Sounds like the old general store model, you didn’t browse yourself, the shop keep would bring out what you wanted, it was always behind the counter. I experienced this in China when I started visiting in 1999/early 2000s, it’s mostly not like that anymore though. You still have department stores where you need to buy things first before touching them, though.
Oh Service Merchandise was a thing in the USA also, where I was living at in Mississippi at least. It was basically catalog focused store with a showroom.
IKEA is kind of like that also, but you have to get everything yourself after picking it out upstairs. And Sears might have been like this at some point before I was born.
Argos in the UK was similar. You would go into the store and look up the product in a catalog. Then go to counter and order it, wait 2-5 minutes and they give you the product. I found it quite convenient.
Screwfix do this too. Just a counter with a handful of staff who go and get your items.
If you pre-order it's waiting at the desk. Very handy for people who can order from the job site on the account and send the lad round to grab it.
And a (relatively) unshittified website too because if jobbing tradies can't use the damn thing because it's too loaded down with ads and bullshit, they just won't.
They're still there. Was surprised to run into one recently when I was in London (they pulled out of Ireland a while back, and I'd assumed they'd just closed totally at that point, because it _does_ feel like an increasingly marginalised business model.)
They still exist. Tend to be pretty competitive on price, although they must be losing out to online shopping in a lot of places since they don't offer any showroom advantage.
In my experience because you're picking up from the Argos you can do an instant return if you realize you ordered wrong (or the item is rubbish). Not perfect but a good way to get your hands on the product with an easy refund option
Little bit more specialized, but Lee Valley Tools [https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca] stores seem to still operate this way. Showroom (and a few computer kiosks) and order forms up front, then line up for them to pull the items from the back.
Reading the history of Consumers (thanks, I never knew this existed):
>In the 1990s, Consumers Distributing struggled to compete with Zellers and then Walmart Canada. Consumers Distributing sought bankruptcy protection in 1996.
