The physical challenges of the virtual sale.

Once an online order comes in, cyber-retailers must deliver the merchandise quickly. That's not always as easy as it sounds.

Conventional wisdom would have it that fulfilling orders placed over the Internet is really no different from fulfilling orders placed any other way. But nothing could be further from the truth, says consultant Steve Mulaik, a director of the logistics systems practice at the Progress Group in Atlanta. Mulaik recalls the case of an e-tailer that placed an advertisement on America OnLine (AOL) for a slow-moving product that was languishing in a cor