When we sign up for the store and are setting it up with inventory will the customers see each item as we set it up or is there a way to fill the store then "publish it"?
There are several ways to go about this. You can give you inventory items a status of hidden or inactive until you are ready to show it on your store. Or you can set your entire store to catalog mode, in which case the items will be displayed but checkout will be disabled.
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