Elizabeth 'Wizz' Halley and Sam Stoffelen have celebrated their first year owning Avenue Records, Launceston's only independent record store. Video by Aaron Smith (7/1/25)
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00:00I can't believe it's been a year. That's so really, that's so bizarre to me. It went so quickly.
00:07And to think about where we started and where we are now, I'm just really proud that it's
00:14happened and we've grown our customer base a lot and grown our knowledge a lot. And
00:23yeah, I'm just excited to have a whole year. We were here for a few years beforehand under
00:30Callum, who was the old owner, and we just had such a great time here. And yeah, so when Cal
00:36asked if we wanted to take over, it was kind of a, it was a no brainer. We took a week to decide
00:42because we thought that that was the sensible thing to do, but I think straight away we knew
00:47that we wanted to take over. I think our customer base has become wider. I think a few more people
00:54know about us now. And I think we've started stocking a few different genres of music that
01:03maybe we didn't have before. I think that's what I love about the shop the most is swapping music
01:08suggestions and learning all the little things about music. Who wrote this? Who collaborated
01:14with this? If you like this person, you'll like this person. And I think that's really special.
01:20What this offers to the community is it's just a space to chat and connect, whether you're
01:25actually buying stuff or just coming in. Like we have a lot of teenagers coming in, just
01:29rifling through CDs and picking stuff up and showing their friends. And I think that's
01:37what it offers. It's just a community. And that's, yeah, I think in a time like now,
01:43small communities are what really matters. So I'm glad we're here for that reason,
01:47if that's how you feel. Yeah.