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Long Island-based Tiffen Co. LLC has quietly shut down its Rochester operations over the past several months, five years after acquiring Saunders Group, a local company with a nearly 60-year history.
Tiffen, which in April declared it would restructure under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, has whittled its employee base here over the past few years to two people overseeing a warehouse. After acquiring Saunders and its 100 employees in April 1998, the company had expanded to 130 people here.
The Saunders acquisition was part of a Tiffen land grab in the photo camera accessories business. The Long Island firm wanted enough scale to launch an initial public offering.
Several former employees, who asked not to be named, said that the company did not control spending as it grew, and that suppliers began dropping the firm as Tiffen started making late payments on bills.
The company listed assets of $400,000 and liabilities of $23.5 million in its April filing to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York. Its primary...