Missoni (Misery) at Target

I have been waiting for Missoni to come to Target all summer, however I did not realize so many other people were waiting for September 13^th like I was. For those of you who don’t know Missoni is a high end fashion designer from Italy who agreed to design a line for Target that included: clothes, luggage, accessories, throws, pillows, kitchen ware and more.

When I got to Target this afternoon, September 14^th, there was barely anything left. There were a couple different shirt, 3 plates, 1 cup, and a couple journals. I was in complete shock! I asked one of the Target employees when they expected to get in another shipment and she just shrugged and said “not sure”. If I did not need anything else from Target I would have left right then. How could this woman who is restocking products not know when a shipment is coming in?

Understanding that the Target I went to was a smaller Target, near Wake Forest campus, I checked online when I got home. The first link that came up was to eBay . . . confused, I was too. As I continued reading down the page I realized how many people had been awaiting the release of this line. Apparently within three hours of Missoni items becoming available online, at 6am, Target.com went down. The site was still down in some place at 5pm, needless to say this outraged customers who were trying to log on.

Not only am I completely surprised that Target did not plan for this and that their website could not handle the traffic, I am also shocked that all the items are now on eBay, for much higher prices. Because the online and brick and mortar stores are all selling out or completely sold out people will be turning to eBay and paying higher prices, but not everyone. By not planning for the amount of interest from customers Target lost millions of dollars in sales. Target way underestimated the impact of their own large marketing efforts and the power of the Missoni brand name.

I also looked into the pop up store that Missoni/Target opened last week for Fashion’s Night out. The store sold out of everything in one night. This should have been an indicator to Target that this new line was hot and in high demand. However when the line was available in stores and online a week later Target was unprepared.

Reading through articles and the comments people have posted below articles and on blogs, it is clear that Target now has to work on their customer relations. People are infuriated that staff could not answer their question, that Target.com crashed and that Target was clearly unprepared. I am interested to see where Target goes from here. If they do not somehow rectify this situation it is a very likely possibility that they will lose customers and not get as nearly as much interest the next time they feature a high fashion designer.

Lisa Prentis major: BEM/Marketing