ERIC MOORE WAS IN THE MIDDLE of a corporate career in the grocery business when he decided to become an entrepreneur. He became determined to open his own wild bird specialty store. And it took him about a decade to do it.

“We started from scratch,” Moore says of Jay’s Bird Barn, the store he opened four years ago in Prescott, Arizona, two hours north of Phoenix.

“We literally, I just created it on paper and did a business plan, did market studies and determined what I felt the competitors in town were doing in terms of dollar sales.”

Moore’s story is part of the larger trend. Successful business people, satisfied with success or frustrated by corporate confinements, are setting up their own shops in industries like birding. They bring expertise and discipline to an industry built by mom-and-pop stores that began because the owner liked birds.