Families step through the doorway of Enchanted Fairies to find a warmly lit den of hardwood floors, plush furniture and walls decorated with specialty portraits of children dressed as fantasy characters: fairies, warriors and mermaids.

The specialty photography studio's ambience—set by the whimsical music and scents of white tea, thyme and jasmine that waft through its chambers—stands in contrast to the sterile hallway just outside its doors in The Shops at Willow Bend, where Enchanted Fairies has operated since mid-2014.

The carefully crafted environment helps set the stage for the portrait sessions themselves, said Aileen Avikova, who co-owns the business with her brother and her husband.

“It’s all about keeping them in this bubble of they’re not in a mall, they’re not in a retail space—they’re definitely not at a photography studio—they’re just in Narnia,” Avikova said. “They’ve entered a different world.”

The studio is built around an unconventional business model: Clients pay $25 per child for the shoot and an 8-by-10-inch portrait, and all of the proceeds go to children's charity Kidd's Kids. The studio only makes money if customers upgrade to a more elaborate photo package. Most do, Avikova said.

This charity-centric policy has been in place since Avikova and her husband, Christopher Rensink, helped her brother, Dan Gutier, rebrand a traditional photography studio into one that focused exclusively on fairy-themed photo shoots in 2012.

Gutier had started to offer the fairy shoots at his old studio, and they became so popular with clients that Gutier began to have trouble balancing his studio management with his extensive volunteering commitments. Launching Enchanted Fairies, Rensink suggested, could be a way to blend business with philanthropy.

“On the front end, I think, it’s scary,” Avikova said of the Enchanted Fairies business model. “But it really forced us to innovate and really [ask], 'How much value can we bring to this client on the front end so that they do feel compelled to actually purchase one of their images?'”