Avante Capital Backs Sweet Tooth Holdings’ Add-On Acquisitions of Stelised and MADA

Manufacturers that once competed on price alone are now competing on speed, customization, and breadth of service. Customers across confectionery, healthcare, commercial products, and retail displays want fewer vendors doing more, and they want those vendors close to home. That shift has rewarded U.S.-based custom manufacturers with in-house tooling capabilities and the flexibility to handle low-volume, highly specialized work. It also set the stage for a platform expansion in the plastic injection molding and tooling space.

Sweet Tooth Holdings, a portfolio company of Monument MicroCap Partners, has completed the acquisitions of Stelised and MADA, two additions that expand its manufacturing footprint, capabilities, and customer base. The deal closed July 2, 2026.

A Platform Built on Responsiveness

Sweet Tooth’s position in the market rests on a simple premise: customers with custom, low-volume manufacturing needs value speed and quality over scale alone. Its in-house tooling operation lets the company support customers from initial design through full production, a capability that shortens timelines and reduces handoffs. Stelised brings a comparable operating philosophy along with specialized tooling and assembly expertise for the retail display market. The combination strengthens Sweet Tooth’s position across several adjacent, non-cyclical end markets rather than concentrating risk in any single vertical.

Manufacturing capacity has become a limiting factor for many specialty producers trying to grow without overextending existing facilities. Stelised contributes two Kentucky facilities with meaningful available capacity, giving the combined company room to take on new work without a corresponding capital outlay for new construction. MADA adds a portfolio of proprietary molded products, diversifying revenue streams beyond contract manufacturing alone. Together, the acquisitions give Monument’s platform more geographic reach and a foundation to pursue further consolidation in a still-fragmented industry.

How the Deal Came Together

The opportunity surfaced indirectly. Avante’s deal team was conducting industry diligence on a separate transaction and reached out to Monument for a reference call related to one of its other portfolio companies. That conversation led to a broader discussion about Sweet Tooth’s acquisition plans and capital needs. Existing relationships, including a prior connection between Avante and Monument’s leadership through a shared MBA program, helped accelerate trust between the two firms.

Avante offered flexible capital and partnered with Oxer Capital on the debt facility. That flexibility, rather than a rigid one-size structure, is often what separates a completed deal from a stalled one in the lower middle market¹.

Where the Platform Goes From Here

Independent sponsors and PE firms operating in niche manufacturing face a common challenge: finding capital partners who understand both the operating business and the sponsor’s broader acquisition strategy. Monument has a track record of building lower middle market platforms, and its growth plan for Sweet Tooth includes continued M&A. Structuring the facility to include additional capacity gives the platform dry powder for opportunistic add-ons without requiring a full re-negotiation each time.

Private credit allocations to the lower middle market have continued to grow as banks pull back from cash-flow lending below certain thresholds². Sponsors increasingly need lenders willing to combine debt and equity in a single transaction, particularly for platforms executing buy-and-build strategies across multiple add-ons in a short window. The Sweet Tooth transaction reflects that broader trend: a credit provider stepping into a structuring role that used to sit primarily with equity sponsors alone.

“Sweet Tooth has built a strong reputation by delivering high-quality tooling and injection molding solutions to its customers. The addition of Stelised and MADA expands the platform’s capabilities, manufacturing footprint, and customer reach, creating an even stronger business positioned for continued growth. We’re excited to partner with Monument and management as they build on this momentum.”, Nicole Vatter, Principal, Avante Capital Partners

“What impressed us most was the quality of the customer relationships these businesses have built over many years. Their reputation for reliability and responsiveness has created a loyal customer base, and we believe the combined platform is well positioned to build on that foundation.”, Amanda Kim, Managing Director, Avante Capital Partners

We Thought It Would Be Spreadsheets. Then We Met the Companies.

We Thought It Would Be Spreadsheets. Then We Met the Companies.

We showed up in May expecting spreadsheets. We got those. But we also got a nuclear facility diving accident, a room full of toddlers, and a student loan marketplace that hit closer to home than any of us expected. Nobody warned us about that part.

Five of us spent the summer at Avante Capital Partners, a private credit firm in the lower middle market. We came from different schools, different majors, different reasons for landing in finance. By August we had arrived at the same realization from five different directions: the work is not really about the model. The model is just where you start.

The spreadsheet is never the whole story

Sydney worked on a deal for an equipment dealer with limited operating history as a private company. To understand it, her team studied public comparables and how they performed in 2008 versus today, looking at cycles, pricing, and buying behavior across an entire industry. Her manager asked a question that reframed the entire exercise: how is this business different from its comps? She had assumed the goal was finding the most similar company. It turns out the goal is understanding exactly where the similarity breaks down.

Sebastian learned a version of the same lesson on a cyclicality report for a geopolitical risk advisory firm. Researching how a business performs across different economic environments taught him that due diligence means leaving no stone unturned, and that the job requires a strange blend of technical precision and intuition. Later, on a different deal, he asked what percentage of total contracts sat with the top five customers. The answer was concerningly large. One number reframed the entire risk profile.

Fabiha kept running into the same red flag, on two different deals. The first time, she was looking at a company whose EBITDA had gone from $4.6 million to $3.2 million to $7.3 million over three years, numbers that could easily read as growth if nobody stopped to ask why they were bouncing around like that. A senior member of the investment committee did stop, with one question: is this real? Weeks later she found herself asking the same thing on her own deal, a salon suites franchise where the CIM showed $8.5 million in current EBITDA, but the whole pitch was really about a $20.1 million “embedded” number, stacked on top with acquisitions, renewals, and locations that hadn’t even opened yet. Both times the takeaway was the same: don’t let the bigger, more exciting number distract you from checking whether the deal even works on the one that’s already real.

The better question beats the faster answer

Chris gained a much clearer understanding of how private credit decisions are made through working on an IC memo for a dental services group. At the beginning of the summer, he assumed the main question was simply whether a deal looked attractive. By August, he realized that even a strong opportunity must also align with the lender’s fund strategy, LP expectations, risk tolerance, and return targets. One question especially changed how he viewed credit risk: What happens to leverage if EBITDA declines? He learned that debt does not have to increase for a deal to become riskier. If earnings fall while debt stays the same, leverage rises and the company’s ability to repay that debt weakens.

Mathew found the same dynamic on the sponsor side. After a sponsor meeting, he asked what actually stops a sponsor mid-negotiation from walking to a competitor offering a lower rate. The answer surprised him: it happens, but most sponsors stay because they value the relationship and the partnership going forward. He had assumed deals came down to whether the numbers worked. The relationship carries real weight, sometimes more than a few basis points.

People, not just positions

Some of the summer’s sharpest moments had nothing to do with a deal at all. Chris sat in on a conversation with Omar Abou-Sayed about three types of power: positional, personal, and persuasive. The strongest leaders do not lean on title. They earn trust and build credibility over time.

Sebastian and Sydney each met women who had taken nonlinear paths into finance, from psychology backgrounds and career breaks to raising families while building serious careers. Fabiha heard a line during a first week coffee chat that she kept coming back to all summer: “I don’t know the process yet, but do you need me to do anything?” Not pretending to have answers, but not waiting around for someone to hand her a task either.

What the numbers are actually measuring

Fabiha talked with a colleague about the daycare industry and learned that safety incidents, like a child left unsupervised, are a real recurring risk, not a compliance checkbox. Behind every location in that portfolio is a room full of toddlers and a teacher who might step away for two minutes. Sydney sat in on an IC meeting about a company helping students find better student loan options, and heard investors debate federal policy and borrower behavior in terms that applied directly to her own life as a college student.

Mathew’s moment was harder to sit with. Reading the safety risk section of a memo for an underwater construction company, he read that in 2019, a diver performing routine maintenance at a nuclear facility became trapped and died. The memo listed appropriate mitigants and moved on, as memos do. But that was the moment the spreadsheet stopped being a spreadsheet. Real people do that work. Decisions about capital sit on top of their jobs, and sometimes their lives.

What we believe now

None of us walked in thinking finance was simple. But most of us believed, somewhere in the back of our minds, that it was mainly a technical exercise: build the model correctly, get the numbers right, and the answer follows. What we found instead were businesses built by people who had spent decades getting them to this point, sponsors who stay in a deal because of trust rather than pricing, and colleagues who ask “is this real” before they ask “how big is the upside.”

The spreadsheets are still there. They still matter. But they are describing dentists and hygienists, divers and toddlers, students figuring out loans, and founders who built something real long before anyone modeled it. That is what private markets actually are. We just did not expect to learn it this fast.

Jeri Harman Receives PEWIN’s North Star Lifetime Achievement Award

Jeri Harman, founder and chairman of Avante Capital Partners, has been named the recipient of the North Star Lifetime Achievement Award by the PEWIN Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Private Equity Women Investor Network.¹

The award will be presented at the Brilliance Soirée in New York City on September 23, 2026, alongside honorees recognized for advancing women’s leadership across private markets.¹ For everyone at Avante, the recognition lands differently. It belongs to the person who built the firm from the ground up and has spent seventeen years showing what a different kind of leadership in private credit can look like.

PEWIN’s North Star Award recognizes individuals whose careers have shaped the private markets industry over the long term, not just within a single fund cycle or firm.¹ The Foundation cited Jeri for more than three decades of leadership and her role in moving women into partner seats, investment committees, and boardrooms across the industry.¹ The citation accompanying the award put it simply: she didn’t just succeed in the system, she built a new one.

What the Award Represents

Private credit has grown into a significant piece of the capital stack for lower middle market companies over the past decade, filling gaps left by traditional bank lending following tighter regulatory capital requirements.² Firms founded and led by women remain a small fraction of that landscape, particularly at the ownership and decision-making level.³ Jeri founded Avante in 2009, during a period when institutional capital was scarce and women-led credit platforms were rare enough to be considered anomalies rather than a category.

Alongside co-founders Ivelisse Rodriguez Simon and Paul Hayama, she grew it into one of the largest women- and minority-owned private credit platforms in the country, with $1.5 billion in assets under management today.

That growth mattered to Avante’s own trajectory. It also mattered to the broader push toward more inclusive access to capital and leadership in private markets, an effort institutional allocators have increasingly prioritized in manager selection.³ The mentorship networks Jeri built along the way are now credited by a generation of women executives with helping shape their own rise into partner and investment-committee roles.

A Personal Note From the Firm

Everyone at Avante has a story about a door Jeri opened that hadn’t been open before. Some of us watched her win deals by adding value and transparency, not by over-levering or under-pricing. Others watched her sit across from an LP who had never allocated to a woman-led credit fund and change that outcome through patience, preparation, and a real understanding of what that LP needed, not persuasion alone. What we’ve come to understand, working alongside her, is that leadership built this way tends to outlast any single fund or fund cycle.

Jeri has led with the kind of grace and humility that doesn’t always get recognized publicly, which makes this recognition land with more impact for the people who’ve worked closest to her. She built Avante on a foundation of strong partnership and a culture rooted in the belief that delivering superior returns and helping others rise are not mutually exclusive, and that belief shows up in how the firm approaches every sponsor relationship and every LP conversation. The North Star Award recognizes a career. For Avante, it recognizes the person who taught an entire firm how to operate with conviction and generosity at the same time.

To the industry, she is a pioneer. To us, she is the founder who inspired and empowered us to help build this firm, opened doors that had never opened, and still leads with grace and humility.

Congratulations, Jeri. This one is well earned, and we could not be prouder to call you our founder and chairman.

Anyone Will Fund You on a Good Day

The real test of a lending partner shows up after the deal closes, not before.

When I moved into private credit, the reaction from friends outside finance was almost always the same. They were headed into nonprofits, teaching, government work, the professions you tell your parents about at dinner. Lending money seemed like the opposite of that, a transaction dressed up as a relationship. One friend asked me directly: if your firm disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice, or would another lender simply take the check size and fill the gap?

It is a fair question, and one worth sitting with rather than answering defensively. Private credit has grown into a roughly $1.7 trillion asset class, and capital has followed the returns. Direct lenders, BDCs, and credit funds have multiplied, and on a healthy deal with 3x leverage, tight pricing, and clean adjustments, the pool of interested lenders is deep. Anyone can fund a good deal. The differentiation shows up somewhere else entirely.

The Commodity Illusion

Capital itself is fungible. A dollar from one lender spends the same as a dollar from another, and term sheets on strong credits tend to converge fast because everyone is pricing off the same comps. That convergence creates an illusion that lending is a commodity business where relationships are decoration on top of a spreadsheet. The illusion holds right up until performance dips, a covenant gets tripped, or an add-on acquisition needs to close in three weeks instead of three months.

Distressed and stressed private credit situations have climbed steadily since rates moved higher, with payment-in-kind usage on syndicated and direct loans hitting multi-year highs as borrowers and lenders worked to preserve cash. Those numbers matter less as a market statistic and more as a signal of how many partnerships were actually tested during that stretch. Some lenders held the line on strict terms and lost the relationship along with the recovery. Others treated the moment as the actual job.

What Shows Up When Things Go Sideways

Years ago I worked with a manufacturer of induction heating equipment for hospitality venues and stadiums, the kind of business that depends entirely on people gathering in large numbers. When the world shut down in 2020, its revenue did too, almost overnight. The easy move for a lender in that position is to tighten immediately, protect the collateral, and let the workout process run its course.

Instead, we chose to PIK the interest, trading near-term cash coupon for a longer path back to health, because the management team had earned that trust before the crisis hit. The business preserved jobs through the shutdown, recovered as venues reopened, and eventually repaid the deferred interest in full once cash flow normalized. None of that outcome was guaranteed at the time the decision was made. It required believing the people running the business more than the trailing twelve months on the financial statement.

Honesty Is Not the Same as Comfort

Good partnership also means catching problems before they become emergencies, which is rarely a comfortable conversation to start. A lender who waits until covenant breach to raise a concern has already failed the relationship, even if the paperwork says otherwise. Flagging a soft quarter, a customer concentration issue, or a margin slide early gives a sponsor and management team room to act instead of react. Every operator I have worked with values that early warning more, in hindsight, than any grace period extended after the fact.

Renegotiating economics works the same way. Lenders who bend on every point to avoid friction are not actually building trust, they are avoiding the harder conversation that trust is built on. A partner willing to say no to a request, and explain why, is worth more over a ten-year relationship than one who says yes until the moment it costs them something and then disappears. Sponsors remember which lenders were straight with them when the numbers were tight, and they route their next three deals accordingly. Accommodation without candor is not generosity; it is a bill that comes due later, usually at the worst possible time.

The Answer to the Question

So would anyone notice if the firm disappeared tomorrow? Yes, and not only on the deals that go sideways. Even on the healthy ones, where a dozen lenders could match the check by Friday, borrowers choose to work with us despite our not being the lowest price, because the capital is only part of what we bring. The rest is proactive: the operating workshops, the WON network, the board members and operators we can put in a room when a portfolio company needs them. That value shows up whether or not a covenant is ever tested, and it is the reason a sponsor picks up the phone for us first rather than shopping the last ten basis points.

That is the part a commoditized view of lending misses entirely. In a $1.7 trillion market, capital is abundant and term sheets converge, so if funding were the whole job, price would decide everything and no lender would be missed. It does not, and we are, because the work starts before the wire goes out and continues long after.

And it matters most in the moments the spreadsheet cannot dictate: the quarter the numbers slip, the year a pandemic erases a customer base overnight, the three-week window when an add-on has to close or the opportunity is gone. Those choices come down to judgment, to the willingness to trust people over trailing financials, and to whether the relationship was ever real in the first place.

My friend headed into nonprofit work and I into private credit, and I no longer think the distinction he drew holds up. The best version of this job is not moving capital from one place to another. It is the value we add before anyone asks, standing behind a management team when standing behind them is the hard thing to do, and telling them the truth when the truth is unwelcome. Capital is the commodity. The partnership is not. And the difference between the two shows up long before a deal ever goes sideways, and long after it closes.

Avante Capital Provides Financing to Support Awani’s Investment in Kalustyan

Avante Capital Partners has provided financing to support Awani’s investment in Kalustyan Corporation, one of the world’s leading ethical spice and herb sourcing companies. The financing supports Awani’s acquisition of Kalustyan as the company enters its next phase of growth.

When Kalustyan’s owners began exploring a sale, they sought more than capital. They wanted a partner who would honor the company’s heritage and protect the international sourcing relationships built over generations. Kalustyan’s global supplier network and cultural identity made finding the right financial partner especially important, and the transaction reflects the kind of culturally significant, founder-oriented business that fits squarely within Avante’s lower middle market focus.

The firm put special emphasis on partnership quality, cultural alignment, and long-term support in selecting its capital provider.

The result is a highly aligned capital structure behind a business with deep ethnic roots and a longstanding international sourcing network. Avante is proud to partner with Awani in supporting Kalustyan’s next chapter.

The Race We Didn’t Run

Avante Capital Invests in Museum of Illusions Alongside Brightwood Capital

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Avante Capital Partners Invests in Museum of Illusions Alongside Brightwood Capital Advisors

The longtime partners back the world’s largest privately owned museum operator as it accelerates its global expansion

LOS ANGELES, July 1, 2026 — Avante Capital Partners (“Avante”), a lower middle market private credit and structured equity firm, today announced an investment in Museum of Illusions (“MOI”), the largest privately owned museum operator in the world. Avante made the investment alongside Brightwood Capital Advisors (“Brightwood”), a longtime investment partner, to support the company’s next phase of growth.

Founded in 2015, Museum of Illusions has grown into one of the world’s most recognized out-of-home entertainment brands, with more than 60 locations across 27 countries and five continents and more than 12 million visitors to date. Its immersive, interactive exhibits invite guests of all ages to experience the science of perception, and the company continues to open new locations in major markets around the world.

The opportunity represented a more complex, non-traditional situation that called for underwriting both a credit and an equity story. Drawing on a long history of investing together, Avante and Brightwood moved with conviction to support MOI and its management team.

“Museum of Illusions is a rare platform: a globally recognized brand that is still early in its growth,” said Lamar Horne, Principal at Avante Capital Partners. “This was not a conventional deal, and that is exactly the kind of opportunity where we can add the most value. We have a deep, trusted partnership with Brightwood, and we are proud to support their vision for the company’s next chapter.”

Avante expects Museum of Illusions to continue its trajectory as the largest privately owned museum operator in the world, expanding its geographic footprint and further establishing itself as a premier out-of-home entertainment platform.

About Avante Capital Partners

Avante Capital Partners is a lower middle market private credit and structured equity firm that provides debt and equity capital to growing companies. Avante manages approximately $1.5 billion in assets and is one of the few women- and diverse-owned firms in private credit. Over its 17-year history, the firm has maintained a track record of zero cash loan losses. For more information, visit avantecap.com.

About Brightwood Capital Advisors

Brightwood Capital Advisors, LLC is a private credit firm with a long-standing track record of investing in middle market businesses. Brightwood specializes in providing senior debt capital primarily to U.S. businesses with $5-$75 million of EBITDA within five core industries: technology & telecommunications, healthcare, business services, transportation & logistics and franchising. Brightwood partners with non-sponsored businesses as well as private equity sponsors to provide customized financing solutions for directly originated investments.

About Museum of Illusions

Museum of Illusions is the largest and fastest-growing privately owned museum brand in the world. Since opening its first location in Zagreb, Croatia in 2015, it has expanded to more than 60 locations across 27 countries and five continents, welcoming more than 12 million visitors. Its exhibits explore optical illusions and the science of perception through immersive, interactive experiences. For more information, visit museumofillusions.com.

Media Contact

Jesse Beck, Vice President

Avante Capital Partners

jesse@avantecap.com | 718.612.4785

The Naked Truth

Dispersion has arrived in private credit. Everyone swims well at high tide, but what happens when the tide goes out?

For most of the last decade, private credit rode a rising tide: capital flooded in, defaults stayed muted, and outcomes across managers looked remarkably similar. That era is closing. Rising defaults, concentrated stress in software and AI-adjacent borrowers, and a public BDC index down 23% from its peak add up to the first real stress test the asset class has faced in a decade.

The headline numbers are blunt, though. The interesting question isn’t whether private credit is in trouble, it’s which parts, and why. In our Q2 letter, we look past the surface data to where the stress actually sits:

The market is already sorting winners from losers — lower-middle-market lenders are holding par while upper-market vehicles fall. Same asset class, very different outcomes.
Scale isn’t the same as resilience — with a record share of 2025 capital raised by $1B+ funds, the pressure to deploy on a clock has consequences.
Fundamentals are being rewarded — wider spreads, lower leverage, more covenants, and roughly half the default rate where discipline held.

Dispersion is the signal. Discipline is the answer. The tide is going out and we’re about to see who came prepared.

Read the full Q2 2026 report here: Avante_Beyond_the_Headlines_The Naked-Truth

2026 AGM Sizzle Reel

Four funds in and the same discipline in the lower middle market that got us here is carrying us into our most ambitious stretch yet.

Avante Capital Partners Closes Oversubscribed SBIC Fund IV at $400 Million

Final Close Marks Continued Momentum for Firm’s Lower Middle Market Private Credit Platform

LOS ANGELES – May 20, 2026 – Avante Capital Partners (“Avante”), an award-winning private credit and equity firm focused on the lower middle market, today announced the final close of Avante Capital Partners SBIC Fund IV (the “Fund”) at $400 million. The close marks a significant milestone for the firm and reflects continued strong support from both new and existing institutional investors across the country.

Fund IV was oversubscribed with commitments from a diverse group of new and existing investors, including pension funds, banks, endowments, foundations, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals. The Fund’s investment strategy is focused on providing capital to high-quality, lower middle market businesses.

“Closing Fund IV at $400 million, oversubscribed, is a meaningful vote of confidence from our LPs,” said Ivelisse Rodriguez Simon, Managing Partner of Avante Capital Partners. “Since 2009 we’ve stayed focused on one thing: being a reliable capital partner to lower middle market businesses. We’re grateful to every investor who continues to back that work.”

The close follows a multi-year build-out of Avante’s origination, underwriting, and portfolio management capabilities, supporting broader capital deployment across the lower middle market.

“What stays with me from this close is the conviction our LPs brought to it, including institutional investors who have now backed us across multiple funds and new partners joining us for the first time,” said Chaz Cocuzza, Managing Director at Avante Capital Partners. “That kind of trust is what makes this firm work, and we don’t take it for granted.”

Avante invests $10–75 million of unitranche, junior debt, and minority equity capital per investment to support the growth of strong businesses and the jobs they create. The firm has a 17-year operating history, has invested in 60+ platforms, and has raised approximately $1.5 billion in assets under management across its funds.

About Avante Capital Partners

Avante Capital Partners is an award-winning private credit and equity firm in the lower middle market. Since 2009, Avante has been successfully providing flexible capital solutions to growing businesses generating at least $3 million in cash flows across numerous industries. Avante is a value-add partner to private equity firms, independent sponsors, and business owners throughout the United States. For more information, please visit avantecap.com.