Freelance Content Writer Jobs in Riverside, CA (NOW HIRING)

Who We Are:
Roark is a premium Adventure Lifestyle brand. Working within the Outdoor, Surf, and Lifestyle channels and offering product that performs without jeopardizing style. Always inspired by the journey. Roark has a collaborative and fast-paced environment where operational excellence directly supports brand growth and customer success.

About The Role:

Every season is a story told through product, photography and film. It has to land everywhere at once: on roark.com, in our own retail doors, on the floor at wholesale accounts, and in the hands of the reps and buyers focused on sell-in.

The Marketing Manager is the backbone of the GTM process, specifically leading the marketing department through the 18-month process along-side other department leaders. This is an operations first marketing role. You own the go to market calendar, you run the projects that fill it, and you make sure every channel has the assets it needs before it needs them on time, on brand and on budget. You are the connective tissue between design and merchandising upstream, and ECOM, retail, and wholesale downstream.

This position requires a dynamic marketer that is disciplined, organized, goal-oriented, digitally native and a critical thinker. It's essential to be a calendar champion, a skilled communicator, thrive as a collaborator, able to balance quality and efficiency while being a brand steward.

We are looking for someone with marketing experience at the brand, wholesale and ECOM level: someone who has built a seasonal calendar, produced a photo shoot, shipped a catalog and built an effective playbook toolkit.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Marketing Operations

• Own the operating system of the marketing team: intake, briefing, routing, approvals, versioning, and archive. Build the process where none exists and simplify it where it has grown heavy.
• Run project management in the team's tools of record. Every campaign, shoot, and asset has an owner, a due date, a status, and a dependency map that is current.
• Manage the marketing budget at the line item level: purchase orders, vendor onboarding, invoice reconciliation, and monthly accruals.
• Own vendor and agency relationships: photographers, videographers, retouchers, printers, fixtures and display fabricators, and freelance designers. Scope the work, negotiate the bid, hold the timeline.

Go To Market Calendar Management

• Own the master Roark GTM calendar end to end: seasonal launches, monthly campaigns, product drops, collaborations, wholesale prebook and at once windows, retail promotional moments, and always on content.
• Build the calendar backward from the commercial date. Work from line adoption and sales samples through sell in, then through consumer launch, so wholesale and DTC are never fighting the same week for the same asset.
• Publish and defend the critical path. Milestone dates for briefs, shoots, selects, retouching, copy, page builds, print files, and account deadlines, with named owners at every gate.
• Run the recurring calendar checkpoints: seasonal kickoff, monthly lock, weekly traffic. Surface conflicts and capacity problems early, while there is still time to solve them.

Omni Channel Project Management

• Lead brand campaigns across every touchpoint so they read as one brand: assets for ecom and site, email and SMS, paid and organic social, owned retail, wholesale account marketing, catalog and print, packaging inserts, events, and PR support.
• Write and steward the go to market brief. Translate the seasonal story and commercial priorities into a single document creative, copy, ECOM, retail, and sales all work from.
• Build and maintain the channel asset matrix: what each channel needs, in what format, at what spec, by what date. Chase the gaps before a channel discovers them.
• Run cross functional launch reviews with design, merchandising, planning, ecom, retail, and sales. Drive decisions to closure and document them.
• Handle the integration work that makes omni channel effective: naming conventions, DAM hygiene, spec sheets, versioned file delivery, and localized variants for Canada, International, and the UK and EU teams.

Brand Asset Creation and Content Production

• Produce seasonal photo and video content start to finish: work with Art Director to create brief, mood and shot list, location scouting, casting, crew and call sheets, permits, product pulls, on set management, selects, retouch supervision, and delivery.
• Manage the asset pipeline from capture to publication so every channel is pulling from the same approved, correctly named, correctly sized library.
• Traffic and project manage the creation of brand collateral: catalogs, line sheets, look books, account presentations, in store signage, window graphics, fixtures, POP, trade show graphics, and event materials.
• Be the brand guardian in every review. Type, color, photography treatment, tone of voice, and logo usage stay correct whether the file is made in house, by an agency, or by a wholesale partner.
• Own the print and production path: mechanicals, press checks, print vendor management, quantity forecasting, freight, and distribution to doors and accounts.

Owned Retail Marketing

• Build the marketing program for Roark owned doors: seasonal window and in store storytelling, floor set support, signage packages, fixture and display refreshes, and clienteling and loyalty support.
• Manage the store communication calendar so store teams receive assets, install guides, and product knowledge on a predictable schedule ahead of every set.
• Support store openings, remodels, and pop ups: local marketing plan, community and event programming, grassroots partnerships, opening assets, and press and influencer coordination.
• Partner with retail leadership on promotional calendars, in store events, and local market activations, and report on what worked door by door.

Wholesale Marketing

• Build the sell in Playbook each season: line sheets, brand and category presentations, seasonal story decks, digital assets for account portals, and sample and showroom support for the sales team and reps.
• Own account facing marketing for Core specialty, Majors, drop ship, Canada, and International: co op programs, brand shops and shop in shops, POP and fixture programs, catalog placements, and vendor asset submissions to each retailer's spec and deadline.
• Run trade show and sales meeting execution: booth design and build, graphics, product merchandising, samples logistics, and rep materials.
• Deliver brand controlled assets to wholesale partners at scale and police how the brand is represented in partner channels, on partner sites, and in partner marketing.
• Work with sales and planning to connect marketing support to sell in and sell thru, and put co op and account marketing dollars where they move product.

Rhythm of the Role:

Roark and Archipelago Companies operate on the calendar year (January through December). This role's clock is set by the seasonal wholesale calendar and the monthly owned channel calendar at the same time.

Requirements and Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in marketing or related discipline or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of 5 years in marketing at a consumer brand, with meaningful time on the traditional marketing side: brand marketing, wholesale or retail marketing, trade marketing, or brand and creative operations. This hire needs traditional marketing experience at the brand or wholesale level. A performance marketing or agency only background is not a fit for this seat.
• Demonstrated ownership of a seasonal go to market calendar in an apparel, footwear, outdoor, action sports, or premium lifestyle business.
• Hands on project management experience running many workstreams, many stakeholders, and hard external deadlines at once, with a track record of hitting them.
• Real production experience: you have produced photo and video shoots and taken print and physical collateral through to delivery, not just briefed someone else to do it.
• Wholesale fluency. You are comfortable with prebook and at once, sell in versus sell thru, specialty versus Majors, drop ship, co op, and retailer asset requirements, and you know how a rep and a buyer actually use what you build.
• Retail marketing experience: windows, floor sets, in store signage, store communication, and store level activation.
• Strong written communication. You write a brief people can execute from and a status update people can act on.
• Proficiency across project management and creative operations tooling (for example Asana, and Elastic), plus working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite files, DAM systems, and ecom platforms.
• Budget management experience: forecasting, tracking, reconciling, and defending a marketing spend.
• Actively seeks out AI-enabled tools and emerging technologies, adapting quickly to leverage them for improved productivity, deeper insights, and more effective processes, while exercising sound judgment and maintaining compliance with organizational standards

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience at a brand with both a healthy DTC and wholesale business, and a process to balance them efficiently.
• Familiarity with an B2B or PLM environment and with cross functional line adoption and sample calendars.
• Trade show and sales meeting production experience.
• Experience supporting international distribution partners.
• A genuine connection to the Outdoor world Roark lives in: Adventure travel, surf, running, climbing, trail, and the culture around it.

How Success is Measured

First 90 Days

• The full Roark GTM calendar is documented in one place, current, and trusted by ecom, retail, and sales.
• Intake and briefing process is live, with a clear front door for every marketing request.
• Asset gaps for the next two seasonal deliveries are identified and being closed.

First Year

• On time delivery of seasonal and monthly launch assets across every channel, measured against the published critical path.
• Wholesale sell in toolkits released ahead of every prebook window, with adoption from reps and accounts.
• Owned retail doors receive campaign and floor set packages on a predictable schedule, before every set.
• Marketing budget managed to plan, with clean monthly reconciliation.
• Measurable reduction in rework, duplicate asset requests, and last minute production spend.

Location & Office Structure:This is an in-office hybrid position, mandatory 4 days per week in office in Irvine, CA with the option to work from home 1 day per week. Subject to change without notice as per company guidelines.

Compensation: The salary range for this position is $90,000 to $120,000 plus opportunity for annual bonus; salary is based on the experience that you bring to the position.

Benefits and Perks:

• Complimentary chef prepared breakfast and lunch provided Monday - Thursday
• Generous product gift program and all brand discounts
• Company bonus program
• 5 year and 10 year Milestone Anniversary travel gifts
• Medical, Dental, Vision insurance in accordance with plan guidelines
• Company paid life insurance in accordance with plan guidelines
• 401k with employer match in accordance with plan guidelines
• 15 Days of PTO accrued annually, plus one additional day of PTO every year on your anniversary, and 3 Floating Holidays per year
• Paid beach and giveback days, bi-annual team building events and other in-person celebrations
• Work with talented and great people who share a love of Roark
• Dog friendly office

Archipelago Companies values a diverse, inclusive, and entrepreneurial workforce and culture, and we provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees. All qualified applicants for employment will be considered without regard to an individual's race, color, sex, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, marital status, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, genetic information, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local laws. If you are unable to submit your application because of incompatible assistive technology or a disability, please contact us at hr@arch-cos.com. Archipelago will reasonably accommodate qualified individuals with disabilities to the extent required by applicable law.