Assuming the hard part is technical
When I started the store, I assumed the challenge was building the system: payment integration, logistics APIs, multi-currency, multi-language. Troublesome, but all documented.
The genuinely hard parts were these.
1. Product selection
Technical people share a misconception that data can compute what will sell.
It cannot.
Data tells you what already sold out — and by the time you see it, that wave has passed. What you actually need is a judgement about what will sell in six weeks. No dashboard gives you that.
2. Logistics
Domestic parcels are a solved problem. International ones are a negotiation with reality: customs delays, remote-area surcharges, packages that vanish and reappear three weeks later.
You cannot engineer this away. You can only price it in and communicate honestly.
3. After-sales
People do not write to you when things go well. Every message is a problem, and every problem is emotional before it is technical.
My first month of replies read like a changelog. It took a while to understand that the person wants to feel heard before they want a solution.
4. Working alone
There is nobody to tell you that this decision is dumb. Automated reconciliation saved my store, but only after a quarter of manual bookkeeping taught me what reconciliation even needed to check.
Honest conclusion
Technology got me to the starting line. Everything after is a business problem, and I am still learning it.
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