Designer

Lead Designer / Merchandiser

Employment Type: Full-Time
Schedule: Monday–Friday
Salary: Based on Experience

Position Overview

A growing apparel company is seeking an experienced Lead Designer / Merchandiser – Children's Apparel to lead the merchandising and design of children's fashion apparel across multiple categories.

The position will focus on boys' and girls' newborn, infant, and toddler sportswear, as well as Toddler–20 sleepwear, swimwear, and intimates. The Lead Designer / Merchandiser will oversee products throughout the design and development lifecycle, from initial trend research, fabric selection, and body development through style creation, line adoption, and pre-production approval.

This role requires a strong combination of creative design, merchandising, technical apparel knowledge, trend awareness, and product development expertise.

Key Responsibilities Design & Merchandising

• Identify market and fashion trends and translate them into commercially viable children's apparel.
• Design branded, licensed, and private-label collections for mass merchants and specialty retailers.
• Develop products across newborn, infant, toddler, and children's categories, including sportswear, sleepwear, swimwear, and intimates.
• Select trend-right fabrics, silhouettes, colors, prints, graphics, and garment bodies.
• Ensure designs are appropriate for the intended age group, customer, price point, and retail channel.
• Maintain awareness of children's trends, including relevant toys, entertainment, movies, shows, graphics, and cultural influences.
• Manage seasonal projects and help build cohesive product assortments.

Product Development

• Work closely with the Sales team and other designers to conceptualize complete garment designs and develop seasonal product lines.
• Prepare materials for design overview meetings, fabric meetings, and seasonal presentations.
• Present and review trends, styles, fabrics, artwork, and product concepts with Sales and Sourcing.
• Partner with the Sourcing team to ensure fabrics, garment bodies, and constructions meet the requirements and price points of each line.
• Prepare detailed production packages containing garment specifications, trims, labeling, artwork, and other required information.
• Ensure designs and development materials are properly uploaded to the company database and server.

Samples, Approvals & Production

• Review and approve fabrics, lab dips, artwork, garments, trims, and other development submissions.
• Communicate comments, corrections, and approvals directly to factories.
• Work with Technical Design to evaluate garment construction, styling, and execution.
• Maintain strong technical knowledge of fabrics, garment construction, printing, and washing techniques.
• Manage development schedules to ensure approvals are completed with sufficient lead time for production.
• Monitor projects from initial concept through pre-production approval.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of experience in children's apparel within a similar market required.
• Bachelor's degree in Art, Design, Fashion Design, or a related field preferred.
• Experience designing for boys' and girls' newborn, infant, toddler, and children's apparel.
• Ability to develop a broad range of designs while working within customer and price-point requirements.
• Strong knowledge of children's fashion, graphics, prints, typography, illustration, and market trends.
• Experience with branded, licensed, and/or private-label apparel preferred.
• Strong technical understanding of garment construction, fabrics, printing, and washing techniques.
• Proficiency in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign required.
• Experience with Acrobat, Excel, FileMaker Pro, or additional design and digital tools is a plus.
• Strong organizational skills and exceptional attention to detail.
• Ability to manage multiple seasonal projects and priorities simultaneously.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
• Ability to take creative direction while bringing strong independent judgment and design intuition.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong collaborative and team-oriented approach.