Multi Facets Shuttering Anaheim Eyeglass Lab
By SHERRI CRUZ
The owners of Anaheim-based Multi Facets Labs plan to shut the company down by the end of August amid slumping sales.
The decision came after company president, Allen Vaughn, abruptly resigned from the business he founded in 1981.
Multi Facets had been looking for an investor to help it expand.
“It’s been a tough fight,” Vaughn said of growing the company’s business. “But I didn’t think it was insurmountable.”
Multi Facets is a custom engraver of rimless eyeglasses. It also adds rhinestones to eyeglass frames and frosts lenses. The company’s lab includes automated precision drilling, lens tracing and cutting machines.
A year and a half ago, Vaughn turned over ownership of Multi Facets to John and Joe Ragazzo, owners of Anaheim’s Brothers’ Optical Laboratory Inc., which makes eyeglass lenses. Brothers’ Optical supplied Multi Facets with uncut lenses.
Vaughn had been unable to get financing for the company.
Multi Facets then moved its headquarters last June from Corona to a 10,000-square-foot building in Anaheim, near Edison International Field.
John Ragazzo said sales lagged. In June he met with his accountant, who recommended closing Multi Facets, which has 11 workers.
Founder Vaughn asked Ragazzo for two months to find an investor and Ragazzo agreed, extending the closing deadline until Aug. 31.
Then Vaughn resigned.
“We haven’t seen him since,” Ragazzo said. The company is set to close at the end of August. It could close earlier if Ragazzo’s attorney approves it.
Vaughn said he has other plans and has moved out of the state. “The money wasn’t there,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”
The closure will not affect Brothers’ Optical, which was founded in 1973.
Brothers’ Optical employs nearly 100 people. Ragazzo said he would take on all of Multi Facets’ workers.
