Manager, Private Brands & Commercialization in Hart, Michigan at Peterson Farms Inc

To lead the coordination and execution of private label brand and customer-specific product initiatives across our retail and food service businesses. This highly collaborative, customer-facing role will serve as the primary marketing project lead for private brand initiatives, coordinating projects from initial customer request through artwork approval and commercialization.

The Manager will work directly with customers and their agencies, Sales, Marketing, Regulatory, Quality, R&D, Operations, Procurement, packaging suppliers, and printers to ensure projects remain organized, accurate, and on schedule.

In addition to private brand responsibilities, this position will manage packaging artwork workflows across retail and foodservice, helping establish clear priorities, timelines, ownership, and approval processes. The ideal candidate combines strong project management skills with an understanding of CPG, packaging, customer marketing, and commercialization and is comfortable managing multiple complex projects simultaneously.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead private brand and customer-specific projects across retail and foodservice from initial customer request through artwork approval and commercialization, establishing project timelines, deliverables, responsibilities, and launch milestones.
• Serve as the primary Marketing project contact for private brand initiatives, coordinating communication and deliverables between customers, customer agencies, Sales, Marketing, Regulatory, Quality, R&D, Operations, Procurement, printers, and packaging suppliers.
• Manage packaging artwork workflows for private brands and assigned owned-brand retail and foodservice projects, including project intake, prioritization, dieline, artwork development, revisions, proofs, approvals, and delivery of final production-ready files.
• Maintain visibility and accountability across active projects, proactively identifying missing information, approval delays, resource constraints, and other risks that could impact customer commitments, production schedules, or product launches.
• Coordinate commercialization activities and cross-functional project meetings, ensure requirements are understood, decisions are documented, action items have clear ownership, and projects progress toward production readiness.
• Participate in customer meetings and presentations, providing project leadership and marketing support related to private brands, packaging, new products, commercialization, and other strategic customer initiatives.
• Conduct market, category, competitive, product, and packaging research to support private brand opportunities, customer presentations, product concepts, and strategic recommendations.
• Partner with Sales and Marketing to develop customer-facing materials and presentations that communicate product capabilities, concepts, competitive positioning, and new business opportunities.
• Establish and continuously improve private brand commercialization and artwork processes, creating standardized workflows, project tracking, documentation, and approval procedures that improve efficiency and accountability.
• Serve as the internal subject matter resource for private brand project execution, developing a strong understanding of customer requirements, packaging processes, and commercialization needs while identifying opportunities to improve how Peterson Farms supports private brand customers.

QUALIFICATIONS

Education

Skills and Knowledge