I think high-end photography is conducive to that style of operation, though. Handling the photographic items, and carrying them around the store, would likely lead to damage before sale, if things were left out in the open on the sales floor.

(My memory is a little shady. They were around when I was a kid and had gone under by the time I was a teenage).

Curiously Argos was owned by Big Tobacco for many years. I wonder how helpful that was during a time when retail was far from easy due to inflation, high interest rates, no EPOS and big changes to VAT, import tariffs and other taxation.

Much like how illegal drug businesses have front companies that don't have to make money but allow illegal money to be laundered into the legitimate economy, I wonder if Argos worked like that, enabling their owners to repatriate untaxed earnings. If some type of financial engineering went on then that could explain why Argos survived whereas Best didn't.

All the old Green Shield shops became the first Argos shops, and worked very much the same as they always had, just without the stamps. For the first few years you could trade old stamps.