Gear4music completes £9m acquisition of Lancashire home cinema retailer

Yorkshire-based Gear4music, the online retailer of musical instruments and music equipment, has completed the £9.2m acquisition of AV Online in Lancashire.

AV Online has been based in Bacup, Rossendale since being founded by Carl Pickles in 2003.

The company has grown rapidly to become one of the UK’s leading online retailers of Hi-Fi, home cinema, and specialist audiovisual equipment.

Gear4music’s CEO, Andrew Wass, said the acquisition was in line with the company’s strategy.

He said: “We are very pleased to have completed the acquisition of AV Distribution Ltd trading as AV Online, and welcome the team into the Gear4music Group.

“AV Online is an online retailer of audio-visual equipment, including HiFi speakers and home cinema systems.

“With the launch of AV.com scheduled for January, we look forward to building on the profitable growth achieved by AV Distribution Ltd, and leveraging the strength of our e-commerce platform and our European infrastructure to accelerate our growth in this £2.7bn European market.

“We are also pleased to report our systems and supply chain operations have performed well over the busy Black Friday and Cyber Monday period, and we continue to be confident that our full year financial results will be in line with the recently revised consensus market expectations.”