Etsy is helping connect its sellers with small manufacturers

Molly Goodall’s store on Etsy, the online crafts marketplace, started as a creative solution to a parenting problem. Her rambunctious 2-year-old, Carter, simply refused to wear the hoods on his coats. So she designed a coat with a hood hidden under a shaggy lion’s mane and perky ears, one that Carter loved and was happy to wear for hours on end. When she started selling the quirky animal coats on Etsy, she was soon swamped with orders. Her aha moment, she said, was a bulk order for 400 coats from Gilt, the flash sales website that had heard about her hot-selling product. “I was sewing all the time. My husband would come home from work and cut fabric for me on the kitchen table, while I was sewing on the dining room table,” said Ms. Goodall, who has run an Etsy store from her home in McKinney, Tex., since 2010. “It became clear that if I wanted to grow and if I wanted to develop more designs, which is the part I love, I was going to have to find help.”