Web Retailers Try New Game

Among the toys for sale on Shoshana Bailey's online store, Woodentoys-and-more.com, is a $147 wooden train set handmade in Montana and a $420 cherrywood rocking horse by a Tennessee craftsman. Overall sales have tripled since April, when her 10-month-old business starting taking off.

"I get a lot of calls from grandmothers who say, 'I found things on your Web site that I can't find in the town that I live in,' " says Ms. Bailey, a Greenville, S.C., resident who started the business after her own struggles to find creative, educational toys for her grandsons.

As some mass-market toy sellers struggle ...