the massive warehouses in the Far-East

That's where a lot of products are coming from anyway. alibaba does a good job of making them available but the cost differential between ordering 100 pieces of something compared to 1,000 requires a huge capital investment upfront in order to get competitive pricing.

It makes it almost impossible to start small and build something up.

That's the beauty of Steemit.

Your work reading, commenting, curation and posting is the sweat equity that can actually build into something.