Benjamin Ward: Global Product Manager in Long Beach, CT

Revitalized brand image with the creation of products that aligned with modern styling and performance trends while paying respect to the brands legacy. Concept, design, spec, of bike, accessory and soft goods lines for domestic and international manufacturing. Assisted our factories evolve manufacturing techniques to deliver higher quality products increasing reliability to our customers. Hands on with design, drawing creation, factory submission, drawing review and implementation of testing and certification. Recruited new professional and amateur athletes to modernize and reinvigorate brand presence. Collaborated with athletes to create signature product assortments. Lead product and marketing art direction to ensure visual elements blended our global initiatives with our brand DNA. Directed collaborative projects with street wear brands, film and television franchises, and sports stars. Review and approval of all licensing partners and products before production. Managed projects to gather photo and video assets for advertorial and web content. Coordinated with print and online media on mutually beneficial projects to raise brand and athlete awareness. Established social media channels to allow our customers to connect directly with the brand. Initiated and executed relaunch campaigns for BMX Freestyle, BMX Race, BMX Big Wheel, MTB Dirt Jump and Transportation bike lines to critical praise. Orchestrated athlete tours to support launch initiatives. Worked with finance and sourcing teams to set up product lines, set yearly goals, and target pricing. Regularly reviewed product road maps to guide development timelines and insure assortments are in line with brand direction. Frequent global travel to oversee line development and distributor education.

S&M Bikes Restored brand images focusing on a reputation for quality in the industry maintaining a superior market position. Recruitment and development of professional and amateur athletes to reinvigorate brand presence. Managed the creation of web content, advertising campaigns, apparel, and hard goods to align with modern styling and rider trends. Coordinated with print and online media for advertising or campaign launches. Concept and design of all hard goods for in-house domestic and international manufacturing. Collaborated with athletes to develop signature product lines.

GSport | Sunday | Fairdale | OTX Design Designed and assisted with spec of Sunday complete bicycle line. Assisted in conceptualizing of Fairdale Complete Bicycle line. Designed updates and replacement components for the complete product line over 4 brands with input from co-workers, team riders, customers, and manufacturing facilities. Developed athlete signature product lines across all brands. Assisted with real world prototype testing. Implemented design standards to ease the understanding of designs transferred between designers in the US and UK. Traveled to Taiwan to coordinate with vendors and oversee production.

Design of tooling to aid in the manufacturing of PCB “printed circuit boards) for various global computer manufacturing companies. This was a machine shop environment where I quickly had to learn and adapt my skills to design for manufacturing. Every job was unique and we would turn out 8+ design jobs a day. First using Cadkey and AutoCAD to aid in the design process eventually expanding to SolidWorks to automate the menial tasks in each design and increasing the speed in which we could turn around jobs. Average job would include data tranlation of printed circuit board information to usable cad information. Possessed a knack for figuring out the impossible and quickly moved up to running my own team of designers and eventually having my own Research and Development department. Part of the R&D was to find government grants to support us as we looked into new technologies to both aid in manufacturing and additional sectors to expand into that would require tooling.