Ops Manager - Australian DTC e-commerce brand

30 SECONDS ON US We're an Australian-owned DTC brand in the low-tox personal care space. Solid seven figures a year, growing fast, sole founder, small remote team. Our customers read ingredient labels properly and have worked out that most products marketed as "natural" are not. We're evidence-led and blunt about it. We're direct, we move fast, and we use AI in our daily work as standard, not as a novelty. You'll deal with the founder, not a committee. JOB OVERVIEW As Operations Manager you own the operational engine of the brand: inventory, purchase orders, manufacturers, freight, 3PLs, and the operational side of new product development. You'll communicate directly with our factories and sourcing agents in China, our manufacturers in Australia, and our warehouses in both countries. The founder signs every PO. Your job is to make sure he's never the reason one is late, and never guessing when he signs. WHY WE'RE HIRING NOW Here's the reality. We sell hard, run out of stock, panic order, wait weeks, repeat. The founder is a marketer running supply chain between campaigns, which means it gets done late and badly. Meanwhile the business is stepping up: new products launching this year through Australian manufacturers, retail launching in Australia, ad spend increasing, and new markets (UK and NZ first) being tested with stock staged out of our China 3PL. The operational load is about to triple, and there are no systems and no owner. The objective for this role over the next 12-18 months: take all day-to-day operations off the founder's plate so his ops involvement shrinks to signing POs and making the calls only a founder can make. Core best-sellers never out of stock. Inventory never bloated on the balance sheet. Every product launch hitting its date. WHAT YOU'LL OWN 1. INVENTORY AND THE PO DRUMBEAT How we do it now: the founder built an internal stock tool that tracks velocity, stock cover and reorder dates. The tool works. Nobody drives it consistently. You can use it or replace it with something better. We care about outcomes, not methods. • Run a rolling PO calendar. We're moving to roughly one PO per month as a steady rhythm. • Propose every PO: quantity, timing, and the reasoning. The founder signs. You make sure the proposal lands early enough that his sign-off is never the delay. • Never out of stock on core best-sellers. Never overstocked either. Dead stock is dead cash. • Forecast properly: growing ad spend means sales history understates demand. Layer in retail orders, campaign spikes, seasonality, and Chinese New Year. 2. SUPPLY CHAIN AND MANUFACTURING How we do it now: the founder manages factories in China through sourcing agents, and two Australian manufacturers for new consumable products, in the gaps between marketing campaigns. • Own production timelines and quality with our China factories and agents: tech packs, samples, QC, container loading. • Own coordination with our Australian manufacturers on the new product lines. • Negotiate hard on price and terms without burning relationships we need next quarter. • Book, track and chase freight. Sea freight door to door is roughly 30 days. You plan around it, not react to it. • Source secondary suppliers where a single point of failure is too risky. 3. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT OPERATIONS How we do it now: the founder works directly with manufacturers on formulation and brand decisions. Nobody owns the operational spine underneath, so components, samples and timelines drift. • Source components and packaging for new products. Live examples right now: a glass jar and metal lid for a new consumable manufactured in Australia, and a cardboard tube for another new product. You find suppliers, get quotes, get samples, manage MOQs and timelines. • Get samples to the founder fast: multiple options, couriered, tracked, chased. Sample turnaround speed directly sets our launch dates. • Prepare SKUs and barcodes for new items to our internal standard, ready for retail and 3PLs. • Own the launch timeline for each new product and keep the product calendar connected to units, POs and cash. • To be clear on the line: the founder decides what we make and how it's formulated. You make it exist, on time, at the right cost. 4. LOGISTICS, 3PLS AND NEW MARKETS How we do it now: we run an Australian 3PL and a Chinese 3PL. Relationships are functional but nobody audits them or holds them to metrics. • Own both 3PL relationships: SLAs, receiving discrepancies, and invoice audits for the overcharges that creep in when nobody's watching. • Support the Australian retail launch operationally: case packs, order splits, retailer requirements. • Stage and run our market tests: UK and NZ first, with stock held in China. Work out per-market landed cost including duties and taxes so we know if a market is actually profitable. • When a test wins, set up the local 3PL and fulfilment lane for that market. WHAT'S NOT IN THIS ROLE Customer service (covered, founder-managed for now). Team leadership (there's no ops team yet, you're first). Marketing and creative. If you're excellent, scope grows with the business. MUST HAVE (NON-NEGOTIABLE) • Operations experience inside a DTC e-commerce brand. Not general logistics, not retail ops, not agency side. You've personally lived through stockouts, freight delays and 3PL invoice disputes at a brand selling direct to consumers online. • Deep supply chain experience with overseas manufacturing, China especially. You know what a tech pack is, what a strike-off is, what Chinese New Year does to your timeline, and how to push a factory hard without wrecking the relationship. • Component and packaging sourcing experience. You've found and qualified suppliers for jars, tubes, boxes or similar, not just finished goods. • You build systems for fun. Disorganisation genuinely bothers you. • Spreadsheet power user: forecasting models, dashboards, landed cost calculators. • You use AI tools in your actual daily work, including building your own small tools. Tell us exactly how, with examples. • Timezone overlap with Australian business hours. NICE TO HAVE • Personal care, supplements or health products • You've run or owned your own e-commerce business • Experience launching into new markets HOW TO APPLY Answer the screening questions and add anything relevant from your own work. You can use AI, sure, but be aware that if you don't edit it/ inject your humanism into it, you will sound like 99% of the other applicants. Do with that what you will Do not message me privately outside Upwork. It's annoying, and your application gets ignored if you do.