Later that afternoon email to mate

1:  consolidate all product onto a single website where each vendor has a space and can publicise all or some of their wares. The shop could also be embedded into facebook, if you really wanted. This is a variant of:  Dropshipping, a business model used to run a store without ever holding the inventory. Once you've made a sale your participating shop will ship straight to your customer's doorstep (or whatever the desired arrangement if you want to complicate this with options!). Obviously a single shop is cheaper than running multiple ones, but there is a bigger setup overhead, so you probably need a bigger package from the kick off. Platform fees, transaction fees, payment gateway fees generally mean the provider benefits a lot more than you do initially (assuming initial traction is slow and little marketing effort). In this model the intermediary takes on a lot of the work (whoever that might be), curating content and is responsible for collecting and then redistributing monies. You cannot take this on without incurring ongoing costs, and contractually it is a little more complicated than running your own shoppe. I could not begin to cost that at all accurately, without a full requirement.

2:  create a tapered support structure whereby individual traders are trained over a number of days and weeks to create and run their own autonomous web shoppe sites. This would allow each individual trader to break into e-commerce in their own right, perhaps for the first time (and perhaps have their first 6 months of ecommerce free.) I could create the sites in test environment (and offer a playground area too). Over a number of weeks I could help them in readiness to transfer ownership to go live. In this model, each trader is responsible for and pays for their site running costs (transaction fees are deducted at source). Contractually simpler. With this model you could offer support in setting up a store with XX products and even insist as a condition of support that the template  brands it as Dunbar Empire  or somesuch ... You would want to boiler plate the package of support as far as possible, in my experience projects start getting many change requests that make things expensive. 

Technical options

1 Cheap and cheerful. It is not daft to use commerce platforms like Amazon and Ebay. Advantages include very negligible start up costs. Start selling in hours ... human transaction costs could be higher if setting up a complex emporium so need to keep everyones initial inventory simple and uncomplicated. Temper any desire to use all the bells and whistles for the first iteration (applies below). Amazon is not local, but eBay can be made so and COD is also possible. Some may balk at the fees, but what you pay in fees is giving you access to a big market in no time.

2 Use ecommerce platform to create dropshipping or, better individual sites. Low entry costs, but bigger setup costs, if this is a first adventure into the online selling world. Who owns the dropshipping portal? 

3 Use a self hosted platform (e.g. based on wordpress or drupal): Much higher setup costs. Needs maintenance mechanic. Who would own it?

4 Pay someone to create a selling platform from scratch (maybe a phone app - see 5 ). Costs would be very high. You might do this if you thought there was a captive audience for your product and considered it could be sold to others as a software service or franchised.

5 I don't know if there are natty phone apps that allow you to load product in a snap, set the price and click sell. Relies on said app already having traction.

Like you I do not care much for Amazon and eBay, I've not used their platforms for selling recently, so that option would require additional research.

While I like the idea of reclaiming the High Street through a portal like shop, my feeling is that this could be very complicated (requirements always grow) and would require ongoing support for a long time, curatorial, managing questions and complaints, disbursements. Accounting headaches too.

Model 2 has the advantage that ownership is with the individual merchant, and this ownership alone could motivate them. Traders are as prone as the next to transfer risk, which is a weakness in Model 1. The hands on support for model 2 would be tapered, until the point that client feels they can fly solo.  In my experience a big effort is required at the start and you would want candidates coming forward that really want it badly and have the right aptitude (previous experience sometimes helps but not always).

I would not really recommend creating a homegrown portal using wordpress, but not because it would not work, simply that one is taking on a lot of responsibility (you don't really want to own a server or have to worry about security - I don't get enough sleep as it is).

My experience of running the ourlocality website gig for ten years means I have much relevant understanding of how users and communities work and their support needs (rather a lot!), which would be a distinct advantage. However there are loads of web DIYers out there, as well as some good pros, though my feeling is too many leave their clients in the lurch (a string of websites from one Haddington purveyor still have no security certificates; Haddington CAB, who had their site hacked and open to abuse for months and months, was incapable of sorting it despite the reputational damage and an offer to do it for nought).

I am now fairly busy through to the 10th report writing and then possibly on jury duty, though I can't believe that is still on ... I hate to dip out of things, but don't feel up to it.

Hope this helps ...