Where the hell do you start?

I've recently found myself in the position where a client has offered to drop ship for me, partly to give me greater freedom of layout/content/style than they'd be happy to risk on their own domain and partly to see if I could come up with some form of drop shipping "template" that could then be rolled out to a wider audience ... either way they're to cheap to pay me the development hours ;) ... So, now I have a conundrum, do I attempt to bend an existing shopping cart to work ( and look ) the way I want it, or do I try and bend b2evo into being an e-commerce solution?

Each has it's own advantages, using off the shelf e-commerce software means that it already does all the tedious stuff required for a shopping cart to function, but I'd spend god knows how many man hours learning the system, and especially the code, before I could begin to use it for a drop shipping site. On the other hand, I'm not to shabby with the evo code base so I'd be able to crack on and add all the custom stuff required to make this all work ... within my lifetime. The downside of using b2evo is that it's not exactly geared up to be an e-commerce solution out of the box.

Decisions, decisions

I guess it all comes down to "which is the better use of my time?", currently my thoughts are "use an e-commerce package and face the 'now make it available to a wider audience' bridge when I get there", by then the chances are that I'd have a much deeper knowledge of the chosen packages code base and in the meantime I could make a few quid ... but ... there's always a "but" huh? ... *if* I went the evo route then I'd save myself a load of learning and, if I needed to, I could change the core in cvs to add any hooks 'n' stuff that would make my life easier long term.

So ... hands up if you think I should go the evo route

¥