Fortune_Hunter - 7:47 pm on Jul 23, 2009 (gmt 0)

I had an interesting situation arise recently. I re-connected with some old acquaintances whom I highly respect for their business savvy. Since I last caught up with them they are in the early stages of starting an importing company that brings in food items. At the moment they are only bringing in partial containers and store it at a warehouse in PA. Right now they are unloading products to small ethnic food stores, but would like to move to the web.

This is where I come in. They want to start an eCommerce operation and start going straight to the consumer and possibly getting to retailers through the web as well. The problem is that why they are good business people they aren't Internet savvy or eCommerce trained and they don't have a large budget to get this going since they are in the early days of this company.

I suggested an arrangement where I will set up the eCommerce and build up that entire channel in return for a percentage of all online sales and an equity stake in case they decide to sell the company down the road. My concern is that I would build up this great eCommerce operation and they would sell out and I would get nothing. Therefore, I said I wanted some type of equity stake that if they sold out I got a pay day.

My question is what is a fair percentage of sales and what is a fair equity stake given that building the site and building up the entire eCommerce channel will be on me?