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The USA used to have "Service Merchandise" [1], which was a similar concept -- it was a "catalog showroom", you'd walk the isles, find the product you wanted an
by Johnny555 9y ago
The USA used to have "Service Merchandise" [1], which was a similar concept -- it was a "catalog showroom", you'd walk the isles, find the product you wanted and write down the code and then after you check out, you'd wait for your product to appear on a conveyer belt from the warehouse. They went out of business in the early 2000's.
I don't know of any similar stores that are still in business.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise
- peter303 9y agoIkea
- rsynnott 9y agoIkea's a bit different, in that you collect the items yourself in a warehouse, and it's mostly furniture-centric. Argos is more like a small Amazon in a building; they sell all sorts of stuff.
- philipodonnell 9y agoIkea still works this way with larger items.
- SippinLean 9y agoI still remember seeing my SNES come down that conveyor belt.
- DrScump 9y agoSM was the third in that category (locally), after Consumers Distributing and Best Products. There was also one named something like DAK (not the Drew Kaplan electronics-specific thing); they had a store at Camden and Union in Campbell/San Jose. Years earlier, there was Unity, but they had few stores and were mostly catalog. One could argue that Sears was the original catalog+store model.