Please identify this store/business model

In 1981, or perhaps early in 1982, I bought my first 35 mm SLR. I didn’t get it from a camera store or a department store, and this was a long time before online shopping. I bought it from a store that seemed like a New Idea at the time. It’s been almost 40 years, but I’ll try to remember…

It was laid out sort of like a storefront shipping business. There was a small front area, a long counter, and hatches on the back wall with conveyor belts or roller belts. If I recall correctly, and my recollection is by no means certain, you chose an item out of a catalogue and filled out an order form. You went to the counter to pay for your item, and were told when you could pick it up. On the day, you’d go back to the store and your item would come out of the back wall and the clerk would give it to you. I suppose it was like the Sears-Roebuck Wish Book style of buying, only this store was just a storefront and not a department store. As I recall, the prices were very good. I’m guessing that prices were low because they did not have to maintain a large building and inventory.

Is there a name for this type of store from the early 1980s? Any chance anyone remembers the specific name of the store? (This one happened to be in Lancaster, CA, in northern Los Angeles County.)

Service Merchandise?

There’s also Best Products.

The OP is definitely describing a catalog showroom, but I remember that Service Merchandise had one of each item on display, so you could see and touch it. There was another such chain called Consumer Distributing that just had catalogs out front. And I never saw a Best Products store, but I remember magazine articles about the unusual architecture of their stores.

Edited to add that Service Merchandise usually had the inventory in the back warehouse, so you could get it right away, or at least as soon as the guys in the back could find it and put it on the conveyor belt. (It was a bit of a thrill to see the thing I ordered come down the conveyor.)

There were other regional catalog showroom retailers as well: Edison’s in Oklahoma, Ellman’s in Atlanta, Wilson’s in Louisians, Bennett Bros. in New Jersey and Chicago, Consumers Distributing.

I think it was a way around the agreements name-brand manufacturers of electronics, cameras, jewelry, etc., had with department stores regarding manufacturer’s suggested retail price and exclusivity. Because the catalog showrooms were not selling over the counter—but instead just taking orders for later delivery—they were allowed to price things more like Sears and Montgomery Wards.

Consumers’ Distributing was a store chain in Canada - not sure if it was an offshoot of an American one, or a copy. Same idea - order from catalog, sometimes they had it in stock and run into the back and bring it to the counter, sometimes it would show up later. Ontario liquor stores were like that too - fill out the slip and hand it to the clerk at the counter, they would go back/send it back and fill the order for you, some stores it arrived from the back in a tub on those roller conveyors.

In Hawaii, we had Jewelcor in 1976. But this was a combo department store/catalog sales store. This local article states it was our first catalog store, but I recall another store (thought it was Jewelcor) at a different location before the one mentioned in the article that only had a showroom and everything had to be ordered through the catalog.

https://staradvertiser.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=22223620&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjI2MTU0MzMxNSwiaWF0IjoxNTU1NzQ0MzY0LCJleHAiOjE1NTU4MzA3NjR9.wjwYzRLRacm5PDDMAIoZ1qvxhdWRyNpp11Crsvhsx_4

In Salt Lake City during that time frame was a store called LaBelle’s (not sure about the spelling) that followed that same format.

ETA–LaBelle’s had the products on site, you ordered at a service desk and a few minutes later the item came out on a conveyor belt as mentioned above.

Lots of past tense in this thread, but in the UK the store Argos still operates like this. Are there any catalogue showrooms still extant in the US, or other parts of the world?

My memory of Service Merchandise and Consumer Distributing was that you got your merchandise right away, rather then coming back another day - they kept stock just like any other store, only it was not accessible to customers. The problem was that if they were out of stock on a particular item you wouldn’t find out until after you waited on line and paid for the order.

JC Penney used to have a store like that in Columbus (and presumably other places). It was attached to a distribution warehouse and you could buy things from the catalog. I think there was also a traditional retail setup at the same place, selling discontinued and overstocked merchandise.

Lee Valley Tools largely works like this, at least at the store local to me. There are some displays in store where you can just pick things up, but most of the stock is held in the back, and an employee puts the order together for you.

In my part of the world, before Service Merchandise, there was Sam Solomon Company.

Also, in the early days, Circuit City was a showroom with separate item pickup desk.

I would say it was Best Products. They were famous for the funky architecture of some of their stores.

That sounds just like Best (or Best Buy?). There was one just like this in Torrance, so if yours was in Lancaster, I’d imagine it was part of this same chain.

So does Screwfix (tool and hardware store). It even has almost identical order slips in a little rack with pencils (and an enormously thick catalogue).

I was an electronics (Sight and Sound) manager at Service Merchandise in the mid 80’s and I don’t think they had any locations matching the OP’s description. The stores were typically a showroom with most items on display. When you ordered we could tell if the item was in stock or not. If so, you would pick it up at the electronics counter or the Jewelry counter for those two parts, and everything else went to the main pick up area (conveyor belt/rollers). The reason for this is the warehouse was in two sections… a secure one with limited access for Jewelry and electronics, and the general warehouse for everything else. If it was not in stock and the item was current you could “Back Order” the item and you would be called when the item came in (and you had 10 days to pick it up). This was not the normal way things were purchased though. If the location had other stores in the area we could check their stock and put an item on hold there but the customer had to go there to pick it up.

Someone mentioned that you had to wait in line and pay before finding out if it was in stock or not. Waiting in line… yes, but paying no. If the number of items was below a certain level the procedure was to call the warehouse (or go back yourself if electronics/jewelry) to assure the item was actually there before ringing anything up. Occasionally it may show we had 200 of a VCR in stock and it would get rung up, and then you would find out it was still on a pallet from a truck that had just come in. You would still get it at that time but you may have to wait a bit while it was tracked down and unpacked.

I’ve been to electronics distributors with this model. They’re the kind of places that sell components, connectors, cables, etc. I think many such places are mostly mail order and the walk-in customers are only a tiny fraction of the business.

We had both LaBelle’s and later Service Merchandise in my teens and early 20’s. I loved their catalogs; it seemed like they had nice descriptions and a relatively big selection (of non-clothes items). Our LaBelle’s catalog was even hard-covered; I don’t know why.

About half of the catalog was jewelry. When we were buying an engagement ring at a local jeweler’s (early 1980’s), I mentioned that I could just go to Service Merchandise for a bigger, cheaper diamond. He was disgusted with the idea, stating that the SM diamonds were very low-quality, which may have been true.

Service Merchandise had a large presence at the 1992 opening of the Mall of America, but it seemed like lots of their items were always out of stock, probably due to the volume of visitors they had. It closed in 1997. That link described the demise of these kinds of stores for a variety of reasons.

Didn’t Sharper Image run the same type of business - write it up and get it from the back room?

Not true actually. All of their diamonds over a certain size were professionally graded. You could pay more/less based on the grade. The manager and assistant manager of that department had to have a certification of some sort (Gemologist?) and only employees who had specialized training could work the diamond counter. They would also have periodic diamond events which was always a big deal where they would bring in larger and higher grade diamonds than were normally on hand that you could have specially mounted.

Bit of a moot point since they have been gone for 17 years or so but they were just as good of a quality as most box jewelry stores.