Interestingly, at the time, we WERE the high end store in our area. I call our store upper-mid fi because, in retrospect, thats what the lines we carried were. We sold some very credible high-end products, Audible Illusions, EAD, B&K, Dynaco's Second Coming, Kinergetics, B&K, Sumo, Mirage, Snell (original incarnation), B&W (even keeping a pair of B&W 801's on display), but the meat of our business was Denon, Carver, Paradigm and the $1500-$2000 stereo system.
I deduct "high-end" points, too, because a large part of our business was dedicated to car audio. We did very credible, well installed systems in the worst possible audio environments. Indeed, we purveyed very good sounding "high-end" car systems (although I always considered that an oxymoron).
And, Carl, I definitely agree that the business model has changed. In the late 80's, marketing was vastly different than it is today. There were no home-based retailers...or, if there were, nobody new about them. In addition, a home based business would have gotten little support from rep firms and mfg's, so their knowledge base and ability to display or demo would have been very limited.
The home-based high-end store is now I believe, is the trend. It is much easier to find home-based dealers now than it was in the '80's and information is much more readily available. Also, the home-based retailer has the advantage in that they can much more closely match their demo rooms to a customer's scenario, whether they have a dedicated-audio-man-cave in the basement or a living room used by wife kids and pets.