- Business
- Gear4music (Holdings) plc operates as a leading UK-based online retailer of musical instruments, music equipment and audio-visual products; its core offerings encompass guitars and basses, drums and percussion, pianos and keyboards, orchestral and brass instruments, woodwind instruments, live sound and lighting systems, DJ gear, recording and studio equipment, music production software, home audio products and accessories; the company stocks over 60,000 stock-keeping units from more than 1,000 manufacturers including premium brands such as Yamaha, Fender, Roland, Casio and Gibson, complemented by proprietary in-house brands like SubZero for professional audio, Hartwood guitars, Premier Percussion drums, Eden amplification, Archer strings, Coppergate brass, Rosedale woodwinds, Playlite student instruments, G4M premium lines and Gear4music entry-level products. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in York, England, Gear4music serves amateur musicians, enthusiasts and professionals through over 21 multilingual, multicurrency websites operating in 15 languages and nine currencies; it ships to 190 countries worldwide with distribution centres in England, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Ireland, alongside showrooms in York, Rosersberg, Mülheim an der Ruhr and Bacup for AV.com, its specialist hi-fi and home cinema platform acquired as AV Distribution Ltd in late 2021. In recent developments, Gear4music acquired Studiospares, a UK studio equipment supplier, in October 2024; it purchased stock and digital assets from competitors PMT (S&T Audio Ltd) and GAK.co.uk Ltd following their administrations in 2025, bolstering its UK market position; the company launched a second-hand trade-in and refurbished instrument platform in 2023, introduced its Sustainable Sound Scheme in 2025 pledging tree planting for select product purchases, relaunched its growth strategy in June 2024 with platform upgrades including a marketplace aggregator, promo centre, customer engagement tools and AI-based marketing system, and reported first-half fiscal 2026 revenue growth of 31% to £80.7 million alongside full-year fiscal 2025 revenues of £146.7 million, EBITDA of £10 million and pretax profit of £1.6 million.