Pretty damn rude, but in his defence I would imagine him getting that same question several times a day, you may well have caught him at the boiling point!
We all have our limits, better to smile and then kick a cow afterwards, than to offend any potential customer, but having worked in the service industry for a lot of years, I can actually imagine the type of day he was having....lol
Still, no excuse.....and he may well just have been your common garden variety a-hole after all, so just wipe him off the sole of your shoe and keep walking.
The bricks and mortor thing is becoming a more common theme these days as companies are trying to protect their suppliers from the on-line onslaught!
Of course what tends to happen is that the guys with the shop front then establish an on-line sales platform as well to cover both markets.
However, products that have that sort of authorised seller protection will usually offer much better margin on-line because of the authorised supply chain.