Missoni Rush Crashes Target's Site

The day many fashionistas have deemed better and more important than Black Friday or after Christmas sales combined was finally upon us yesterday when Target released its limited edition Missoni line.

Facebook and Twitter alike were decorated with, “Happy Missoni Day” and “Good Luck to All Missoni Lovers,” posts and tweets. At least until Target’s overloaded servers stole the joy.

Target released the limited edition line on their website at 6 a.m. EST, and by 7:47 a.m. the site was down. At 8 a.m., the company put up a courtesy page explaining that the issue was being worked on. But for all the fashion-at-a-low-cost lovers out there, the problems with buying a Missoni product had only just begun!

Target’s Web Crash of the Century

 Margherita and Angela Missoni during the 2006 Glamour Magazine “Women of the Year” Honors award show in New York City.

Even as the site’s problems were slowly resolved, online shoppers experienced items disappearing from their carts, leaving them unable to check out.

“It was a nightmare,” Alex Gagne, a marketing executive in Mission Viejo, CA quoted in the New York Times said. “Their site was 100 percent not prepared for it.”

Ian Schafer, the chief executive of the digital marketing firm Deep Focus also scolded Target saying, “It’s a little bit embarrassing for one of the nation’s largest retailers to have a Web site that can’t support a rush — it’s not like they’re any strangers to rushes. It’s saying, ‘We’re so popular we had to turn people away at the door.’ Then get a bigger place.”

Back in the real world, shoppers in stores weren’t having an easy go at it, either. Long lines at the actual retailer had many of the stores selling out of their inventory in mere minutes, leaving shoppers empty handed.

Target claims that the stampede was unprecedented and unexpected. A temporary store in Manhattan set up before Fashion Week, and weeks before the line launched in stores and online, spanned six city blocks and planned to stay open for three days. It closed in six hours after everything sold out. Seems like Target could have seen this one coming.

While not exactly a Prada or a Gucci, the Missoni brand started by Italian couple Ottavio and Rosita Missoni in 1953 still has an extremely large, cult-like following leaving experts wondering if it was the popularity of the line that caused the rush, or Target’s marketing campaign around the launch.

Despite the Italian family’s type 2A strands, the entire family almost always rocks their natural style – steering clear of the perfectly straight and flat look that straighties are known for having. Then again, maybe that comes from a retro point of view towards the 21st century and living la dolce vita.

Either way, “Target Tuesday” has marked the beginning of what is sure to be a fashionable fall. It’s also proven to other lower-priced retailers that middle-class consumers are obsessed with great fashion, and if you give it to us for a lower price, we will make the Cabbage Patch doll rush of the 80s look like a test run.

Final Thoughts

Get ready ladies, if Target Tuesday proves anything, we’re coming upon the dawn of haute couture for oh, so much less! Not sure if it is the economy, Target’s marketing, Missoni popularity or just plain good sense that has gotten us to this point, but I’ll take it!