Bruce Arden
Bruce died of old age in May of 2025. In the 50’s as a youth in Minneapolis he was an unremarkable student who was fired from his various jobs during and immediately following his high school years. After three years in the Marine Corps he attended the University of Minnesota where his only notable accomplishment was leading the student body for two years in fundraising for two non-profit organizations. These fundraising successes led to him being recruited by a cookware company for door to door sales where he quickly learned that success for him would be the result of a 6-7 day work week. With this knowledge and resulting effort he proceeded to lead his small company’s sales force in total sales volume while implementing a career long work ethic. During this time he was also pleased to learn that commission salespeople were never fired from their jobs.
Shortly thereafter this questionable career choice led him from Minneapolis to Portland, Oregon and then to Honolulu. While living and working selling “pots & pans” in Hawaii, he was recruited/invited to New Zealand and appointed Director of Marketing for a start up cosmetic company (Ovation International). Innovative marketing and recruiting in this country starved for direct to the home sales resulted in the company quickly enjoying phenomenal success. This success led to a move to Stockholm and the opening of additional markets throughout Sweden, Denmark and Norway. In 1967 Ovation evolved into Oriflame Cosmetics with current sales of 1.5 billion euro, second only to Avon as the largest direct sales cosmetic company in the world.
In 1968 he returned to Hawaii where he joined IBM and ignited a dormant account (the State of Hawaii) which in 1969 resulted in him leading IBM’s 3800 person sales force in total sales volume. After promotions to sales training in Dallas; sales management in San Francisco and ten years with IBM, he left and joined Coldwell Banker’s Commercial Real Estate Division. This was the beginning of a forty year sales and management real estate career that eventually led to Santa Barbara where he achieved modest success and won an International advertising award confirming him as a creative marketer. In addition, that same year at age 72 he completed his third marathon and was selected as “Santa Barbara’s Most Eligible Bachelor”, proving that at that time, Santa Barbara was a very small town.
Over his early and middle years, two marriages resulted in five children and eight grandchildren. The past 16 years he has enjoyed a loving relationship with Nicki Frank and a plethora of friends that have shared countless meals, conversations and sailboat journeys to always warm ports around the world.
In addition to Nicki, Bruce is survived by his five children Cole Dolmseth, Britten King, Leighton Roarke, Shaun Kittle and JJ Arden Addison. In addition, there are eight grandchildren who pre-pandemic he advised (to their parents dismay) to “always sit at the bar and always talk to strangers” Grace, Christopher and Emma King; Alexander Dolmseth, Maile and Charlie Roarke, Sophie and Fiona Addison.
