Product Manager

Location: County Hall, London (with optional home working 2 days per week)

Role: Full time

Reporting to: Product Development Manager

Rewards: 25 days holiday, 8% company contribution to pension, life cover, flexi working hours, cycle to work scheme, private health care

Pay: Competitive

Divine Chocolate was one of the pioneering Fairtrade brands in the UK and is still a catalyst for change today. We are one of the founding UK BCorp’s and we are part owned by cocoa farmers so every chocolate bar we sell really makes a difference. The company head office is based in a newly built coworking space in County Hall, London. The views are spectacular, especially from the bar in our workspace! The overall purpose of this role will be to develop, from initial concept to launch, a range of on trend products that taste amazing and excite our consumer base. With support from the Product Development Manager, you will take the creative lead on your own projects producing real innovation for the UK and international markets including USA and Sweden. You will become the Divine product & packaging guru, not just in product development but the wider scope of the R&D department. No day will be the same whether you will be completing market analysis, building Divine policies, guiding on creative design or sourcing innovative packaging, this is a chance to get stuck into an end-to-end NPD process whilst making a real difference in a small and friendly team.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Understand the market, using appropriate consumer insight and market analysis to identify key trends and buying behaviours, reporting back to the wider team, and providing recommendations.
• Stay up to date with category and packaging innovation, utilise your learnings to include in Divine policies where appropriate.
• Identify opportunities for Divine to grow sales in both seasonal and all year-round ranges.
• Work closely with third party suppliers, building strong relationships whilst managing projects from concept through to launch, including cost negotiations.
• Be the Divine brand guru, ensuring the correct execution of the brand across all new products and packaging design, leading with your creativity.
• End to end critical path management on your own projects with effective communication across multi-departmental and national teams, holding successful project meetings ensuring all departments know their responsibilities.
• Building strong partnerships with 3^rd party manufacturers, to ensure the smooth running of product launches, within time and budget constraints.
• Work with Marketing and 3^rd party designers to deliver impactful packaging designs. 
• Stay up to date with product and labelling legislation and regulations, ensuring our packaging complies with all requirements within the relevant territories.
• Assess each product following launch to understand initial performance and identify successes and areas for further development.
• Build a highly effective partnership with the Product Development Manager, taking an active part in the decision-making process within the NPD Department.
• A keen eye for detail, gold standard completion of all relevant NPD technical data including product specifications.
• Work with external certification bodies, such as Fairtrade and The Vegan Society, on a regular basis.
• Build strong relationships with international teams including USA and Sweden.

Essential skills and knowledge:

• 2+ years FMCG development experience (preferably confectionery/chocolate)
• Ideally third-party supplier management
• High level of numeracy, with the ability to use spreadsheets and formulae to analyse and present data
• Able to produce presentations of a high standard to company leadership and Board using Word or Powerpoint as appropriate
• Full category and trend analysis
• University degree or equivalent

Application process:

If you would like to be considered for this role, please send us your CV and a covering letter including your expected salary, to jobapps@divinechocolate.com, by COP on 17^th December 2021.

We will be reviewing all applications over the Christmas period and will be in touch in the New Year. Interviews will be scheduled for week commencing 10^th January 2022.