Woodbridge Stereo / Video

Woodbridge Stereo/Video was founded in 1971 by Marc Chelnik, in Woodbridge, NJ. The company began in a 1,000 square feet building selling and installing home and car stereo systems. As we shall see, from these humble beginnings it grew into one of America's premier home entertainment retailers. The early years were quite successful. So much so, that in 1975 land was purchased and a new building was erected at 751 Amboy Avenue. The product selection was expanded to include higher line audio electronics and speakers and Woodbridge Stereo/Video became a significant local force in the specialty audio community. In 1978, a devastating fire destroyed the original building. Not daunted, plans were immediately begun to construct an even bigger new facility of approximately 4,000 square feet on the same site. This was completed and opened in the spring of 1979. In 1980, Tom Altobelli joined Woodbridge Stereo/Video and the company began its expansion into High End Audio in a big way. Over the next 5 years, high end product lines from Audio Research, Threshold, Bryston, Magnepan, conrad-johnson, B&W, M.I.T., Tandberg, Revox, SME, Infinity, Quad, Wilson, California Audio, Oracle, Snell, SOTA, VPI and many others were added. At this time we also became one of the first to embrace the upcoming Home Theater revolution, introducing projection video systems from Advent, Kloss and Barco (the nation's first residential consumer installer). To commemorate this, our name was changed from Woodbridge Stereo Center to Woodbridge Stereo/Video. We were now a nationally recognized high end audio/video specialist. The business shift to integrated audio/video and distributed music systems brought with it the need for increased and more rigorous custom installation capabilities. In 1986 Craig DeAndrea and his installation firm, Safe and Sound Systems, joined Woodbridge Stereo/Video. This further expanded our services menu to include electronic telephony and home security. There's a joke in our industry that the goal is to make every custom system the same. While that might help profitability, we don't think it's particularly good for our customers. After all, there's a good reason we call it custom. We take for granted that competence, robustness and ease of use will be paramount in any installation. We think our customers deserve more.