Toy Product Development Specialist

Our Client, an international e-commerce company with a strong presence in the USA, is looking for a creative and driven Toy Product Development Specialist to help the company develop new physical toys for its growing Amazon brand portfolio. In this role, you'll be responsible for turning product opportunities and market insights into thoughtful, appealing, and competitive toy concepts - from the initial idea through a production-ready concept.

This is not primarily a research role. Research is a tool you'll use to understand the market, customers, parents, and competitors and make better product decisions. Your main responsibility will be to transform those insights into toys that are fun, visually appealing, intuitive, and meaningfully better than what is already available on Amazon.

About the Company:

It is a fast-growing small company that manages Amazon accounts and runs its own brand, offering eco-friendly products. The team works fully remotely, allowing for flexibility and efficiency while maintaining strong collaboration.

The company operates in an international and rapidly evolving market, providing a dynamic work environment. It encourages creativity and initiative, giving team members the opportunity to bring new ideas to life and make a real impact.

Key Responsibilities:

• You'll identify potential toy product opportunities using a structured and repeatable process. You'll evaluate different ideas against predefined criteria and use your judgment to decide which opportunities are genuinely worth developing further.
• For selected products, you'll research the market to understand what customers actually want. This includes analyzing customer reviews, studying competing toys, researching relevant keywords, identifying common complaints and missing features, and understanding what both children and parents find appealing. The goal is not to create long research reports, but to extract practical insights that directly inform product decisions.
• Using what you've learned, you'll develop actual toy concepts and explore different ways to make them more fun, appealing, useful, intuitive, and competitive. This may include the way the toy works, play features, shape and design, colors, themes, materials, size, construction, accessories, included components, variations, or meaningful improvements over existing products.
• You'll use ChatGPT and other AI tools to explore ideas, develop different product directions, create mockups, and visualize concepts. You should be comfortable experimenting with multiple creative approaches before deciding which direction is strongest.
• You'll find and communicate with suppliers to understand what can realistically be manufactured. This includes exploring existing products that can be customized, available materials and production options, customization possibilities, manufacturing limitations, and pricing. Supplier feedback should be used to refine your concepts and make sure the final direction is both creatively strong and realistically manufacturable.
• You'll continuously iterate on your ideas rather than stopping at the first acceptable concept. You'll explore multiple directions, reject weaker ideas, improve promising ones, and keep refining until you reach a product concept you genuinely believe is strong. When useful, several strong final versions may be prepared and tested through customer surveys.
• Once a product direction is approved, you'll prepare it for sampling. This includes finalizing the product concept, confirming specifications and manufacturing feasibility with the supplier, confirming pricing, and preparing the product for the sampling stage.
• You'll be encouraged to challenge assumptions, ask questions, and take ownership of the product development process. The expectation is that you won't simply present several options for management to choose from - you'll use your own product judgment to determine which direction you believe the company should pursue.

Requirements:

• Strong creative thinking and the ability to come up with original product ideas and meaningful improvements to existing toys.
• Good product sense - an ability to understand what makes a toy fun, appealing, intuitive, and desirable.
• Strong visual sense and good judgment around colors, shapes, proportions, themes, and overall product appearance.
• Ability to understand both the child who will use the toy and the parent who will purchase it.
• Ability to analyze customer reviews, competing products, and market information and turn those insights into practical product decisions.
• Experience using ChatGPT, AI tools, or other creative tools to explore ideas and create product mockups or visual concepts.
• Ability to communicate with suppliers and understand basic manufacturing, materials, customization, pricing, and production limitations.
• Strong judgment and ownership - you should be comfortable rejecting weak ideas and deciding which concepts are genuinely worth pursuing.
• Willingness to iterate, experiment, and refine ideas until you reach a strong final product.
• Experience with Amazon, toy product development, private label, FBA, supplier communication, or physical product development would be a plus.

What We Offer:

• Fully remote work with flexible hours (work from whatever place).
• Competitive and timely salary.
• Creative freedom and ownership over the entire product development process.
• Supportive and collaborative work environment.