are no direct reports, and the execution is yours. The right person wants breadth, direct vendor and product ownership, and proximity to the decisions, and is looking to grow by deepening scope rather than by building a team.

What's In It For You

• This full-time, exempt position is remote for candidates based in the following states: California, Maine, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas, Colorado, Washington, Illinois, New York, Missouri, and Massachusetts.
• Competitive benefits - medical, vision, dental 
• Equity - shared success is core to our mission 
• Flexible Paid Time Off - we care most about results
• Free VIP membership and 50% employee discount
• Working for a company that believes that a small group of people can change the world for the better by creating products and funding initiatives that help the planet!

Compensation

The salary range for this role is $132,000-165,000. Our compensation bands are determined based on market-specific cost of living data, meaning that the top of our salary range is reserved for the most experienced candidates in the highest cost of living areas across the country. In addition to the base salary, this role is eligible for an annual incentive target and equity.