Online musical instrument retailer Gear4music has reported a 66% rise in sales as sales in Europe soared 137%.

The company is hoping to open its first European distribution centre before the end of the year, in the wake of European sales growing to account for 34% of all sales compared to 24% last year.

Gear4music's chief executive Andrew Wass said: "We are very encouraged by our trading performance during the first four months of the new financial year. We continue to invest the proceeds from our IPO in June 2015 in our ecommerce system, stock and staff to deliver on our strategy of constantly improving our proposition, which helped drive the 66% sales growth in the period.

"Gross margins and administrative expenses over the period were broadly consistent with management's expectations for the current financial year, which puts the group in a good position to deliver full year profit expectations.”