How your product reaches people decides your margin, your cash flow and how fast you can grow, and it decides all three before you sell a single unit. Choosing deliberately is one of the few decisions where thinking costs nothing and getting it wrong costs years.

Most small producers never choose. They take whoever approaches them first, and inherit that buyer’s terms, pricing and payment timing as if it were the industry standard.

Three numbers, and the strategy is guesswork without them:

• What one unit costs you to make, fully loaded, including your own labour
• What you currently sell it for
• How many units you can produce in a month without hiring

That last one is the constraint most people forget. A distributor who wants four thousand units a month is not an opportunity if you can make six hundred.