Bruce Berton
MANUFACTURING
Bruce Berton Steps Down as Roochi Traders Executive
After five years as the executive vice president and chief operating officer at T-shirt and apparel importer Roochi Traders Inc., Bruce Berton has stepped down from that position to work as a consultant.
“I am turning everything over to other department heads,” said Berton, who officially resigned from day-to-day operations at the Los Angeles company on Oct. 11. “I will be here until the first of the year, and then I’ll be using the offices here as a consultant and adviser to the firm.”
Berton, 73, said he will be consulting through his own firm, B&B International, which he established in 1984.
The industry veteran has worked in the apparel industry for nearly 60 years. His first job as a teenager was as an assistant cutter in the men’s suit-manufacturing factory his father, Irwin, owned in downtown Los Angeles at 1013 S. Los Angeles St. The company, with 100 employees, was called Berton of California.
“I became a member of the Amalgamated Garment Workers in 1954,” Berton recalled.
He went on to a varied career in retail and manufacturing. Berton was the president of Botany Industries for part of 1972. He was president of softlines at S. Klein Department Stores in New York from 1972 to 1973 and headed up imported men’s tailored clothing for Ohrbach’s department stores from 1974 to 1976.
He later lived in South Korea, working as an agent and sourcing expert for the apparel industry. Following South Korea, he went on to operate 21 cut-and-sew apparel contract factories in Mexico that made clothing for several well-known California labels such as Carole Little, Tomato, Bum Equipment and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans.
Berton sold his apparel factories, returned to the United States and later worked for 11 years at the Los Angeles accounting firm Stonefield Josephson (now called Marcum LLP) as a principal and director of import consulting before joining Roochi Traders.
