Westchester County Business Journal Profits & Passions Edward H. Roberts: The triathlete
Edward H. Roberts: The triathlete
For CPA Ed Roberts, “The best part of the job is gaining my clients’ trust and respect and becoming an integral part of their team. That’s the way I feel about what I do.”
Roberts, with 25-plus years CPA experience, is a partner with Citrin Cooperman & Co. L.L.P. in White Plains. He practices in eight business arenas, alphabetically from advertising to staffing. He has long enjoyed working in the garment and textile world, because, as he said, “There’s a lot to look at with apparel.” The business contains variables that Roberts ticks off: inventory, costing, gross profit and cutoff analysis and overhead analysis. “You have some of these factors in all businesses. It’s rare you have it all in one place as with apparel.”
Apparel also has a lot of personality. “The owners are real characters who make the work a lot of fun,” Roberts said. “They are only as good as last season so every six months they reinvent themselves and they’ve got to be better than the guy down the hall. The entire industry is about relationships with buyers and with factories; it’s all personality driven. I’m not sure other industries are not personality driven, as well, but apparel certainly is personality driven.”
Time was, apparel constituted 90 percent of Roberts’ work, but he noted much of the manufacturing has been farmed overseas. He still does apparel work – mostly for distributors and accessory manufacturers – but lately also works with day camps, IT development companies, real estate offices, doctors groups and law firms.
“We also analyze tax implications at the business level and industry level,” Roberts said. “We’re consultants – that’s what we do. It’s no longer the green eyeshades of posting the general ledger. We’ve now really become business consultants.”
Roberts is also a very effective salvo aimed at the misperception – perhaps rooted in all those numbers – that CPAs are a bookish lot whose spare time is further devoted to bookish pursuits or, on Friday nights, to Rubik’s Cube. He is an athlete and – at 6’2” and 185 pounds – it shows.
To shake Roberts hand is to understand the difference between staying in shape and real training.
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