Supply Chain Operations Manager
Hawthorn Innovations — Louisville, KY (On-site)
We design and manufacture custom tools and hospitality products for brands, restaurants, hotels, concessionaires, and cruise lines — from luxury bar carts for cruise ships to custom food and cocktail tools for Michelin-starred restaurants. Our team ships millions of custom products each year to some of the biggest names in food and beverage. Now we need someone to help keep it all moving.
Hawthorn Innovations is a dynamic company with multiple divisions — a creative agency, production studio, manufacturing team, and supply chain operation all under one roof. We design, source, build, and deliver custom hospitality products for clients including Suntory, Outback Steakhouse, Diageo, and other leading brands — taking projects from concept sketch to loading dock. Our Louisville warehouse serves as the operational hub where products arrive from vendors around the world and ship out to restaurants, hotels, stadiums, and brand activations across the country and beyond
We’re looking for a Supply Chain & Operations Manager who is equally organized and resourceful — someone who can manage vendor quote sheets in the morning, troubleshoot a freight delay by lunch, and help improve an operational workflow before the day ends.
This is not a passive, dashboard-watching role. It’s hands-on and fast-moving. You’ll be involved in sourcing and vetting vendors, managing incoming shipments and production timelines, coordinating warehouse inbound and outbound logistics alongside our warehouse and accounting teams, maintaining and tracking our custom Airtable systems, and helping oversee every stage of the shipping and fulfillment process.
What You’ll Actually Do
Run the supply pipeline end-to-end in partenship with your other supply chain dept collegues. You’ll own the lifecycle of every product we source — from RFP and vendor quoting through manufacturing, inbound shipping, warehouse receiving, inventory management, order fulfillment, and outbound logistics. We track all of this in our custom database system, and you’ll be the one keeping it tight.
Manage our warehouse operations. Oversee receiving, inventory counts, picking, packing, and shipping. Coordinate with ShipStation for order processing. Make sure what’s on the shelf matches what’s in the system. Lead and schedule warehouse personnel and temp labor as volume demands.
Own vendor and freight relationships. Negotiate with domestic and international suppliers. Manage purchase orders, track shipments (ocean, air, LTL, parcel), and solve problems when containers are late or customs paperwork is wrong. You’ll deal with everything from FedEx Ground to DDP international freight to cruise ship port deliveries.
Build and improve our systems. We’ve built a solid foundation of custom systems to handle this our supply chain pipeline , SOPs, and workflows — but there’s more to do. You’ll help consolidate our supply pipeline so that a single product card can show its entire journey from quote to delivery. You’ll write SOPs where they’re missing. You’ll find the gaps and fill them, after bringing solutions to leadership for approval.
Coordinate across teams. Work closely with our design team, build team, account managers, and clients. When a custom project kicks off, you’re the one making sure materials are sourced, timelines are realistic, and the finished product ships on time and in one piece.
Who You Are
You’re organized but not rigid. You love a good spreadsheet, but you also know when to pick up the phone and just get it done. You’ve managed inventory, dealt with freight carriers, and aren’t intimidated by international shipping paperwork. You find a way to make it happen, and have fun doing it.
The Hard Stuff
- 3–5+ years in supply chain, operations, logistics, or warehouse management
- Hands-on experience with inventory management systems (Airtable, ShipStation, or similar)
- Comfortable managing vendor relationships, negotiating pricing, and placing POs
- Experience with domestic and international shipping (LTL, parcel, freight forwarding, customs)
- Solid understanding of SKU management, GTINs, safety stock, and reorder planning
- Proficiency with procurement workflows — quoting, PO management, receiving, invoicing
The Stuff That’ll Make You Stand Out
- Experience in hospitality, beverage, CPG, or custom manufacturing environments
- Familiarity with 3PL operations or running a fulfillment center
- You’ve built or significantly improved operational workflows and SOPs before
- You’ve managed warehouse teams (even small ones)
- You’re comfortable with Airtable or similar no-code database tools — not just using them, but building views, automations, and linked record structures
- You utilize AI in your workflow already - we use it daily
- You are all about scale and optimization
- You are a born problem solver
Who You Really Are
Here’s the thing — we’re a growing company and this role will grow with you. We don’t need someone who’s done this job at a Fortune 500 for 15 years (we do things differently and move fast). We need someone who:
- Is a problem solver at heart. When something breaks, you don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do. You figure it out, fix it, and then build a system so it doesn’t break again.
- Has a great attitude. Its not always glamorous. Freight delays are frustrating. Client timelines are aggressive. You bring energy, not excuses.
- Wants to build something. This isn’t a maintenance role. You’ll have real ownership over how our supply chain and warehouse operations evolve. If you’ve ever wanted to put your fingerprint on how a company runs — this is it.
- Is organized and detail-obsessed. We’re tracking hundreds of SKUs, dozens of vendors, and shipments going to hundreds of locations. One wrong label can mean a pallet goes to the wrong state. Precision matters.
- Wants to grow with a growing company. Hawthorn is expanding — new clients, new product lines, new capabilities. The person in this role will have a seat at the table as we scale.
What We Offer
- A creative, fast-moving team that builds cool stuff for major brands
- Real ownership — you won’t be buried in corporate bureaucracy
- The chance to shape operations at a company that’s actively scaling
- A Louisville-based team that works hard, solves problems together, and keeps it fun
- Competitive salary commensurate with experience
How to Apply
Send your resume and a brief note about why this role interests you. Bonus points if you can tell us about a time you solved a supply chain or logistics problem that nobody else wanted to touch.
Hawthorn Innovations is an equal opportunity employer.
