One of my favorite tasks at my internship with ChannelAdvisor has been contributing to the company blog. There’s something so refreshing about being able to sprinkle some opinion into my professional writing every now and then.
Recently, I was asked to blog about Target and the launch of it’s new discounted Missoni product line. For those of you who aren’t exactly fashion-savvy, Missoni is a renowned Italian knits brand, known for its unique colorful flare, zig-zag patterns and insanely high price. Walk into any Saks or Neiman Marcus store and check out the tags for yourself. It seems odd enough that such a high fashion brand would link arms with Target, right? Just wait -it gets more shocking.
For those of you who didn’t hear the news, the launch not only caused lines out of Target stores nationwide, but drew so much traffic to the Target.com that the website crashed in less than 3 hours after the products were posted. Phew–somewhere along the way Target’s marketing and IT teams missed the mark…big time.
This e-commerce catastrophe, as many have called it, was followed by a wave of opinion articles and news reports on the topic. Here are the links to some I found interesting:
Retail Online Integration: Learn from Target’s Crash
brandchannel: Target x Missoni, The Social Fall-Out
Forbes: The Genius of Target’s Missoni Madness
Of all the posts I’ve written at ChannelAdvisor, this one may top the charts as my favorite thus far. For more on the mishap and how retailers and future marketing pros can learn from Target’s stumble, check out my blog post here.