Yes and no. They have access to the shoes in the warehouse they're just not currently in store stock. When he takes your order I'm assuming he's making an order to the warehouse for your specific shoes that when the store receives they then ship to you. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily a pre order since they're checking warehouse stock before they make your order.
Just basing this off completely nothing besides the experiences I've heard/read/had.
Also not sure if this helps at all just throwing my 2 cents out there. You can call it a pre order if you want? I guess it's up to you