Consumers Distributing (known in Quebec as Distribution aux Consommateurs, and informally as Consumers) was a catalogue store in Canada and the United States that operated from 1957 to 1996. At its peak, the company operated 243 outlets in Canada and 217 in the United States, including stores in every province in Canada and in the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California and Nevada. Consumers Distributing aimed to reduce costs for customers by stocking merchandise in a warehouse-type stocking system instead of displaying them in a costly showroom. Customers made their selections from a catalogue, filled out a form listing the items they wanted, then waited for stock staff to retrieve the items from the warehouse. The business model of Consumers Distributing has been described as "Internet shopping before the Internet". History The first Consumers Distributing store was opened in 1957 by Jack Stupp and Sydney Druckman in Toronto. The company was taken public in 1969. In 1978, Oshawa Group sold the 50% interest it had acquired. In 1988, revenues topped $1-billion. Consumers Distributing purchased the 42-store Cardinal Distributors catalogue chain from Steinberg Inc. and the 70-store American chain Consumers from May Department Stores, bringing its total store count to approximately 400 in 1981. During the 1980s, Consumers Distributing built a chain of toy stores called Toy City (Toyville in Quebec). In 1990 and 1991, some stores became Toy City/Consumers Distributing stores. They closed in the mid-1990s. Consumers Distributing was bought by the Quebec-based grocery retailer Provigo in 1987, then was sold in 1993 to a group controlled by Ackermans & van Haaren, a Belgian holding company. In the 1990s, Consumers Distributing struggled to compete with Zellers and then Walmart Canada. Consumers Distributing sought bankruptcy protection in 1996. Ten years following the bankruptcy, former Consumers Distributing employee Marc King relaunched the company as an online retailer. The new Consumers Distributing website operated in the run up to the 2012 holiday season, taking orders for furniture and brand-name electronics, but the site was shuttered in January 2013, and King was accused of owing back wages to employees. In May 2015, the company was issued a compliance order by Consumer Protection B.C. for deceptive acts and practices and for failing to issue refunds. The regulator reopened the investigation in October 2016 when it received a new complaint, noting that the company still had not paid penalties