I stumbled into web design about two years ago, love it and am doing everything I can to make a it a full time gig.

I want to take a step into ecommerce now. I've worked with open source stuff before and have enough knowledge that I feel comfortable building and designing an ecommerce site for clients.

I have the potential to redo someone's site (it really needs it). Currently, they only sell their product in store but feature a ton of products online that they should be offering for sale. What I'm worried about is handling inventory management.

Do brick and mortar stores expect their website to tie in with their existing inventory management system? Would I need to find someone to contract with to program this? Is it difficult to manage an ecommerce site that calculates inventory separate of whatever system they are using in-store?

Any insight you can provide into this would be really helpful. Thanks.