AVI Systems rebrands as Forté as it passes $500M revenue milestone

In the age of hybrid work and more sophisticated event centers, AVI Systems in Eden Prairie has outgrown its name.

After surpassing $500 million in revenue in its last fiscal year, and as it’s about to reach another milestone, officials of the employee-owned company decided it needed a more modern name.

Chief Executive Jeff Stoebner was set to announce the company will rebrand as Forté at AVI’s annual sales conference Tuesday morning in Dallas.

“We just think the brand has elevated beyond a three-letter acronym,” Stoebner said. Between Forté’s growth and its planned international expansion, with two pending acquisitions, the time is right for the change.

Forté, he said, needs to distinguish itself from competitors with similar names at a time when it is acting as an industry consolidator.

When Stoebner’s father, Joe, started the business in 1974, it was more important to have the title explain what it provided. Audio Visual Inc. provided a new service. In the 1980s, it rebranded as AVI Systems as the use of screens and sound became more important to businesses and schools.

Minneapolis-based branding agency Rise and Shine Partners worked with AVI to land on the name. Forte is a musical term for loud, and also means a strength. .

Not only are a large percentage of Forté’s workers musicians, but the name is meant to signal the company’s leading position in a fragmented market.

“I would say, when you’re really good at something, it’s your forte,“ Stoebner said.

The name change isn’t just window dressing. It’s a reflection that the company has industry-leading offerings as its clients and potential customers have changing needs.

Its products range from electronic menu boards for restaurants to enterprise-wide collaboration spaces and broadcast systems for large public, private and educational organizations.

The meeting collaboration equipment segment saw a surge during the pandemic. In the past three years, Stoebner said, it saw even more growth from global companies that want to update equipment across locations.

“In the past it would have been a two- or three-year sort of capital campaign, but now wanting it in three months,” Stoebner said.

Most of the connected meeting room work is to a customer’s specifications and requires some customized engineering and design.

“When you’re trying to push tech out in very short periods of time, it’s a different delivery model,” Stoebner said.

In June 2024, the company opened its Velocity Logistics Center in Dallas, a facility to assemble the equipment, including all the cables and fittings, and shrink-wrap them for transportation.

What used to take weeks or months to deploy can now be delivered anywhere in the U.S. in two days, the company said.

The process allows Forté’s technicians or subcontractors to assemble the rooms faster by assuring that all the accessories and main equipment are delivered together.

The industry-first investment in the Texas facility was in response to large deployments from a major retailer and a global biotechnology company.

It’s a long way from when Jeff Stoebner’s father, Joe, got into the business. He was an elementary school teacher in Bismarck, N.D., in the early 1970s who needed a better-paying job for his growing family.

He asked for his superintendent’s help to find a job selling office supplies. The supply business where he landed was just starting to sell slide show equipment and other AV products, and the owner was willing to sell that slice of the business in 1974 for $109,000.

Joe Stoebner became sole owner in 1979, and the company grew gradually. He had an aversion to long-term debt, and after paying off the initial purchase price, the company remains free of long-term debt.

As the company grew geographically, it was struggling to build a consistent company culture with outposts in places like Omaha and Des Moines.

The company decided that one of the best ways to do that was to give employees “a piece of the rock.” So in 1989, the company began an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan).

The ESOP grew with the company, and by 2009, the plan owned 100% of the business. By then the company had a valuation of about $20 million.

It’s not a coincidence that giving workers a piece of the action has helped fuel growth.

“Over 90 percent of the value has been created since becoming a 100 percent ESOP,” Jeff Stoebner said.

Forté has about 1,400 employees. With recent growth and the pending acquisitions of companies in Ireland and Germany that have 40 to 50 employees each, Forté will become one of the 100 largest ESOP companies in the U.S.

As an ESOP company, Forté is required to make annual reports available to its workers. For fiscal 2025 ended March 31, the company had sales of $576 million, and with the international acquisitions, Stoebner expects the company to reach $600 million to $620 million in fiscal 2026 sales.

“In 2020, our value went down because our customers stopped buying as much, and then they started buying a lot,” Stoebner said.

Since then, the value has nearly doubled, he said.

Even though companies and government agencies are moving toward back-to-office mandates, Stoebner believes the company can continue its rapid growth.

“The genie’s out of the bottle on hybrid meeting. You can’t get it back in,” Stoebner said.