Director of Product Development

Faber-Castell USA is a leading creative company dedicated to inspiring creativity and quality craftsmanship in arts, crafts, and kids’ activities. With more than 260 years of heritage, we are known for premium creative products, innovation, and sustainability. As part of our growth strategy, we are expanding our global toy and creative play business, with the U.S. playing a critical role in driving product innovation.

Faber-Castell USA is seeking an experienced, highly creative, and technically strong Director of Product Development to lead the innovation, design, and execution of new products across the kids’ space, including toys, arts, crafts, and creative activities.

This role is focused on product creation and development excellence, working in close partnership with Marketing (assortment strategy and portfolio architecture) and Sales (commercial execution). The role combines strategic influence with hands‑on creative and technical leadership, with a heavy emphasis on developing products to defined cost and margin requirements.

• Lead end‑to‑end product development from concept through commercialization, ensuring speed, quality, safety, cost discipline, and commercial success.
• Act as a hands‑on designer: contribute to sketching, concept refinement, CAD development (or guidance), and creative problem‑solving.
• Own design‑to‑cost and value engineering to meet defined cost and margin targets throughout the development cycle.
• Translate Marketing‑led strategies into clear product briefs, development roadmaps, and executable innovation plans; assess feasibility early.
• Partner with Sales to ensure strong retail selling stories, clear differentiation, and aligned price architecture.
• Collaborate on sell‑sheets, line presentations, and sales tools that clearly communicate product benefits and value.
• Build and manage a disciplined innovation pipeline that balances breakthrough innovation, line extensions, and margin‑driven initiatives.
• Oversee design, prototyping, and validation testing; partner with Quality and Compliance to meet safety, regulatory, and performance standards across markets.
• Define testing protocols with Quality, manage third‑party lab testing, and ensure timely certifications and approvals.
• Own product costing, margin modeling, and value engineering in partnership with Finance, Sourcing, and Operations.
• Partner with Supply Chain and Sourcing to leverage multi‑national manufacturing capabilities and optimize cost, quality, and lead times.
• Travel regularly to China and other manufacturing regions to support design execution, tooling, sampling, cost optimisation, and production readiness.
• Maintain strong working relationships with factories and suppliers to ensure design intent, quality execution, and on‑time commercialization.
• Drive speed‑to‑market improvements through disciplined stage‑gate processes and continuous process optimisation.
• Analyse trends, consumer insights, and competitive products to continuously fuel innovation and portfolio improvement.
• Ensure product documentation, specifications, compliance records, and approvals are complete, accurate, and audit‑ready.
• Review product performance post‑launch and apply learnings to future development cycles.
• Lead, coach, and develop a high‑performing Product Development team, fostering creativity, accountability, and execution excellence.

• Strong hand‑sketching and visual concepting skills; proven ability to take ideas from early concept through final execution.
• Experience with CAD tools such as Solid Works, Rhino, Fusion 360, or equivalent in a product development environment.
• Experience with Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign) for visualization, concept communication, presentations, and packaging mockups.
• Ability to create and interpret technical drawings, specifications, and production‑ready documentation.
• Experience with rapid prototyping methods (e.g., 3D printing, foam modelling, sample fabrication).
• Strong understanding of materials, manufacturing processes, and tooling related to toys, plastics, paper goods, and craft products.
• Strong design sensibility for form,…