Chelsea Mosteller’s interest in birds was set in motion by her older brother.
She was only 5 when her brother got hooked on a book called “Birds” and read through every single range map and memorized all the birds in the book.
When he began to point them out in the family backyard, his interest was gradually adopted by the rest.
Chelsea’s family spent hours at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area, using binoculars and cameras to identify the birds. This led Chelsea to the Columbia Audubon Society, an organization that works to preserve wildlife, biological diversity and the ecosystem.
Chelsea also has a knack for art. That, combined with her love of nature and birds, evolved into sketching birds on her iPad.
Her mother, Lori Mosteller, discovered her doing that one day and told her she could really do something with the results.
Simple beginning
Chelsea, 18 and a senior at Rock Bridge High School, had no idea that she would launch a business selling her art around the country.
When she was 14, she decided to create a card-matching game featuring birds. She designed her own logo, the cards and even the boxes.
Although her idea was initially met with some doubt, she and her mother took a leap of faith and ordered 30 decks to sell.
The business was called BirdMatch, a memory match game designed to educate people about the types of birds through Chelsea’s artwork. A Facebook post prompted the cards to sell out in a week. Then, she ordered 100 more decks, and those sold, too.
Deciding that the business had universal potential, they started a shop called BirdCraftShop in Etsy, which sells the game for $20 per pack or $30 for two packs.
Chelsea has since expanded the original card sets to highlight different species of birds seen in other parts of the country. One is called the Rocky Mountain Edition, a special tribute to the family’s favorite Colorado park.
“Rocky Mountain National Park is something we visited a lot. And I kind of thought, I’m going to start making some phone calls, looking for some connections,” Lori Mosteller said.
They managed to find the right connections, but because of COVID-19, the timing was off and the buyers for national parks were not adding new products.
Business takes flight
In the summer of 2021 when the family was vacationing in Colorado, they decided to reconnect with the contact at the national parks. This reconnection led to an order that was five times their combined sales to date.
“That was kind of the big turning point,” Lori Mosteller said.
BirdMatch is now sold in the gift shops at Yellowstone and Glacier national parks. That kickstarted wholesale orders, and suddenly, they no longer had just a small Etsy shop on the web.
BirdMatch became a genuine, legitimate business, and they began to treat it like one. Through the Missouri Women’s Business Center , Chelsea and her mother obtained official licensing and a website for the business, which has taken off around the country.
Reaching new heights
Prior to its success, Chelsea tried marketing her cards to a small store off Chapel Hill Road called Songbird Station, with limited success.
After the national parks began to carry her cards, Chelsea gave it a second go, this time with more confidence.
“That store is part of what’s known as Gold Crest Distributing, which is basically a whole national center of distribution of bird-themed products,” she said.
“A month before their wild bird expo, they invited us there for free to their trade show.”
BirdMatch ended up in a dozen stores from California to New York, prompting Chelsea and her mother to make cold calls to parks and stores nationwide.
Soon, BirdMatch made its way to state parks in Missouri, the Department of Conservation, the Department of Natural Resources and 60 other small bird stores across the country.
What the future holds
Although Chelsea is unsure whether she’s ready for college just yet, she’s happy with where the business is right now.
“It’s almost scary to become too big,” she said. “Not that I necessarily think that will happen, but I just wanted to be able to support my passion of drawing birds and art and support myself financially through them.”
BirdMatch currently features three separate decks for sale, including the newest edition called DuckMatch. To learn more about the cards, visit https://birdmatchgame.com
