I'm looking at setting up an e-commerce site involving custom apparel, and I've been impressed by BigCommerce, http://www.bigcommerce.com If anyone has feedback on that one positive or negative, I'd be very interested in hearing about it, I'm just about to go with it. Need speed and simplicity, and am not in a position to drop thousands on a custom site design. That can come later.
How many products and how do you plan on handling transactions?
PayPal isnt a bad way to get started. You can always ditch them if you reach a certain volume of sales.
For sure - dont spend on “design.” Most of todays big Content Management Systems come with nice themes - that can be customized enough to appear unique.