Chris Bates Email & Phone Number

United States

As a strategic leader, I drive product innovation and market responsiveness, leveraging extensive industry expertise from Nike and Cole Haan. I lead cross-functional teams with empathy, ensuring operational excellence, financial optimization, and timely project delivery. I engage marketing and sales teams early in the product journey, fostering a collaborative environment and transparent communication. My proactive leadership focuses on deep project knowledge, efficient execution, and maintaining strong workplace relationships to achieve outstanding business results.Key Responsibilities:• Strategic Leadership and Innovation: Direct and execute the product lifecycle strategy for the Performance category, from ideation to market launch, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives. Drive product innovation to meet market demands, focusing on urgent and transparent project management.• Profit & Loss Management: Oversee P&L, optimizing financial performance, managing costs, and maximizing profitability. Deep dive into pricing, builds, costs, materials, and deadlines.• Cross-Functional Team Leadership: Lead and inspire cross-functional teams to achieve business and financial goals. Foster a collaborative environment, address team dynamics, and ensure optimal collaboration.• Operational Excellence: Ensure on-time delivery of samples, buy readiness, and cost-effective production. Mitigate risks, enhance product quality, and increase transparency with a weekly progress tracking system for critical projects.• Market Responsiveness and Integration: Maintain a deep understanding of market trends and consumer needs. • Visibility and Communication: Maintain transparency with management, keeping them informed of progress and challenges.• Workplace Relationships: Strengthen workplace relationships by addressing potential tensions and fostering a positive, collaborative environment. Engage in team-building activities and seek opportunities to build camaraderie.

Portland, Oregon, United States

In my role as the Performance and Sport Lifestyle Sr. Product Director, I play a pivotal role in driving the success of our product portfolio. With a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic consumer landscape, I craft and execute strategies that seamlessly blend our brand DNA with the collective memory of sport. My leadership encompasses guiding cross-functional teams through product ideation, development, and launch phases, resulting in an innovative and compelling product range. Through a combination of strategic insight and hands-on collaboration, I harness market trends and consumer insights to deliver a harmonized product offering that captures the essence of both performance excellence and lifestyle versatility.Performance (Running, Golf, and Boating), and Sport Lifestyle line plans of +$150M revenue, +160 BPS of YoY profitability while increasing style and sku productivity, and growing market share in both Performance Golf and Sport Lifestyle.· Translate brand construct vision and strategy into actionable marketplace initiatives, shaping a dynamic product portfolio.· Lead cross-functional teams to achieve excellence in product creation and go-to-market processes, fostering efficient collaboration.· Develop and maintain the Product Line Architecture, utilizing top-down and quantitative approaches to define scope.· Implement model franchise and classification strategies based on market and geography insights, driving sustainable growth.· Deliver impactful presentations in internal and external settings, showcasing compelling product strategies and insights.· Collaborate closely with Global counterparts in Brand Marketing, Planning, Finance, and Product Management to optimize product assortments.· Drive innovation and differentiation in Performance and Sport Lifestyle segments, elevating brand competitiveness.· Provide oversight for budget allocation and resource management, ensuring the achievement of strategic product goals and financial targets.

Portland, Oregon, United States

As the Footwear Product Director of Golf and Tennis at Cole Haan, I successfully led the launch and management of the Golf division, driving exceptional results in alignment with the brand's mission. I developed and executed comprehensive strategies that elevated Cole Haan's golf presence in North America through strategic Green Grass expansion. I played a pivotal role in international market expansion, achieving measurable success in Japan and Korea. Through my visionary leadership, I established a high-performing team, and executed impactful sales and marketing initiatives. My track record showcases the ability to blend a passion for sport with astute business acumen, resulting in consistent revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and brand prominence on a global scale.

Beaverton, Oregon

As a Nike Golf Global Product Line Manager I am asked to perform many diverse tasks: Gather consumer insights; identify industry trends; synthesize business goals; line plan management; product marketing strategy; product briefing, product marketing, cross-functional collaboration; support healthy team dynamics; process management and innovation; excel in communications and presentation skills; deliver on revenue growth and margin management goals through partnership with product design, costing, and development teams.• FY20 Revenue Growth + 51% $156M GPM% +200bpts• Set and execute the 3 year vision and growth, aligned with finance and the company’s strategic plan. • Re-energize the Golf business through Nike Icons and Jordan categories to increase marketshare in key accounts and regions. • Identify new growth opportunities through product evolution and innovation around style• Create capability in the business to get closer to and engage the consumer, building deeper emotional consumer connections thru compelling product storytelling, ensuring consumer and market insights are acted on across all business functions. • Lead the product creation Triad (development/design) through the creation process including the geo product teams. • Build, manage and elevate the team to embrace more growth mindset and different ways of working • Align cross functionally on Go-to-Market strategy to ensure benchmark execution in the marketplace (Merchandising, Brand, Sales) • Set the winning business plan and targets aligned with the brand objectives and ensure financial and brand performance targets are met. Review and approve category financial KPI targets, including units, margin, SKU targets, sell-through and inventory. • Lead and develop a diverse and multi-disciplinary team and create a growth and transformation focused mind-set. Encourage risk taking and exploration. • Foster an ethical work environment with clear values, priorities and standards.

Portland, Oregon Area

Crafting world class footwear for Nike's top 20 elite athletes.Understand Customer Need - maintain close relationships with researchers and stakeholders to understand and communicate their needs and participate in validation of the solutions.- Create and effectively champion a data-driven product vision and strategy that puts our research and athlete needs. - Develop and maintain a product roadmap based on a clear understanding of Athlete Services priorities.- Demonstrated success working with various, cross-functional, internal and external groups to deliver meaningful results on time and on budget with limited direction. - Develop, maintain, and communicate the vision to the team and collaborate to define feature delivery schedule milestones via product roadmap.- Partner with technology partners to determine buy/build/partner decisions.- Analyze and communicate success, productivity, time to market, quality, partner health and team engagement metrics to stakeholders.- Provide oversight of strategy, technical, and transition management aspects and has the final say on product functionality of all products in the portfolio.- Articulates future needs and advocates for budget requests based on estimated work.

Beaverton, Or

Innovation Product Manager and Running PLM for Nike Global Core Performance.Lead and manage the innovation initiatives from the running category and scale them into core performance.Identify insights that lead to innovative solutions.Responsible for line planning and briefing seasonally in collaboration with cross-functional triad team.Create and communicate innovation vision for the product category.Serve as the senior category spokesperson with internal and external audiences, including all design reviews, sales meetings, employee meetings, Integrated Marketing meetings and work with Sales, Retail and key accounts to ensure the successful execution of product initiatives in the marketplace.

United States

Global Football Product Line Manager; Youth and Women's silos. Provide product line management for all facets of the product creation process. Responsible for creating insightful and impactful product briefs, grounded in a deep understanding of marketplace, consumer, the game and competitive trends. Communicate a vision for the Global Football Footwear strategy; working closely with the our functional partners to ensure integration within the Football Category. Set clear, concise direction to achieve the right price-value relationship for our athletes, consumers and customers; and partner with the category merchandising team to achieve revenue growth and profitability objectives. Spend time with the consumers, professional athletes, geography and marketplace partners and conduct analyses of the global business. Lead the design and development team to hit the key deliverables each season. Create and present impactful presentations at key product creation gates.

Manage product creation of NAPC footwear lines including Women’s Soccer and Men’s Sportswear across basketball, football and running.Built the women’s soccer line from it’s first iterations for NA Sporting goods (2011) to a global offering for WWC15, Rio Olympics 2016, and FY17.Previously managed product creation of the Core Performance, Young Athletes, Young Jordan (kids), and LIVESTRONG footwear lines.

APLM Nike Football/Hockey Licensed Apparel

Beaverton, Oregon

Sourcing Analyst for Nike Team and Licensed Apparel.

Portland, Oregon Area; Greater St. Louis Area

Responsible for all aspects of public affairs including writing, photography, media relations and design. Managed media and public relations for U.S. Coast Guard events in the Northwest. Created media, photography and reporting, for internal and external publications, including Rose Festival’s “Fleet Week” and emergency situations on the Oregon Coast.