Building a ecommerse based flash site

Hi guys!

Looking for some advice on how to build a flash based gallery which will show a scrolling image of a series of products which will be displayed by accessing a series of catagories via a navigation bar. It is envisaged that an ecommerse based element will be integrated in order purchase these products. The site needs to be built in Flash as there are a number of interactive and animated features which can only be achieved using flash. I would imaging the product details and images need to be stored in a database which flash will call upon. Can anyone tell me what other software I should consider to build the site from a developer/programming perspective. It has been mentioned to me to consider XML and actionscript, what about the integration of ecommerse? Hope this makes sense.

Really appreciate any advice and go easy cos Im a designer and not a developer! Need to know what kind of skillset my developer needs to have in order to build the site.

Thanks in advance