Senior Upholstery & Hard Goods Designer
Havenly
Role Overview
We are looking for a Senior Hard Goods Designer to lead the design and development of hard goods product lines across our DTC brand portfolio. This role sits at the intersection of creative vision and commercial execution — you will own the design process from concept through production, ensuring each product is both beautiful and built to margin. You will bring category expertise in hard goods (tabletop, decorative accessories, lighting, textiles-adjacent, or furniture), a strong vendor and factory network, and the ability to design with both the customer and the P&L in mind.
This is a senior individual contributor role with cross-functional influence — you will collaborate closely with Merchandising, Marketing, and Brand to ensure product design ladders up to brand positioning and drives revenue.
Key Responsibilities
Design & Product Development
- Lead end-to-end design and development of hard goods product lines across one or more brands in the Havenly Brands portfolio, from initial concept through production-ready specifications.
- Create detailed design packages including sketches, CAD files, material callouts, color/finish specifications, and construction details suitable for factory use.
- Drive a seasonal product design calendar aligned to launch deadlines and brand merchandising strategy.
- Identify white space opportunities within the assortment, balancing aesthetic innovation with commercial viability and target margin thresholds.
- Maintain a deep understanding of materials, manufacturing processes, and construction techniques across relevant hard goods categories (e.g., tabletop, decorative accessories, lighting, accent furniture).
Vendor & Factory Management
- Collaborate with domestic and overseas factories, artisan suppliers, and material vendors — sourcing new partners as needed to support brand and margin goals.
- Work with Sourcing to negotiate costs, lead times, and MOQs directly with vendors to deliver products at target cost with healthy contribution margins, expressed in dollar terms ($) not just percentages.
- Partner with the Merchandising team to align on cost targets, pricing architecture, and margin structure before committing to development.
- Manage sample development cycles, providing clear and timely feedback to factories to maintain milestone adherence.
- Build and maintain a proprietary vendor and materials library to increase development speed and design consistency across brands.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Brand Marketing and Creative teams to ensure product design reflects each brand's aesthetic identity and storytelling direction.
- Collaborate with Merchandising on assortment architecture, ensuring new designs ladder into the broader strategy for GMV growth and margin expansion.
- Present product concepts, in-development updates, and final designs to senior leadership and brand stakeholders with clarity and conviction.
- Support go-to-market efforts by providing product content, storytelling hooks, and design context to Marketing and Editorial teams.
Quality & Compliance
- Ensure all products meet quality standards, safety requirements, and applicable regulatory compliance (e.g., Prop 65, CPSC, country-of-origin labeling).
- Conduct pre-production and production QC reviews, managing corrective actions as needed.
- Establish and maintain product testing protocols in partnership with operations and quality teams.
Qualifications
Required
- 6+ years of product design experience with a focus on hard goods, decorative accessories, tabletop, lighting, or related categories within a DTC, wholesale, or lifestyle brand environment.
- Demonstrated ability to take products from concept to commercialization, including full factory communication and sample management.
- Proficiency in design tools including Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop) and 2D/3D CAD software (e.g., Rhino, SolidWorks, or equivalent).
- Strong vendor network with established factory relationships, particularly in Asia (China, Vietnam, Cambodia, India) and/or artisan markets.
- Proven track record of designing to cost — fluency in target costing, margin math, and cost negotiation with an understanding of the relationship between design decisions and product economics.
- Excellent visual communication and presentation skills, with the ability to bring internal stakeholders along through the design process.
- Highly organized with the ability to manage multiple development timelines simultaneously across different brands and categories.
Preferred
- Experience designing across multiple brands or assortments simultaneously within a multi-brand portfolio environment.
- Background in artisan or handcrafted goods, including natural materials (ceramic, rattan, stone, glass, textile-adjacent).
- Familiarity with e-commerce product content requirements and how design choices translate to customer experience online.
- Experience working with offshore development teams or independent artisan vendors.
- Knowledge of sustainable materials and ethical sourcing practices.
What Success Looks Like
In your first 90 days, you have established a working understanding of our brand portfolio, product assortments, vendor relationships, and development pipelines. Within six months, you are driving design decisions with independence and have delivered at least one product line from concept to production-ready spec. Within a year, you have contributed measurably to revenue growth and margin improvement through strong design-to-cost discipline, a strengthened vendor network, and product launches that resonate with our customers.
Compensation & Benefits
- Competitive base salary ranging between $110K-$125K, commensurate with experience
- Annual performance bonus tied to individual and company goals
- Equity participation
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
- Generous employee discount across all Havenly Brands brands
- Professional development stipend
Havenly Brands is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
Havenly Brands is a multi-brand home furnishings and design company on a mission to make beautiful, well-designed spaces accessible to all. Our portfolio spans technology platforms — Havenly (interior design services) and The Expert (trade services) — and DTC home furnishings brands including Interior Define, The Citizenry, The Inside, St. Frank, and Burrow. We build products and experiences that help people love where they live.