Manufacturer, contractor, law firm win HIA awards

The Tiffen Co., a manufacturer of photographic equipment in Hauppauge, has won two technical achievement awards and a scientific and engineering award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, as well as an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

While those awards made the 70-year-old company proud, chief executive Steven Tiffen takes pride in the recognition the company has gotten on Long Island for its involvement with its employees. For more than a year now, Tiffen has provided free round-trip transportation from Brooklyn for about 30 employees. They had worked for a Brooklyn lighting company Tiffen acquired in January 2009. Tiffen wanted their expertise, and the employees wanted their jobs.

Tiffen is the winner in the Large Business category in the Hauppauge Industrial Association's 16th annual Business Achievement Awards.

"There are some companies that blow us away," said HIA president, Terri Alessi-Miceli. "This was one of them."

Tiffen won not only for involvement with its employees - it has about 200 - but also for its innovative products. The company came out with more than 100 products last year. It owns Steadicam, which allows an operator to walk with a motion picture attached to his or her hip and produce steady pictures.

"My dad was a manufacturing guy," Tiffen said of his late father, Nat Tiffen, who founded the company with two brothers in Manhattan in 1938. "I grew up on the factory floor. The factory is the heart of what we do. You can't do that without people," he added. "We offered all the [Brooklyn] employees jobs. The goal was to keep qualified people here."

The company moved to Roslyn in 1951 and to Hauppauge in 1979. About 65 percent of what it sells is made on Long Island.

Irwin Contracting Co., a Hauppauge-based general contractor started by John Irwin in the den of his Hauppauge home in 1986, won in the Small Business category. The family-owned company has 23 full-time employees.

The Bohemia law firm Campolo, Middleton & Associates won the Rookie of the Year Award. The firm was founded in 2004. Joe Campolo said the firm's "extensive" training program for its four recently graduated attorneys includes taking them into the courtroom to see how the courts work, offering lunch lectures and requiring participation in networking events.

An awards ceremony is to be held Sept. 14 at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury.