Ecom Vendor Sourcer / Supply Chain Improver at Fun, Flexible Co with Great People

JLS Trading Co.
- Do you get a kick out of finding the absolute best possible deal before you buy stuff?
- Do you like thinking about ways to make products better?
- Do you thrive in a high-stress environment filled with political infighting, bureaucracy, and corporate nonsense?
If so, then we are the place for you, except you might hate how nice of a company we have - filled with happy, generally competent people that don’t put up with jerks. Frankly, it makes me sick how nice everyone is.
We are remote full time, have very flexible hours, people are judged by their output, not by how much they suck up to the boss, and turnover is super low because the company believes that happy employees=happy customers=happy bank account. Simply disgusting, if you ask me.
--Is this a real job ad?--
Yup! Amazingly enough, we actually paid money to post this on a bunch of different job sites. And it’s not even a pyramid scheme! Plus, get this: the owner just started paying our 30+ employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons - we’re big time, people.
Our careers page is actually worth checking out to learn more about how insane we are:
http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/
--What do you guys do?--
Our business involves taking random products and then marketing the heck out of them, primarily on Amazon. We have 1,000+ SKUs at the moment and are launching around 10-20 new products every single month. A small sampling:
Bad Parking Cards (http://amzn.com/B01HLGZRCQ)
Cable Tie Mounts (http://amzn.com/B06XNBS6TG)
We want to launch as many products as we can. Our business is growing rapidly every year, and it’s our intention to continue that for as long as possible, which means we need good people to help us keep up with the growth.
--What is your company like?--
1. Full Time Remote/Flexible Hours. You will be working from home in your pajamas, on your schedule. And we don’t care if you work 10 hour days 4 days a week or want to catch up on the weekend. So long as you put your hours in and get your work done, we’re happy.
2. Complete Work/Life Balance. If you’re routinely working more than 45ish hours, you’re gonna get a friendly talking-to. We want you to be operating at 100% capacity, which means that you need to rest.
3. You Can Be Yourself. You don’t have to put on a fake, professional face. You can just be yourself. You can talk smack to the CEO, and no one will think anything of it.
4. Major Opportunities for Career Growth. We are not trying to just be a small business. We plan to be doing $100 million annually in the next few years. We promote quickly once we identify talent. It doesn’t matter what your credentials are – it matters what you get done.
5. Strongly Anti-BS. Anybody in the company can (and is expected to) tell the CEO when he is wrong. There are no bureaucratic or BS rules getting in the way of getting work done.
6. No Micro-Management. Once you’re trained and have demonstrated you know your stuff, we are pretty hands-off. In fact, if you need external management to stay on-task and motivated, we probably aren’t the place for you.
7. Supportive Environment. We don’t operate via intense stress or unreasonable top-down deadlines. Everyone wants you to be successful – internal politics are at a minimum here.
8. No Toxic People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. Imagine never having to interact with toxic people at work - how nice would that be?
9. We’ll Invest in Your Training. We want you and everyone to get better constantly. You’ll be learning new things all the time, and are strongly encouraged to invest time every day to learn new things, improve your system/work process, and just generally try to make your life easier.
10. Four+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.
--What are your company’s values?--
Yes, those are legitimately our values. The careers page is definitely worth checking out - it’s not just normal corporate BS. We promise you’ll learn a lot about us.
--What will I actually be doing?--
Super short version:
Making us more money by reducing our cost of goods sold by finding better/cheaper vendors, and also making us more money by improving our products and their packaging.
Here is a bulleted list of responsibilities:
- Identify all possible vendors for our products including foreign factories
- Get prices from those vendors
- Track everything correctly in spreadsheets
- Negotiate hard with the vendors to get the best possible deal
- Analyze the options and make a recommendation on which option to select
- Execute on the buy
- Identify which products need some TLC (we’ll help, of course)
- Figure out creative ways to improve the product and its packaging
- Work with multiple teams to be certain that any product changes will indeed be improvements
- Run design projects to get packaging art produced
- Keep multiple re-sourcing/product development projects going simultaneously without anything falling through the cracks
Like everyone else in the company, you will also need to innovate regularly - which means figuring out ways to improve quality and production speed.
It is challenging, but fun work that’s going to require a lot of time and task management, problem-solving, and a reasonable amount of people skills.
--Do I need supply chain experience?--
Speaking frankly, it will definitely help you, but no you technically don’t as long as you have a high base-rate of competency and can learn very, very quickly. We’ll train you how to do most of these things.
--Will you hire worldwide for this job?--
Absolutely - we love smart, capable people no matter where they reside.
--Do I need a college degree?--
You just need to be awesome, though a college degree can sometimes help demonstrate that to us.
--Will I be negotiating with the Chinese?--
Definitely. For better or worse, nearly all manufacturing takes place in China now and for us to compete, we need to do the same. This means you’ll need to be comfortable dealing with pushy Chinese vendors with a major language barrier between you. And it will definitely help you if you’re a night owl or in a nearby timezone. Speaking Mandarin is also definitely a plus.
--How much will it be sourcing and how much will be product improvement?--
At least for the first several months, I anticipate it being purely supply chain/vendor research/negotiation. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be done before we want to invest into longer-term payoff projects. My guess in the long-term is that this will be 2/3 supply chain and 1/3 product improvement. I don’t know for certain though.
--This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.--
You and the IRS both!
--That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--
Please complete the following survey:
https://jlstradingco.applytojob.com/apply/1Gwk2cRnDl/Remote-Vendor-Sourcer-Supply-Chain-Fixer-At-Fun-Flexible-Ecom-Co
We promise to respond within 5-10 business days even if our answer is No.
There will be multiple steps in this process, FYI, including a long written application, interviews with potentially a few different people, and (a) paid work test(s). Hiring the right people is really hard and very expensive if we do it poorly, so we have to front-load the process. I'm sorry about that and thank you for sticking with us.
Once you’re in our pipeline though, I would anticipate giving you a final answer within a few weeks, depending on how it goes. We definitely don’t want to string you along, and as long as you do what we ask, we promise to tell you “yes” or “no”, and to not just ghost you (like everybody I match with on Tinder).
Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope we can work together soon!
----
JLS Trading Co. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, JLS Trading Co. complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.
JLS Trading Co. expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of JLS Trading Co.’s employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge

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