Brand Partnership Manager

About Koobz

Koobz makes footwear without molds. We 3D print monolithic, made-to-order shoes in foamed TPU at our factory in Ventura, California, so a brand can launch its own footwear without the tooling cost, minimum order, and 12-month lead time that have kept most of them out of the category.

We are a seed-stage team of about 15 people. Our customers are streetwear and lifestyle brands, creators, and designers who want to own their product. Demand from those brands has grown faster than our ability to work it, and this role exists to fix that.

The role

The Brand Partnerships Manager owns the front of our funnel: finding the right brands and creators, qualifying them, running the first conversations, and keeping every lead moving until it is ready for a term sheet. You will be the first person most of our customers talk to, and the person who decides whether a lead is worth the team's time.

You report to the Chief Commercial Officer and work alongside our VP of Product and Commercialization, who takes qualified deals through development and launch. This is a hands-on role at a small company. You will write the DMs, run the CRM, and work the show floor yourself.

What you will own

• •Outbound prospecting. Build and work target lists of streetwear, sneaker, and lifestyle brands and creators through Instagram, email, and events. Hit our ICP, not just anyone with a following.
• •Inbound response. Answer every Innovation Brief and website inquiry within two business days, using our standard templates and pricing lanes. Route the strategic or unusual ones to the CCO.
• •Qualification. Run first calls, score fit against our customer profile and our manufacturing constraints, and move leads from first contact to qualified (our E1 to E3 stages). Decide what we pass on and say so clearly.
• •Deal desk. Quote standard pricing, prepare call briefs, keep follow-ups on schedule, and hand qualified deals to the VP of Product and Commercialization with a clean record.
• •CRM ownership. Keep HubSpot accurate as a habit: every lead logged, every stage current, every next step dated.
• •Shows and events. Represent Koobz at ComplexCon, Stride, and the pop-ups and drops where our customers are. Turn conversations into logged leads.
• •Market feedback. Tell the product and design team what brands are asking for, what they balk at, and where competitors are winning.
• •Three to six years at a streetwear or sneaker brand, collab agency, boutique, or culture media company, in a role like collab coordinator, brand partnerships, wholesale or production coordinator, or buyer.
• •You already live in this world. You go to the shows, you follow the drops, you know which founders are building something real, and some of them already answer your DMs.
• •You are organized and you follow through without being chased. A clean pipeline is a reflex for you, not a chore.
• •You can explain a non-standard business model to a founder who has never made a shoe: made-to-order, no minimums, no molds, and what that means for their margin and their risk.
• •You can hold your own on a first call, ask the questions that reveal whether a brand is serious, and say no without burning the relationship.
• •You write well and fast. Most of this job happens in DMs, emails, and CRM notes.
• •You want to be early at a company that is building something that did not exist before.
• •Footwear or apparel production exposure: tech packs, sampling, sizing, factory communication.
• •Experience with HubSpot or a comparable CRM, including sequences and reporting.
• •A record of closed collab, licensing, or wholesale deals you can walk us through.
• •Spanish or another language common among the brands and creators we work with.

Who you are

• •Three to six years at a streetwear or sneaker brand, collab agency, boutique, or culture media company, in a role like collab coordinator, brand partnerships, wholesale or production coordinator, or buyer.
• •You already live in this world. You go to the shows, you follow the drops, you know which founders are building something real, and some of them already answer your DMs.
• •You are organized and you follow through without being chased. A clean pipeline is a reflex for you, not a chore.
• •You can explain a non-standard business model to a founder who has never made a shoe: made-to-order, no minimums, no molds, and what that means for their margin and their risk.
• •You can hold your own on a first call, ask the questions that reveal whether a brand is serious, and say no without burning the relationship.
• •You write well and fast. Most of this job happens in DMs, emails, and CRM notes.
• •You want to be early at a company that is building something that did not exist before.
• •Footwear or apparel production exposure: tech packs, sampling, sizing, factory communication.
• •Experience with HubSpot or a comparable CRM, including sequences and reporting.
• •A record of closed collab, licensing, or wholesale deals you can walk us through.
• •Spanish or another language common among the brands and creators we work with.

Nice to have

• •Footwear or apparel production exposure: tech packs, sampling, sizing, factory communication.
• •Experience with HubSpot or a comparable CRM, including sequences and reporting.
• •A record of closed collab, licensing, or wholesale deals you can walk us through.
• •Spanish or another language common among the brands and creators we work with.