Fulfilment

Fulfilment is the physical half of selling merchandise. Somebody has to hold stock, pick the right item, pack it, hand it to a carrier and deal with returns. You can do this yourself from a spare room, pay a third-party logistics provider to run it from their warehouse, or use print on demand and hold no stock at all.

The routes trade cost against margin. Doing it yourself is cheapest per unit and eats your week. Print on demand removes the risk of unsold boxes and takes the largest slice of each sale.