Freelance Book Layout Contract Jobs in Burr Ridge, IL

We are looking for a Vice President of Strategic Sourcing to own the upstream, commercial side of our supply chain: what we buy, from whom, and on what terms. Reporting to the Chief Supply Chain Officer, you will carry gross margin and landed COGS, own the supplier base end to end, and build the category management organization that does not yet exist.

Odeko keeps thousands of independent cafés and coffee shops supplied. This seat will own our buy, which is the single largest lever on both our margin and how much of each customer's wallet we earn.

How You'll Make an Impact: 

Supplier management:

• Supplier strategy: You'll own the supplier base end to end selection, consolidation, and the decision of who we do and don't do business with. You'll also develop and maintain our supplier tiering strategy, and enforce supplier performance against terms. Supply Chain detects the failure; you own the conversation and the consequence.
• Commercial terms: You'll lead on the full negotiated package price, MOQs, lead times, rebates, and payment terms. You'll own DPO as our half of the cash conversion cycle, and produce the negotiated-terms sheet Purchasing buys against so no one downstream freelances on price or other material terms. You will also work with our Legal Team to enhance our standard supplier contract forms and terms to drive the right partnerships with the right suppliers.
• Margin & savings: An integral part of your job will be to drive improvements on gross margin percentage and landed COGS, and to ensure that negotiated savings are actually captured and banked, not merely secured on paper. You will also own the price-increase response: negotiate, absorb, or pass through.

SKU Selection and Category growth:

•  Assortment & category strategy: You will work closely with the revenue teams to determine what's in the catalog.
• Private label: You will run Odeko's private label from category selection through supplier development, margin structure, and penetration targets.

Team Leadership 

• Organization build out and design: You will build out the new category manager organization at Odeko. With input from other leaders, you will define the categories, hire the leaders, define and drive success for each category and category manager, and install a category review cadence. 

About you:

Critical:

• Commercial leadership: 10+ years in sourcing, procurement, or merchandising, with 5+ leading teams ideally in distribution, foodservice, CPG, or another business where cost of goods is the primary margin lever.
• Scale: managed a spend of more than $250MM annually, with a track record of savings that reached the P&L.
• Negotiation: have personally led negotiations, as the principal at the table, on individual contracts of $10M+ in annual value. Have experience with contract development and supplier terms.
• Commodity experience: have managed a commodity-exposed category book
• Category management: have owned assortment decisions as well as stood up new categories 
• AI leadership: Have deployed an AI or advanced-analytics solution against a sourcing problem
• Executive presence: able to represent the commercial supply story to the executive team, and to partner as a peer with Supply Chain, Sales, and Finance on metrics none of you can move alone.

Nice to Have:

• M&A experience: carrying suppliers and vendor relationships through mergers, acquisitions, and integration.

• Private label: own-brand development from supplier selection through launch.
• Perishables: short-shelf-life categories, where sourcing decisions drive waste and obsolescence.
• Growth stage: a high-growth company where the process you inherit is the one you're expected to replace.

• Education: Bachelor's degree in supply chain, business, finance, economics, or a related field. MBA preferred.

Travel: 20%+, including attendance at trade shows, supplier visits and co-packer oversight on private label