... the author was saying the opposite. "far from the hardest" = "not the hardest" and you can see it in context:
> Shortly after the launch I was contacted by many artists, mostly from China (they already saturate other marketplaces like eBay, Alibaba, and Etsy). The initial batch of orders were break even, but once the market-rate artists contacted us, I knew it was going to be profitable.
Sounds like the difficulty wasn't in finding artists
That's true, the difficulty wasn't finding the artists. It was finding customers, and growing the customer base, if any thing.
That being said, the OP is correct also in that the tech wasn't the hardest part either. The tech was always something I had to worry about after the fact of acquiring more customers. You can always find customers first and support them manually, and then revise the tech later to reduce costs.
This.
I consulted many businesses as an engineer and often times technology can get you so far. You have to "get your hands dirty" and do the work.
Tech is rarely the bottleneck, it's often sales, understanding needs, contracting work to 3rd parties etc...
Kudos to the owner, great job