New York-Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) was hoping a smooth launch of a highly anticipated designer collaboration, but their website didn’t make it possible.
Thousands of people, who had been up all night to get their hands on the colorful beachwear designs, only encountered hurdles as there were delays on its availability. Many of these people had to return empty handed as well, which only raises questions about the preparations made by the discount retailer.
Target told their customers via Twitter feed that it had been updating its website in the meantime and would “be shoppable soon”. However, customers were destined for disappointment when after couple of hours; the discount retailer didn’t show any signs of recovery and had been instead limiting traffic at certain times. At one point of time, Target had made their site inaccessible for nearly half an hour.
At about 6.00 am, Eastern Time, the Lilly Pulitzer beachwear collection were made available online. However, more disappointing news awaited people as the collection had been sold out quickly by people, who were up all night. This provoked anger among their customers, which they made it evident in the social media.
Perhaps the fact that it was a limited collection, and will not be made available anytime soon (or the foreseeable future) had angered the people most.
Target Spokesman Joshua Thomas gave a statement through an e-mail which declared that their guests had experienced inconsistency “due to heavy traffic”, which also resulted to slowness. The statement was provided to Fortune. He also apologized for disappointing its guest as Target realizes the fact that “an extreme amount of excitement” was present among its customers on the collaboration.
Target was expected to know that it could witness a huge demand for the collection as there were hundreds of people at the preview event, which was held at New York’s Bryant Park last week. This embarrassing incapability to handle its customer perhaps seemed more confounding by their customers as well.
