Blackford Capital sells Hall Technologies to investment partner

Jason Schwartz. Courtesy Blackford Capital

Blackford Capital sold an audiovisual technology portfolio company to a local economic development corporation.

Grand Rapids-based private equity firm Blackford Capital said Wednesday, April 13, it sold Coppell, Texas-based Hall Technologies to Grand Rapids-based Gun Lake Investments (GLI), the nongaming economic development arm of the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, or Gun Lake Tribe.

Blackford acquired Hall with GLI and other investors in July 2018 to increase its leadership in the U.S. and international AV market, expand its engineering capabilities, and promote its reputation for providing top-quality, highly reliable professional AV products.

Founded in 1984, Hall Technologies, previously known as Hall Research, designs and manufactures high-end, customized audiovisual systems for corporate conferencing and collaboration spaces. Hall creates solutions for a broad array of markets, including health care, corporate IT, education, gaming, hospitality and houses of worship.

“Blackford and GLI have been excellent partners who shared our vision for rebranding the company,” said Jason Schwartz, CEO of Hall. “With Blackford’s support, we appointed industry veterans Ken Eagle as VP of technology, Matt Kingsley as CFO, Hal Truax as VP of sales and added executives in domestic and global sales, marketing, as well as increased R&D and operations capabilities.

“Blackford and GLI backed our move from California to a much more central location close to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport that has allowed us to bring together our engineers, assembly operations and executive offices and provides a great new space for our customer HIVE Experience Center.”

Stephen Parker. Courtesy Blackford Capital

Stephen Parker, Hall board chair and Blackford operating partner, said Hall is well-positioned to continue growing as it exits Blackford’s portfolio.

“We were honored to be partnered with the team at GLI during this time and are confident they will continue to be excellent stewards for Jason and his team at Hall as they pursue their next stage of growth,” Parker said. “Gun Lake Investments has the access to capital, customer relationships and unique structure that will be an ongoing excellent fit for Hall’s product line and goals, and we wish Hall great success under their new ownership.”

In 2021, Hall launched HIVE Control, the world’s first cloud-based driverless control system. HIVE delivers a flexible, scalable, collaborative experience for in-person and remote participants.

In addition, Hall’s new EMCEE200 is a presentation switcher with picture-in-picture and picture-over-picture capabilities for corporate meeting rooms, hybrid learning spaces and houses of worship. HIVE and EMCEE200 integrate with Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and other video platforms.