Jim Berkrot is Vice President Marketing at Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc. for the Beauty Personal Care Group, North America. Jim has a BA in Psychology with a minor in Business from Ithaca College. Jim also completed a Corporate Finance Course at Manhattan FIT’s MBA Master’s Program in Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing & Management, Spring, 2015.
His professional background began 30 years ago in contract manufacturing for an OTC Drug and Cosmetic Skin Care company, San-Mar Laboratories. His experience at San-Mar included raw material innovation, product development, marketing, business development, sales, package development, as well as Supply Chain Management including purchasing, planning, manufacturing and filling operations. His leadership of the sales team resulted in tripling the size of the company over the course of 20 years.
After San-Mar was sold in 2012 to Process Technologies & Packaging, Jim worked for the new entity for 2 years where he drove new sales and developed expertise in the color cosmetics category. Jim then joined Bentley Labs in 2014. Over the course of 7 years with his skills in product innovation and business development, Jim onboarded both indie and established beauty brands and achieved an average YOY growth rate of 35%.