Innovative Global to lay off 47 workers

Innovative Global Brands LLC, a Hauppauge company whose products include granite kitchen countertops and floor tiles, plans to lay off 47 employees, or about 40 percent of its workforce, according to a state filing and an interview with the company's president Friday.

The executive, Tracy Streckenbach, said the company was closing its residential business, which employed most of those workers. That division specializes in kitchen countertops. Price demands from its primary customer would have made the business unprofitable, Streckenbach said.

She said some of the employees could find jobs on the company's commercial side, which focuses on the hospitality and retail industries in the U.S. and abroad in such areas as China, the Middle East and Europe. That business specializes in floor and wall tiles. "We continue to move forward with a growth strategy on the commercial side of our business," she said.

Woodside Capital Partners, a Massachusetts-based equity group that formed Innovative Global, bought the assets of bankrupt Hauppauge-based Innovative Stone about a year ago and hired a management team to run Innovative Global, Streckenbach said. The company has about 120 employees.

The company filed the layoff notice under the state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act, which requires employers with at least 50 full-time employees to provide at least a 90-day written notice of a mass layoff or plant closing.