Q This is a forum about selecting an appropriate business organization. You are interested in setting up a business which would make and sell custom designed handbags in shops and on the internet. You have four seamstresses who are experts in quilting, cross-stitching, and doing needlepoint that you will be hiring. You are going to contact individual stores, boutiques, and accessory shops as well as individual consumers. You have about a quarter of a million dollars already invested into this business venture. A friend of yours is also interested in joining you and he can put up one hundred thousand dollars. You have decisions yet to make about design, advertising, meshing online business with brick and mortar. But the first decision is : "What form of organization should this business be in"? Should it be a proprietorship, a general or limited partnership, a public or closed corporation?