SUCCESS on the continent is being reported by a York headquartered international music retailer after overseas sales grew by 124 per cent.
In a trade update, for the year ending February 28, 2017, Gear4music, of Clifton Moor, revealed a 58 per cent rise in total sales, which grew from £35.5 million the previous year to £56.1 million.
Rising revenues were bolstered by a surge in sales from Europe and the rest of the world, which soared from less than £10 million to £21.3 million during the year.
The opening of the firm’s Swedish distribution centre in November last year resulted in a 186 per cent raise in Scandinavian sales, with the recent opening of a German distribution centre expected to deliver similar results.
Gear4music’s chief executive officer Andrew Wass, said: “We are extremely pleased with our trading performance over the last 12 months, with 58 percent sales growth being well ahead of our expectations at the start of the year.
“As expected, we have achieved especially strong growth in Europe and with our Swedish distribution centre opening in November last year and our German distribution centre commencing operations during the last few weeks, we look forward to building on our success on the continent.
“We remain fully focused on our long-term growth strategy of investing in our people, products, websites and operational capabilities, to continually improve the customer proposition and look forward to further progress in the year ahead.
“Whilst continuing to invest in the future growth of the business, we have closely managed our costs and the Board is now confident of delivering profits for the year marginally ahead of our increased expectations signalled in January.”
The 12 month period covered in the trading update, issues to investors on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), also saw the company’s active customer base increase by 49 per cent to 339,8000.
Operaing from an office, showroom and distribuion centre in York, and distribuion centres in Sweden and Germany, the Gear4Music sells own-brand musical instruments and music equipment alongside third party brands including Fender, Yamaha and Gibson, to customers ranging from beginners to musical enthusiasts and professionals, in the UK, Europe and, more recently, into the rest of the world.
Having developed its own ecommerce platform, with multilingual, multicurrency and fully responsive design websites covering 19 countries, the Group has rapidly expanded its database and continues to build its overseas presence.
Gear4Music will report its full year results for the financial year on May 9.
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