Who We Are
At Brooks, we believe movement is the key to feeling more alive. That's why we're driven to create gear and experiences that take people to the place that makes them feel more alive whether it's a headspace, a feeling, or a finish line.
Everyone who works at Brooks is propelled by a company culture that sparks excitement, fuels collaboration, inspires creativity, and ignites innovation.
Our brand values help bond us together and drive our success:
We act in the best interest of the runner
We do what we say we'll do
We give our all in everything we do
We stay generous with our humanity
We find ways to move every day, because joy is kinetic!
We welcome everyone from every walk of life looking to inspire others through the power of movement because we're
all moving towards something. Let's run there.
Your Job
As the Color Developer, Apparel at Brooks, you will help bring our seasonal color strategy to life by executing the end-to-end color development process across all fabrics, trims, and prints. This role partners closely with Design, Materials, Product Development, and global vendors to ensure accurate, high-quality, and consistent color execution from concept through production.
With a focus on color and print development, you will guide projects through commercialization, ensuring consistency across categories including apparel, seamless, and socks and monitor factory-sourced color developments to maintain alignment with internal standards.
The ideal candidate has a technical understanding of color theory, textile dyeing, and print processes with excellent communication, organization, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Your Responsibilities
- Execute the seasonal color development process from handoff through commercialization, ensuring color accuracy across all fabrics, trims, and prints.
- Partner with Design and Material Development to interpret color intent and translate the seasonal palette into executable materials and prints.
- Request, evaluate, and approve lab dips, strike-offs, and bulk color submissions using both visual and digital tools (e.g., lightbox, spectrophotometer).
- Evaluate and approve color for print submissions (lab dips, strike-offs, bulk fabrics) using both visual and digital tools (e.g., lightbox, spectrophotometer), alerting greater team on issues if necessary.
- Report seasonally on quantity of dips, mills, color use, trends, issues, and challenges, making recommendations for improvements.
- Collaborate with Graphic Design to ensure print color accuracy, alignment with fabric base, and execution quality.
- Maintain seasonal color standards and communicate color expectations clearly to vendors and mills in Asia and Latin America, ensuring communication of color development status to stakeholders across the organization
- Support and monitor factory-sourced color developments for seamless and socks categories, providing technical guidance and driving internal approvals. This includes troubleshooting any color and print issues aligned with the seasonal calendar.
- Provide color technical support to Apparel product teams
- Partner with global vendors and mills to align on timelines, technical requirements, and color development expectations.
- Update and maintain the Color Quality Mill Manual and ensure all vendors follow our procedures
- Monitor calendar/timelines/deadlines that result in a timely completion of each product and/or collection
- Collaborate with Sustainability and CSR teams to support long-term color and material sustainability goals as set by the Manager, Material Development.
- Partner with Apparel Senior Color Designer to cross check the accuracy of color in seasonal line plans, samples, bulk production and buy ready documents.
- Participate in seasonal vendor and mill meetings, international and domestic material development trips to review developments, identify innovation opportunities, and strengthen supplier relationships.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Textile Science or related field required; may substitute education for relevant experience
- 3+ years of experience in a related role preferred
- Technical understanding of color theory, dyeing processes, and textile material coloration techniques/limitations, including fibers, yarns, dyeing, finishing, coating.
- Knowledge of testing methods, interpretation and application of results.
- Understanding of vector-based graphics software applications Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Cloud. Mac environment for design, with some need to work in PC environment and spectrophotometer hardware
- Experience working with PLM systems and digital color management platforms is a plus.
- Knowledge of color processing, from RGB to CMYK to L.A.B. digital color
- Excellent written and communication skills
- Must be fluent in English (writing and speaking) and able to communicate clearly with Brooks Asia and USA based teams
- Solid problem solving and strategic thinking ability
- Attention to detail and a passion for color
- Embraces and lives the Brooks values!
At Brooks, we celebrate diversity & equity. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment, and encourage people of all backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and skills to apply. Brooks is proud to be an equal employment opportunity employer. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, two-spirit identity, sexual orientation, genetic information, the presence of a physical, mental, or sensory disability, marital status, pregnancy (including childbirth and related conditions), caste, citizenship or immigration status, honorably discharged veteran or military status, actual or perceived victims of domestic violence, harassment, sexual assault or stalking, HIV or Hepatitis C infection, political ideology, use of a trained service animal by a person with a disability, or on any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law, or any other non-merit based factors. 
