Ralph Lauren
Website:
ralphlauren.com
Company:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ralph-lauren
Seniority: Mid-Senior level
Industries: Retail Apparel and Fashion
Job details:
Ralph Lauren Corporation (NYSE:RL) is a global leader in the design, marketing and distribution of premium lifestyle products in five categories: apparel, accessories, home, fragrances, and hospitality. For more than 50 years, Ralph Lauren's reputation and distinctive image have been consistently developed across an expanding number of products, brands and international markets. The Company's brand names, which include Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren Collection, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Polo Ralph Lauren, Double RL, Lauren Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren Children, Chaps, among others, constitute one of the world's most widely recognized families of consumer brands.
At Ralph Lauren, we unite and inspire the communities within our company as well as those in which we serve by amplifying voices and perspectives to create a culture of belonging, ensuring inclusion, and fairness for all. We foster a culture of inclusion through: Talent, Education & Communication, Employee Groups and Celebration.
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The Senior Manager – Costing will be responsible for leading the end-to-end product costing function for Ralph Lauren globally, ensuring that inventory standard costs, transfer prices, purchase price variance analysis, and costing governance are accurate, timely, controlled, and decision-useful.
This role will upgrade the existing costing capability into a scalable Center of Excellence, strengthening the team, standardizing global ways of working, improving reporting and analytics, and partnering closely with Production, Sourcing, Supply Chain, FP&A, Accounting, and regional finance stakeholders. The successful candidate will bring strong inventory costing expertise, business partnering capability, operational discipline, and the ability to visualize, design, and operationalize reports and dashboards that support effective business decision-making. Experience in luxury, premium apparel, retail, or consumer products costing will be highly beneficial.
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Global Product Costing Leadership
- Lead the global product costing function responsible for setting, updating, validating, and analyzing inventory standard costs and transfer prices in accordance with Ralph Lauren policies, accounting principles, and operating procedures.
- Ensure all product and inventory items are costed accurately, consistently, and on time across relevant product categories, regions, and systems.
- Provide leadership oversight on complex costing matters, including new product introductions, vendor cost changes, material and freight impacts, margin implications, and transfer price updates.
- Partner with Production, Sourcing, Supply Chain, FP&A, Accounting, and regional finance teams to ensure timely information flow and effective cost-related decision support.
Costing Center of Excellence
- Create and mature a Costing Center of Excellence that standardizes global costing processes, controls, service levels, knowledge management, and operating rhythms.
- Define clear roles, responsibilities, process ownership, escalation paths, and governance routines for the costing team.
- Visualize and strengthen the existing team structure by identifying capability gaps, building succession plans, improving cross-training, and embedding consistent ways of working.
- Develop playbooks, SOPs, control checklists, and training materials to enable scalable and repeatable costing operations.
Reporting, Analytics, and Decision Support
- Design, visualize, and operationalize costing reports, KPI dashboards, exception reports, and management insights that are useful for business decision-making.
- Provide meaningful analysis of purchase price variances, standard cost changes, margin impacts, vendor and category cost trends, and other cost drivers.
- Translate detailed costing data into concise executive summaries, business narratives, and actionable recommendations for finance and operating leaders.
- Leverage Excel, BI tools, ERP reporting, and automation opportunities to improve visibility, accuracy, speed, and self-service access to costing insights.
Controls, Compliance, and Financial Close
- Maintain strong controls over costing master data, cost updates, approvals, documentation, reconciliations, and evidence standards.
- Complete assigned month-end and period-end financial close activities, including required analysis and support for forecasts, inventory valuation, and variance review.
- Provide timely, complete, and well-supported responses to internal audit, external audit, and SOX compliance requests.
- Identify recurring process, data, and control issues; lead root-cause analysis and drive sustainable remediation.
Team Leadership and Transformation
- Lead, coach, and develop the costing team in alignment with Ralph Lauren values, promoting accountability, inclusion, continuous learning, and operational excellence.
- Set clear objectives, service expectations, performance measures, and development plans for direct reports.
- Challenge existing practices and lead process standardization, simplification, automation, and digitization initiatives across costing operations.
- Support ERP, system, and reporting transformation initiatives by representing costing requirements, controls, data quality needs, and operational readiness.
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Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business, Costing, Supply Chain Finance, or a related field; CA, CMA, CWA, CPA, MBA, or equivalent professional qualification preferred.
- 12–16 years of progressive experience in inventory costing, standard costing, cost accounting, inventory accounting, supply chain finance, or financial operations within a global retail, apparel, consumer goods, manufacturing, or luxury products environment.
- Strong experience managing teams and leading global or regional finance operations in a shared services, global business services, or multinational environment.
- Hands-on experience with inventory standard costs, transfer pricing, purchase price variance analysis, month-end close, forecasting support, audit requirements, and SOX or similar controls.
- Experience with ERP and reporting tools such as SAP or S/4HANA, Oracle JDE, Microsoft Dynamics, Island Pacific, Excel, Power BI, or similar BI and data visualization tools preferred.
Skills And Capabilities
- Strong technical knowledge of costing, inventory valuation, accounting principles, standard costing processes, and controls.
- Ability to visualize end-to-end processes, strengthen operating models, and create scalable Center of Excellence capabilities.
- Advanced analytical capability with comfort working across large data sets, complex product hierarchies, multiple systems, and cross-functional inputs.
- Strong reporting and storytelling skills, with the ability to convert detailed costing data into decision-useful dashboards, insights, and executive summaries.
- Leadership presence, stakeholder management capability, and ability to influence across Production, Sourcing, Supply Chain, Accounting, FP&A, IT, and regional finance teams.
- Experience in luxury, premium apparel, fashion, or consumer products costing is highly beneficial.
Key Relationships
- Internal: Finance Leadership, Corporate Controller’s Group, FP&A, Production, Sourcing, Supply Chain, Merchandising, Inventory Accounting, Record to Report, Internal Audit, IT, Data and Reporting teams, Regional Finance, and Global Business Services teams.
- External: External auditors, system implementation partners, service providers, vendors, and other relevant business partners as needed.
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