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The Technical Designer is an active driving member of the Meijer Softlines Product Development Team through-out the own brand development stage with focus on all areas of Technical Design, including but not limited to fit, patternmaking, technical sketches, consulting on garment construction in coordination with cross functional teams to ensure department and business objectives are met in a timely manner.
What You’ll Be Doing:
- Owns the Fit process. As a key member of the Product Development Team drive fit conversation for assigned product departments and brands throughout the Development process.
- Schedule and lead fit and construction meetings with Product Team.
- Build and maintain PLM tech packs from development stages through production.
- Facilitate sampling process of apparel styles from first prototype to a final, production-ready sample offering solutions to correct fit and construction details for challenging styles when needed.
- Oversee and approve fittings prior to and through the production phase, verifying that fits and measurements are consistent.
- Lead the creation of block library of patterns to maintain fit consistency across vendors within product categories.
- Identify and alert design and production teams of potential production, quality and costing issues and make recommendations to ensure brand integrity is maintained
- Ability to drive and manage multiple projects from initial sketch pass to development and start of production ensuring brand quality standards and design intent are met.
- Knowledge of apparel construction and manufacturing methods and machinery needed for mass production.
- Oversee and manage team’s fittings, ensuring on time communication with Global Sourcing.
- Oversee team’s daily correspondence with Sourcing Tech, sending and tracking comments and follow up on prototypes when needed, ensuring calendar deadlines are met.
- Support Sourcing and Product Development with fit process, fitting illustrating, pattern corrections and style comments using PLM, Excel, Illustrator and Photoshop.
- Work closely with Department Manager to develop fit consistency by assisting in the development of Grading Standards and Fit Blocks.
- Correct factory patterns and apply grade rules as necessary.
- Collaborate with Product Development in initial stages of tech pack development: Ensure POM, spec sheet and construction details are accurately maintained and communicated from first prototype to production TOP.
- Build new product specifications including full graded measurements and detailed technical sketches including full construction callouts.
- Anticipate and resolve any pre-production and production issues while in the fit process.
- Partners with Product Development on garment costing as it applies to garment engineering, construction and/or material consumption to achieve targeted goals.
- This job profile is not meant to be all inclusive of the responsibilities of this position; may perform other duties as assigned or required.
What You Bring With You (Qualifications):
- Bachelor’s degree in Apparel Design and Patternmaking, or equivalent
- 10+ years previous garment industry experience as a Technical Designer with Patternmaking experience
- Proficiency in Adobe Illustrator (sketching), MS Office, Word, Excel, and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM system).
- Exceptional knowledge and eye for fit, garment construction, and finishing
- Extensive knowledge of patternmaking including grading, construction, and fit
- Exceptional written, oral and face-to-face communication skills
- Proven track record of growing businesses and delivering results
- Deadline driven and extremely detail oriented
- Ability to apply technical knowledge to various apparel categories and sizes
- Ability to pivot workflow as needed. Must be able to work autonomously on key deliverables