AVENSYS

My son Markus formed the company at around the turn of the century. The name comes from 'Audio Visual Entertainment Systems. The original idea was to combine a retail outet with a professional audio visual hire business serving the local hotels and conference centres.

The first shop was here in the village of Copthorne in 2002.

When we took on the shop

We were running out of space fast, even though we had taken another unit in Copthorneas as a warehouse and repair workshop.

In 2008 we bought a 2500 sq foot unit in Rutherford Way on the Crawley industrial estate and moved the hire side and office staff into it. It was not possible to use it as a retail outlet so there was no external signage,

Photos below on the left as we moved in and on right after we had fitted new roller shutter doors.

It wasn't long before this became too small as well so we bought the unit next door and cut a joining doorway as shown.

Next, in 2011 we opened a Panasonic Store in County Mall, Crawley.

When we decided to close the Copthorne shop in 2014

we rebranded the store Avensys Panasonic Sony and Samsung

One of our shop assistants - can't remember her name

The original Panasonic Store on it's opening day

It was obvious that we were not operating efficiently in seperate units and we needed to have a major change and get everything under one roof where we could operate a 'super store' representing the major suppliers and have our hire and event and professional facilities on hand.

We looked at everything that came on the sale market without much luck until the electrical wholesaler TLC decided to upsize to a new local unit.

Markus managed to sell the Rutherford Way unit and buy TLC's old building and move in in January 2014,

It was set originally up as a wholesaler of electrical goods, vast areas of pallet racking and a small trade counter with some offices upstairs.

The unit was in 2 adjoining buildings. We decided to keep the rear one as the stock room and turn the front one into the superstore.

It took 8 months of sweat, graft and some tears to achieve. All the pallet racking had to be removed and steel work for 2 floors built, the floors constructed, together with miles of cabling both for power and data. more windows were added and a shop front door fitted. As it was going to be open to the public it had to comply with all the regulations, both health and safety and fire.