I will take a few minutes to relay my experience: I used to be a partner in a company that shipped 1000+ packages a day with fedex. I ran the websites that sol

I will take a few minutes to relay my experience: I used to be a partner in a company that shipped 1000+ packages a day with fedex. I ran the websites that sold those products, and I made sure to take about 30 minutes a day in the warehouse to help load the truck. They didn't need me down there, but it was a very measurable output of my work. I might have to disagree with the other comment here about Amazon Fulfillment. It may relieve you of a lot of the logistics, but it will also greatly affect how you resolve issues -- bad batches of products, customer service, wrong/missing parts... At the end of the day what matters in physical goods e-commerce is amazing customer service, and you cannot do that unless you have access to the warehouse. You have to have physical access to the product. You have to have a good relationship with the fedex/ups drivers and account managers. You have to work fedex and ups against each other when the time comes to renegotiate your rates. When you outsource too many parts of your business you end up too dependent on too many variables you cannot control. Your business continuity becomes more opaque. Another story: same company in 2005, South Florida-- post hurricane Katrina and Wilma. Because we controlled a lot of the variables and relationships (logistics, internet, warehousing) we were able to do the following: * Redirect the 800 number to a vonage line and send our customer service staff up to an Orlando hotel room to keep answering phones. * Because of our good relationship with fedex we were able to get them to send an empty truck down from Atlanta to pickup in Boca Raton. * We processes printing labels and tickets over a 2G wifi connection. That is duct-tape business continuity. All said -- it would have been better to just move the company to a location that is not prone to Hurricanes. We did that in 2007. OK, this got a little long. I'm happy to share more of my experience if anyone cares.