About Your Role
- Acts as the global functional focal point for apparel costing, driving enterprise standards, influencing strategic sourcing decisions, and enabling margin delivery across the product creation lifecycle.
- Leads end-to-end costing execution across a global sourcing portfolio, ensuring cost accuracy, transparency, and alignment to brand margin targets.
- Owns global costing delivery by embedding enterprise costing standards into disciplined regional execution, enabled through active leadership, development, and coaching of Senior Costing Engineers within key manufacturing regions.
- Partners cross-functionally with Sourcing Development, Engineering, Product Supply Enablement (PSE), Brand Planning, Product Development, Design & merch to drive margin optimization, strengthen cost discipline, and enable fact-based, data-driven decision making across the organization.
Key Responsibilities
The Costing Manager will act as central connector across Finance, PSE and Brand to establish and develop end-to-end product cost governance. This includes:
- End-to-End Costing Delivery
- Own global FOB validation, consolidation, and submission across all GTM milestones
- Ensure costing accuracy, completeness, and alignment to margin targets
- Provide structured visibility of FOB evolution, risks, and variance to enable decision making
- Maintain discipline in milestone tracking, forecast accuracy, and buy readiness
- Cost Governance & Standards Execution
- Implement and enforce global costing standards, frameworks, and processes across regions
- Ensure consistency in costing methodologies, assumptions, and tools
- Own governance of cost changes, exceptions, and approval processes
- Drive transparency and accountability in costing outcomes
- Regional Costing Leadership
- Lead regional costing execution through Senior Costing Engineers in key sourcing countries (e.g., Vietnam, Bangladesh)
- Set clear expectations, monitor performance, and ensure delivery against timelines and targets
- Drive alignment of regional execution to global costing strategy and operating model
- Identify and escalate risks impacting cost performance or GTM readiness
- Cost Optimization & Commercial Impact
- Lead vendor-facing cost negotiations and cost engineering initiatives
- Identify opportunities across materials, construction, and manufacturing efficiency to improve margins
- Partner with Engineering, Sourcing, and Product teams to balance cost, quality, and product intent
- Support sourcing allocation decisions through cost competitiveness insights
- Cross-Functional Partnership
- Partner with Product Development, Merchandising, Sourcing, PSE, and Finance to align on cost targets and margin delivery
- Provide insights on economic trends, cost drivers, trade impacts, and regional dynamics to inform decision making
- Contribute to integrated planning and cost projection discussions
- Reporting & Insights
- Lead structured costing communication at key GTM milestones
- Consolidate regional inputs into clear, actionable global insights
- Highlight risks, opportunities, and recommended actions to stakeholders
- Capability Building
- Build costing capability across regions through coaching and guidance of Sr Costing Engineers
- Develop team discipline in:
- Costing fundamentals
- Analytical rigor
- Stakeholder communication
Competency Requirements
- Strong commercial acumen with the ability to connect product costs, sourcing strategies, margin performance, and business outcomes.
- Demonstrated analytical thinking and problem-solving capability, with the ability to translate data into actionable business recommendations.
- Proven ability to influence and build alignment across cross-functional stakeholders in a complex, matrixed environment.
- Strong leadership capability with experience coaching, developing, and leading teams while driving accountability and continuous improvement.
- Results-oriented with a strong ownership mindset and ability to deliver in a fast-paced, milestone-driven environment.
- Effective communicator with the ability to simplify complex topics and influence decision-making through clear insights and business storytelling.
- Proven change agent with the ability to drive process standardization, governance, and adoption of new ways of working.
- Digital and continuous improvement mindset with a passion for leveraging data, systems, and technology to improve performance.
Key Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Textile Engineering, Apparel Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, or a related field.
- 6+ years of experience in apparel sourcing, manufacturing, product costing, cost engineering, or supply chain operations, including multi-country sourcing environments.
- Strong expertise in apparel costing, garment construction, manufacturing processes, material cost drivers, and vendor economics.
- Proven track record of delivering cost optimization, cost engineering, and vendor negotiation initiatives that improve margin performance.
- Strong understanding of FOB development, cost forecasting, margin management, and costing governance processes.
- Advanced analytical and financial modeling capabilities, including proficiency in Excel and costing tools.
- Knowledge of global sourcing dynamics, trade regulations, tariffs, and regional manufacturing competitiveness.
- Experience working in a global matrix organization with cross-functional stakeholder management responsibilities.
R-20260707-0005
