MARK Johnson is used to running a sound business - literally.

Fifteen years ago his company, Alphasound, was a mobile discotheque service, operating a fleet of mobile DJs who mainly served York's Royal York Hotel, the Viking Moat House and other venues.

Now he is a director of Alphasound Audio Visual, based at Northminster Business Park in Upper Poppleton, York, a £500,000 turnover organisation so dynamic that he is pitching for both the Small Business of the Year and Best Use of New Technology titles in the 2004 Evening Press Business Awards. Mark and his wife, Elizabeth, started the audio-visual side of the business in 1989 to supplement his income as a DJ so that he did not have to work six days a week.

They bought a small public address system and hired it out, but as he was also constantly asked for overhead and slide projectors, he arranged a bank business development loan to extend his equipment and rapidly expanded out of their double garage into the Old School building in Rufforth.

Then they bought a 3,000sq ft warehouse on the Northminster Business Park to keep pace with the massive demand and changes in technology and, with the help of senior technician Ian Woodall, Alphasound has boomed

The business carries a full stock of audio-visual equipment, staging, lighting, "intelligent" lighting and stage sets with 75 per cent of its trade outside York, particularly in London and the Home Counties, but with an increasing number of big orders from abroad.

The firm even created a Spanish Galleon stage set which it delivered to the five star La Manga Resort in Spain for a pharmaceutical conference themed A Voyage Of Discovery. It flew three tonnes of equipment to Mauritius for a product launch and Mark has just returned from a similar event in Miami.

Updated: 16:18 Monday, September 27, 2004