• USA Today, Tuesday, December 15, 2009 11 AM

Remembering how heavy her first guitar was ("and I'm not a little petite girl"), Tish Ciravolo founded Daisy Rock, a line of such instruments designed for women and girls.

Matt Krantz writes the back story to an unlikely small business. Daisy Rock is still a small player in the roughly $1.6 billion market for "fretted instruments," as measured by industry trade group NAMM. The company is private and doesn't provide financials, but says it has sold 150,000 guitars since 2000 at an average price of about $200.

But the company is being closely watched by the guitar-making industry, which has long been thwarted trying to tap the elusive market for female guitarists.

Read the whole story at USA Today »