55-year-old Bay Area electronics company to close plant, lay off 200

A longtime Bay Area electronics company is shutting down its plant and laying off over 200 employees, according to a WARN notice filed with the state of California. The headquarters of LeeMah Electronics on South Hill Drive in Brisbane will close by the end of the year. 

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The company, which specializes in building custom cable systems and printed circuit boards, was founded in 1971 by Hong Mah, an immigrant from China. Mah moved to San Francisco in 1957 to live with his fiancee, and he worked as a waiter while attending Heald College. In 1960, he got a job working the assembly line at Farinon Electric, but he never stopped attempting side hustles, from a failed Chinese restaurant in the Tenderloin to an unsuccessful shrimp importation business. 

In 1971, he convinced the higher-ups at Farinon to let him open a branch of the business in Chinatown. Mah named it LeeMah, a combination of his and his wife’s surnames. The subsidiary thrived, and after a few years, Mah bought out the shares and spun it off into an independent company. In a 2004 San Francisco Examiner feature, Mah said he had five factories in the U.S. and employed over 680 people, many of whom were new immigrants like he had once been.

As electronics manufacturing moved overseas, though, LeeMah retracted significantly. The July WARN filing listed 212 permanent layoffs, including managers like the company president. The layoffs will take place from September to December.

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The Brisbane closure marks the end of the last LeeMah facility; late last year, a facility in Richardson, Texas also shut down.