Landmark Group
Manager - Sourcing (Apparel)
- Permanent
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Experience 5 - 10 yrs
Job expiry date: 09/04/2026
Job overview
Date posted
23/02/2026
Location
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Salary
AED 20,000 - 30,000 per month
Compensation
Job description
The Manager - Sourcing (Apparel) is responsible for deeply ingraining into the role of understanding the Max brand and target customer, and for driving, developing, implementing, and managing sourcing strategies to meet company objectives relating to quality, volume, delivery, and cost of sourced products. The role builds and maintains business relationships between Max Sourcing, its vendors, and internal and external stakeholders at the highest level of trust and integrity to achieve desired performance outcomes, while contributing to growth and profitability through full understanding of business potential, anticipating requirements, and proposing cost-based solutions. The position strategically manages globally assigned cost drivers and develops an E2E costing framework to enable saving opportunities and ensure cost optimization by creating a fact-based and predictable costing environment aligned to optimize product value and target cost. It supports development or enhancement of systems and processes to meet costing requirements and improve costing performance, and collaborates closely with Buying and Design teams to align sourcing strategy with brand needs. Core responsibilities include owning the COGS savings strategy by category and country of origin aligned to pricing and margin goals, setting annual and quarterly savings targets (hard & soft), building a prioritized savings pipeline with quantified baselines and milestones, driving stage-gated execution (identify → validate → pilot → scale → sustain), ensuring Finance sign-off and SKU-level benefits tracking, creating should-cost models covering materials, trims, CM, overheads and logistics, benchmarking process times, yield and wastage with factories, deploying line balancing, cut plan optimization and marker efficiencies, segmenting suppliers, running multi-round bids, negotiations and e-auctions, consolidating spend, evaluating sourcing mix for FOB, duties, lead time and risk, developing near-shore vs. offshore strategies, managing vendor onboarding/offboarding, engineering-to-cost with costed BOMs, improving forecast accuracy and MOQ alignment, building a single source of truth for cost breakdowns and quotes, using analytics for price variance, mix, FX and inflation/deflation attribution, deploying RFQ tools and dashboarding, aligning critical path to range sign-offs and calendar adherence, ensuring ethical sourcing and technical compliance, and building organizational capability through training and lean efficiency coaching.
Required skills
Key responsibilities
- Own the COGS savings strategy by category and country of origin aligned to pricing and margin goals, set annual and quarterly savings targets (hard & soft), and convert them into a prioritized pipeline with clear owners, timelines and governance rhythm.
- Build and maintain a living savings pipeline with quantified baselines, expected benefits and milestones, drive stage-gated execution (identify → validate → pilot → scale → sustain), remove roadblocks early, and ensure benefits realization tracking with Finance sign-off and SKU-level linkages.
- Create should-cost models covering materials, trims, CM, overheads and logistics for top styles and categories, benchmark process times, yield and wastage with factories, and deploy line balancing, cut plan optimization and marker efficiencies to drive cost engineering outcomes.
- Segment suppliers into strategic, volume and opportunistic categories, run competitive events including multi-round bids, negotiations and e-auctions, consolidate spend to unlock scale advantages, and establish long-term agreements and raw material programs.
- Continuously evaluate sourcing mix across regions considering FOB, duties, lead time and risk, develop near-shore versus offshore strategies based on demand volatility and speed-to-market needs, and manage vendor onboarding/offboarding to optimize network footprint.
- Partner with Design to engineer-to-cost early through pre-commit sampling, costed BOMs, cutable widths and tolerance bands, and improve forecast accuracy and MOQ alignment with Planning to reduce premiums and waste.
- Build a single source of truth for cost breakdowns, quotes and purchase decisions, use analytics to assess price variance, mix, FX and inflation/deflation attribution, and deploy RFQ tools, e-sourcing, should-cost calculators and dashboarding for transparency and speed.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with Design/PD, Quality, Planning, Logistics and Finance to align critical path, ensure first-time-right quality, reduce rework, bundle volumes, optimize freight and consolidation, and land savings without delaying range sign-offs or calendar adherence.
- Ensure dual-sourcing of critical programs, maintain contingency options, uphold ethical sourcing and technical compliance standards, and build organizational capability by training buyers and vendors on cost drivers, negotiation playbooks and lean efficiency improvements.
Experience & skills
- Demonstrate comprehensive expertise in apparel sourcing strategies, including ownership of COGS savings strategy, cost optimization initiatives, and alignment to pricing and margin goals across categories and countries of origin.
- Exhibit advanced capability in cost engineering and development of E2E costing framework and should-cost models covering materials, trims, CM, overheads, logistics and FOB structures to create a fact-based and predictable costing environment.
- Show proven experience in managing savings pipelines with stage-gated execution methodology, quantified baselines, milestone tracking, Finance sign-off processes and SKU-level benefit realization.
- Demonstrate supplier strategy competence including supplier segmentation, multi-round bids, negotiations, e-auctions, spend consolidation, vendor onboarding/offboarding and long-term commercial agreements.
- Possess strong analytical skills using analytics, dashboarding, price variance analysis, FX and inflation/deflation attribution, and deployment of RFQ tools, e-sourcing platforms and should-cost calculators.
- Exhibit understanding of sourcing network optimization including evaluation of FOB, duties, lead time, risk, near-shore vs. offshore strategies, and demand volatility management.
- Demonstrate ability to partner with Buying, Design, Planning, Quality, Logistics and Finance teams to engineer-to-cost using costed BOMs, cutable widths, tolerance bands, and align critical path with range sign-offs and calendar adherence.
- Show knowledge of demand management practices including forecast accuracy improvement, MOQ alignment, volume bundling, and distribution of savings without compromising delivery, quality or technical compliance.
- Demonstrate commitment to ethical sourcing, technical compliance, sustainability considerations, dual-sourcing of critical programs, contingency planning, and capability building through training on cost drivers, negotiation playbooks and lean efficiency methodologies.