By Maddy Fitzgerald
She may have been wearing heels, but that didn’t mean she was there to play nice.
Ready for game time behind two heaping carts of clothes, shoes and home goods, this women had blood in her eyes and Missoni in her arms. She came to Target on a mission that morning.
This was the scene in almost every Target store early Tuesday morning last week, where customers went to great lengths to ensure they got a piece — or two carts full — of the new Missoni collection for Target. This collaboration features the Italian luxury brand Missoni at affordable, Target-friendly prices. With the launch scheduled for early Tuesday morning, there was an instantaneous website crash and store shelves were empty within minutes, even in Orem’s store.
When Cami Fitzgerald, a freshman, went to Target around 8:30 on Tuesday morning, she was expecting to have beaten the crowds but instead she witnessed the women with two carts and no mercy.
“I was mostly just shocked that even in Orem people would be so eager about it,” Fitzgerald said. “One woman had obviously been waiting for the store to open at 8 and had snagged most everything, probably to sell on eBay.”
This trend of buying up everything and later selling the products on eBay was seen in Target stores throughout the country. Natalie Holbrook, a BYU graduate and author of the blog natthefatrat.com, considered eBay after failed attempts at the website.
“I checked eBay at about 6:30 — I was straight up alarmed to find that the throw I wanted, retailing for $39.99, was already going for $250,” Holbrook said in an email. “Clearly this flies in the face of ethical Target shopping, nothing from Target should ever cost that much!”
Target was unprepared for such a massive response to the collection, as evidenced by the website crash. The site was down for an entire three hours Tuesday morning, costing the retailer a lot of devastated shoppers. This crash marks the first time the e-commerce site has crashed in Target’s history.
“Target.com is seeing greater item demand than we do on a typical Black Friday and the excitement for this limited-time designer collection is unprecedented,” a Target representative said in a news release on Tuesday.
JeanMarie Stewart, a junior majoring in math, went to Target on Thursday, curious to see what all the fuss was about. She experienced the same shock as Fitzgerald, that even in this small town, hardly a fashion mecca, the Missoni aisles were nothing more than ghost towns.
“There were two pairs of ballet flats left in size 5, a few pairs of rain boots and some socks,” Stewart said. “It astounds me that everything was snapped up that fast. Target definitely has a hit on their hands.”
