There's lots of places you can waste your money on for bare root plants. Throw them into the compost after all the work. No one's buying.

So you would be selling the finished plants, not the bare roots themselves? If so, I'd agree that bare roots are not the best way to start - depending on supplier, you will get very mixed results with a high percentage of failures. It is just difficult to maintain bare root perennial stock in a viable state long term. You'd probably fair much better buying in plugs and those are available from countless suppliers both in this country and abroad. A good many will be patented plants so be prepared to pay premium prices for those.

Is there a really good way to start perennials besides propagating? I'm not sure I understand your question. Propagation is the process of starting of new plants, period. You can accomplish it by various means - seeds, division, cuttings, layering, tissue culture, etc. - but to get more plants, you gotta propagate by some method :-)