Chief Executive Candy Suits bought Symbolic Displays Inc. (SDI), a manufacturer of flight hardware and simulation products, in 1988 with money she had saved from her early modeling career.
Suits had started modeling when she was 12 and said she gave all her checks to her parents up until she was in her early 20s. She wouldn’t touch the wages until several years later, married to her husband Norman Suits, who would be quietly called into Symbolic Displays to evaluate its business model and figure out why the company was losing money.
After Suits handed in his report, the Minnesota-based parent company Sheldahl Corp. decided to sell, and he came to his wife with the idea to buy the firm. Norman Suits had spent many years as a test pilot, been the head of Area 51 – “in those days, it was just a secret site,” Suits said – and traveled to different air bases as both a pilot and colonel during his career.
She agreed, and they bought Symbolic Displays, founded in 1964, completely with her own funds of $100,000. The two ran the company together, her as chief financial officer and he as chief executive, for the next 14 years until her husband passed away from leukemia.
“His strength was [people], getting along with everybody. With the running of the business, the contracts, the money – that was what I was good at,” Suits told the Business Journal of growing the firm with her husband. “We complemented each other.”
Over the last 36 years, Symbolic Displays has added new product lines, providing tech for clients like Boeing, Honeywell and CAE. The company is also called a star supplier for Lockheed Martin.
“If you fly on a commercial plane, I’m on all of them,” she said.
The company ships about $1 million worth of avionics per month from its 30,000-square-foot facility and counts over 60 employees.
Symbolic Displays generated $10 million in revenue last year, up 11% from 2022, manufacturing products such as flight simulator control panels, cockpit displays, integrated and illuminated keyboards, switch panels, LED-based lighting systems, color display units and more.
“We’re doing everything in the cockpit,” Suits said.
“All the stuff you see and touch, we do.”
Symbolic ranks No. 38 on the Business Journal’s annual list of women-owned businesses.
Diligence
Suits describes the growth of SDI as gradual.
“We have always been strong and steady. Every year was half a million more, half a million more,” she said.
Symbolic Displays is forecasting to hit over $11 million in revenue in 2025.
On top of an increase in contracts, Suits pointed to a few product expansions that significantly opened Symbolic Displays to more business.
About 18 years into running the manufacturer, Suits decided to add simulator and cockpit displays to the company’s longtime lineup of keyboards and panels, mainly for commercial aircraft.
“There’s always something new or someone always calling for something new,” she said.
Avionic displays now count for half of the company’s business, according to Suits.
Symbolic Displays was asked several years ago to start building control indicator units (CIU) typically used in military aircraft that predict when another plane is about to shoot and tell the pilot to move.
Soon, CIU displays counted as another significant product line and began to appear in commercial planes as well, Suits said, describing the segment as “going gangbusters.”
The defense business has surpassed SDI’s commercial business in the last year as well, although Suits foresees the scale tipping back the other way soon. Lately, orders and contracts for older models of planes and jets have started to come in for refurbishment.
SDI also handles avionic repairs through a large customer care department.
“My experience as a test pilot’s wife definitely moved me into the stratosphere,” Suits said of gaining her aircraft knowledge throughout the years before running SDI. Her first husband had also been a test pilot and was training to be an astronaut before they divorced.
“They were a cut above the rest,” she said.
Suits spoke fondly of the longevity of Symbolic Displays and the gratification of watching the products her team create work.
“Quality counts. That kind of diligence pays off,” she said.
