AVInside is a South African portal devoted to the HiFi, Home Theatre, and Home Automation industries. The web platform builds not only on its publishers’ experience at Audio Video South Africa, but will incorporate content and concepts pioneered by the late Deon Schoeman’s legendary magazine.
Audio Video South Africa (AVSA) was a ground-breaking publication in every sense of the word. Founded by Deon Schoeman in July 1988, the magazine spent over three decades as the only truly South African source of audio visual industry news, reviews and features. Deon achieved massive success in the media and publishing sectors, and anchored AVSA until his untimely passing in 2019.
“Deon and I met in the late 1990s. I had been a long-time fan of his writing and we struck a friendship – which led to us brainstorming a response to the euphoria of the dotcom boom of the early 2000s,” recalls Sean Jammy. “We decided to register the domain ‘AVInside’, partly because we felt that we needed a different name to the print publication, and partly because the ‘.com’ version was available – we wanted to go big!”
The AVInside project was shelved soon after its inception, but Sean and Deon worked together on several projects over the forthcoming years. Vicki Fulford, the creative force behind AVSA and several of Deon’s other projects, was a key asset to AVSA, and together with her husband, Ken, was responsible for the creative direction of the print magazine, and the creation of the revised AVSA website in 2017.
“The AVSA website was really successful – it received great industry support, and sections like the classifieds really seemed to be game changers for consumers,” says Vicki, “unfortunately when Deon died the site lost momentum, but Deon’s son, Adam, kept the classifieds going.”
Sean and Vicki identified an opportunity to launch a new publication featuring quality content and an authoritative voice for the South African AV industry early in 2021, and subsequently revived the AVInside brand.
“AVSA boosted the AV industry for over 30 years, and we want to emulate this. The industry needs a window to showcase itself, and to grow new audio- and videophiles,” states Sean, “AVInside has achieved great traction in its first month of publishing, with over 500 visitors and thousands of page views – purely through word of mouth.”
The team’s vision for AVInside is to innovate significantly, with system reviews, lossless recordings of systems, architectural showcases and experiential events joining the tried and tested formula of authoritative, unbiased reviews, and informative news and features.
Such has been AVInside’s early success that Deon’s family has agreed to allow the site to use the historical AVSA content, as well as its winning classified formula. AVInside’s Marketplace will shortly incorporate the AVSA classifieds, and the avsa.co.za domain will eventually point to avinside.co.za.
“We are thrilled to be able to honour Deon’s legacy by keeping the AVSA content alive,” concludes Vicki Fulford, “Deon loved the AV fraternity, and we hope to continue to serve this community for many years to come.”
For more information contact Vicki Fulford – vicki@avinside.co.za – 082 773 8187