page_title: A&B Sound
section_title: Expansion throughout British Columbia
hierarchical_section_title: A&B Sound / History / Expansion throughout British Columbia
caption_attribution_description: Downtown Victoria A&amp;B Sound
context_page_description: A&B Sound was a Canadian home electronics retailer based in Richmond, British Columbia. Its flagship store was located in downtown Vancouver, and the chain expanded to other cities in B.C. and in western Canada, but the company began struggling in the 2000s decade and collapsed altogether in 2008.
context_section_description: A second store opened in 1977 in Victoria, British Columbia in a building once used as that city's first hospital, and later as a brothel. This building is now home to a number of businesses and the University of Victoria's poverty law clinic, known as the Law Centre.  In 1980, the company's Vancouver location expanded to three floors, followed in 1981 by the construction of a new store on Hastings Street, near the border of Burnaby. A fourth location opened in 1984 on South West Marine Drive in Vancouver.
  Fred Steiner retired in 1987, and his son Nick became president of A&B Sound. New stores subsequently opened in Surrey (1987), Burnaby's Metrotown area (1988), and Nanaimo (1990). Fred Steiner died in 1991, the same year that the East Hastings location moved into a larger property at the corner of Hastings Street and the Trans Canada Highway, close to the PNE Playland. The following year, an eighth store opened in Kelowna.
caption: The former Downtown Victoria A&B Sound founded by Fred Steiner
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