Re: Template purchase vs. custom design?
You'll have to ask yourself if a custom design is of added value with what you're selling i.e. when you already have established a corporate (online) identity you'd like the webshop to 'fit' as well.
Most of the times pre designed skins/templates will not meet a CI fully or in total. But it can be a start when deceiding to tweak it to meet your needs; could be time consuming as well ... and time is money; X-Cart (Pro) has a steep learning curve and when you then also have to re-design the template at the same time you could be looking at several months before going live.
Regarding custom design:
A good design will cost good money.
A good transfer of the design to X-Cart will cost a corresponding amount.
There's always somebody offering lower/cheap prices but what you get is what you pay for right?
Seeing that your shop is a startup, I'd consider buying the template and performing (minor) color tweaks to fit the logo you will be having. Then wait until the shop will bring in real money so in future you could consider a complete redesign when it's worth doing so.
My 2 cents.
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