By Paul Ziobro
Target Corp.'s website went down Sunday morning, overwhelmed by
shoppers clamoring for a piece of a Lilly Pulitzer collection that
was selling for a fraction of the price of the Palm Beach label's
luxury clothes.
The surge in demand for the 250-item line showed the battered
discounter can still summon up some of the "Tar-zhay" glitz that
helped the retailer grow into a national chain, but it also
underscored that Target still has a way to go before its website is
robust enough to fight off rivals like Amazon.com Inc.
The episode also punctuated a new era of social-media marketing
in which fads explode quickly, coveted out-of-stock items pop up at
three times the price on eBay, and even frustrated tweets and
downed websites can feed into the messaging.
"It's not a marketing ploy, but it is a marketing advantage,"
said Dean Crutchfield, an independent brand consultant. "This to me
creates more demand."
Target took its website off line for about 20 minutes in the
dark hours of Sunday morning as early shoppers scanned through
Lilly Pulitzer bathing suits, shift dresses and jumpsuits before
stores opened at 8 a.m.
At other times during the morning, Target paced visits to the
site, leaving many shoppers unable to access it or a shopping app.
The company also delayed the online launch by two hours.
"When the traffic got heavier, we made the website
inaccessible," Target spokesman Joshua Thomas said.
Target's designer partnerships are less about selling product
and more about buzz. Such intermittent one-offs with high-end
designers, called capsule collections, are part of what helps the
retailer maintain its cheap-chic appeal, which sets it apart from
other discounters and helps draw more affluent shoppers along with
the thrifty.
Keeping a slim inventory borrows from the playbook of luxury
brands. A clogged website can annoy customers, but it can also help
get across the message that the company has a hit on its hands, a
point Target emphasized even as it said it was sorry.
"We realize there is an extreme amount of excitement around this
collaboration, and we apologize for any disappointment this may
have caused our guests," Mr. Thompson, the spokesman, said.
Target planned to have the sale up fully live at 3 a.m. Central
Time, but delayed it until 5 a.m. because of high traffic, Mr.
Thomas said. The number of visits was similar to Black Friday sales
around Thanksgiving.
Three hours into the sale, the entire selection was nearly sold
out online.
Stores also had heavy traffic and early lines. Employees at the
Target in Watchung, N.J., said the store was completely sold out of
Lilly Pulitzer gear within 30 minutes of opening. Many customers
had started lining up at 6 a.m., they said.
The episode was a less serious echo of the launch of Target's
Missoni collection in 2011, when the website crashed and couldn't
be restored for several hours.
That snafu came shortly after Target retook control of its Web
operations from former partner Amazon, and it highlighted
shortcomings of the chain's online infrastructure.
Shortly afterward, Target shook up its online leadership.
Executives have since touted improvements to the website to enable
it to handle massive traffic, including sales around Black Friday
that generated record online results for the site.
Capsule collections have spread to chains including J.C. Penney,
Gap and Kohl's, but they have been a mixed bag.
Target has been building buzz for the Palm Beach-inspired Lilly
Pulitzer line, setting up a temporary shop in New York's Bryant
Park and running a juice bar, offering free manicures and providing
ping-pong tables.
The company also promoted the line in television ads that
started last week. Based on how quickly the collection is selling,
Mr. Thomas said much of Target's paid advertising will end Sunday,
including banner ads for the Web. TV ads are likely to end Monday
morning.
Write to Paul Ziobro at Paul.Ziobro@wsj.com
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