Peddling paintings through modem art.

• Position: People

During a first-grade field trip to the Bronx Zoo, Josh Chodniewicz learned that a hen can lay more than 350 eggs a year. That inspired him to start a business at his Chester, N.J., home. "The $5 allowance just wouldn't cut it," he says. With his dad's help, he bought several dozen hens, a rooster and feed. In his first year, he made $3,000 and blew it on bubble gum and baseball cards.

He soon graduated from the chicken feed, trading baseball cards for a profit and, as a teen-ager, running a stable. But his latest venture -- selling matted, framed posters and prints online -- takes him back to his early days. Like raising chickens, it's high-volume and low-margin, but he says you can make a little scratch at it. Chodniewicz's Raleigh company is called Allwall Technologies Inc., but it does business as art.com.

Chodniewicz, who's 28 and CEO, and Mike Marston, a childhood chum, came up with the idea for art.com in the mid-'90s. Chodniewicz had dropped out of Rutgers University in his junior year to take over his then-ailing dad's homebuilding business. In 1995, he and Marston started selling posters online on the side, peddling 400 of sports stars such as Michael Jordan and Ken Griffey Jr. They made enough money that, after a couple of years, Chodniewicz decided to turn the construction business back to his dad, who had recovered, and concentrate on posters full-time.

He and Marston moved to Raleigh in 1998 because of its big...