If you intend to manufacture your own goods, your production operations alone will involve many aspects of starting a new business. You will have to hire employees or independent contractors, buy or lease property and equipment, finance the operations, and protect the intellectual property involved. For this reason, many companies outsource the production of goods to dedicated manufacturing companies.

Nearly every business needs suppliers, and having a good supplier network is critical to any enterprise. In fact, the success or failure of your business could turn on your relationship with your suppliers and their ability to deliver the quantity of goods you need at the quality you desire, on time, and at a predictable price.

For that reason, it is always a good idea to have alternative sources of supply for everything that is critical to your business. Otherwise, the success of your business will depend entirely on the success of your supplier’s business, which you have no control over.

For everything other than one-off purchases, it is a good idea to have a supply agreement in place to increase efficiency, ensure a stable working relationship with your supplier and guarantee as much as possible that you receive the products you desire on time. Whether to lock in a long-term supply agreement or retain the flexibility of an order-by-order arrangement is a question that depends on the product being supplied and its importance to your business.

In the end, however, regardless of whether you have a dependable supply arrangement or manufacture products yourself, it is still necessary to get your products into the hands of customers. And for that you will need to actively market and sell what your business has to offer.