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Editor's note: While not directly associated with our industry, this story shows how an artistic venue can be successful. 

Many businesses start off as the "little guy," fighting hard to survive in a highly competitive, well established, and heavily saturated market.

Charting Nature, an online retailer of nature art prints, originally started as a small reseller of fish posters.

Now, over a decade since the company's inception, it has established itself within the art prints industry, and has made strides in many areas that contribute to its ongoing success.

In a market dominated by large companies like Art.com and AllPosters.com, Charting Nature's success is the result of establishing several unique niches. Framed art prints, such as botanical prints, fish prints, and bird prints, account for the majority of their business.

Also, all prints are available in several sizes and are custom framed, matted and printed to order. There are a variety of options that give the customer flexibility in fitting a piece of art into an already well decorated room.

These are strategies glass media marketers should adopt as well. 

All of their botanical prints, which include fruit prints, flower prints, fern prints, rose prints, tree prints, and mushroom prints, are reproductions of antique botanical art prints from the 18th and 19th centuries.

These reproductions are more crisp and sharp than the original art prints from which they derive, while still maintaining the antique feel that makes them highly desirable.

Charting Nature's exclusive partnership with renowned artist Brenda Guild Gillespie has also played a significant role in their recent expansion.

fter establishing this partnership, the company received a positive response to Gillespie's biologically accurate fish and shellfish illustrations. Not only have these fish prints increased sales, but they also have paved the way to the new market of licensed image sales.

After having several organizations inquire about licensed use of Gillespie's fish illustrations, the company recognized the opportunity in this market.

It wasn't long after posting an image use request page on the website that new clients such as The Wall Street Journal, Seafood Choices Alliance, the Smithsonian, and the David Suzuki Foundation emerged. Monterey Bay Aquarium currently uses Gillespie's illustrations in their Seafood Watch Pocket Guides, and distribution totals are well into the millions.

Charting Nature created a marriage of two partnerships in their new Sustainable Seafood Guide Posters. Using Gillespie's fish illustrations and Seafood Choices Alliance's guidelines for sustainable seafood choices,

The company produced and published these posters to create yet another niche to set them apart while showing their support for sustainable fishing. The result was increased media attention and expansion to their customer base.

Now, with a diverse line of nature art products such as books and videos on fishing and hunting, antique botanical prints, fish prints, posters, and bird art prints, the company is very well rounded.

After years of hard work, this "little guy" in the art prints industry has made quite a name for itself. The company envisions future growth by using the same formula that got them to where they are: finding niches that set them apart and capitalizing on them. That is, after all, how the "little guys" manage to survive and thrive in any industry.

To learn more go to www.chartingnature.com.