I know my husband is going to scream at me for using the phrase 'epic fail' but really, is there a better way to describe the disaster that was the Outnet $1 Birthday sale this morning? The sale promised the world – designer garb for $1?! Yes please.
One person on Twitter described the sale as "being invited to a party, picked up by a chauffeur and then being punched in the face on arrival". So what went so wrong Refinery 29 have opened up a support group?!
I was fully prepared, working in fashion and living on the west coast, to find the timing in the favour of the East Coast. It's sucks but I'm used to it by now, the West Coast produces wine and celebrities but apparently we do not wear clothes. So with this in mind I woke up at 6am (PST) to begin the periodic checking of my email waiting for the magic message from The Outnet letting me know the sale had started. To my suprise, the email was already there, sitting, waiting. The email had been received at 3.45am.
Yes. 3.45am.
Keeping the start time of the sale secret (something many sites do) is one thing, starting that secret sale at 3.45am, is utterly ridiculous. Really who was up that early? Even those on the East Coast missed out with 6.45am being to early for them.
This alone is issue enough. Combine this with the over zealous marketing done on the run up to the sale (I had an email everyday for a fortnight) resulting in those who were up in time being presented with a site that couldn't handle a mass influx of customers and crashed repeatedly, and one has a disaster of epic proportions. Site failure like this happens with other sites too, Gilt and the Jeffrey Campbell sale springs to mind, but not to this degree. I've also heard story's of people having things taken from their cart during checkout, something both Ideeli and Gilt protect against. Making an already ridiculous experience much worse.
So what could they have done?
– Made the sale later.
– Kept the sale at 3.45am but given people advance notice (I would have gotten up!)
– Prepared the site more thoroughly for a huge influx of visitors
– Given a 'safe' time to items in carts
– Made the exclusive sale actually exclusive.
– Staggered the stock and invite times to correspond with time zones.
But what do I know? I just live my life online…
In all honestly this was a really bad PR move, instead of generating positive interest for a site that is only a year old they have created a whirlwind of bad press with 1000's of tweets and blog posts from people dissapointed with the sale, and I don't think this will be a case of any publicity is good publicity. I certainly have no interest in shopping with The Outnet after this debacle.
So what do you think? Did you snag something? I heard maybe five 'score' story's amongst the 1000's of tweets I just scoured. Did we expect too much? I honestly felt like I'd been hoaxed this morning and I know I'm not the only one.
By Kelsi Smith
yeah i felt like it was really poor taste to start it at a time when east coast might be awake but really no one else. i understand starting it in the middle of the night, but shouldn’t it have been the middle of the night *everywhere*?
Over here in Europe it wasn’t any better: the sale started at 8:30 (when everyone is on their way to work) and the link did not work right from the start.
They knew exactly how many people would log in and we are in the 21st century. There is absolutely NO excuse for crappy servers.
Hear hear, I was similarly shocked and disappointed to see the email waiting in my inbox when I woke up at 8 this morning. When I logged in there was nothing left in my size, and I’m guessing that had been the case for about an hour or so already. Severely depressing, since I’d been excited for weeks (along with the rest of the world). THanks for posting this; I hope Outnet gets their act together next time, though I don’t know if I can suffer this twice.
I was so pissed as well. Like most people I expected the sale to start around 2pm New york time to give the west coast a chance. But i get up at 8am, check my twitter and the first thing I see is a tweet from Refinery 29 saying “the outnet $1 is going on right now.” I was all excited until I read “refinery 29 posted this about 3 hours ago” underneath the message. I still check the website and I saw the message saying the $1 sale is over. I was soo looking forward to this as well.
I was totally pissed, too! Glad I wasn’t the only one that thought this was ultimately a hoax :)
Being repetedly kicked in the face by a jimmy choo would have been less painful than trying to log onto the outnet at 8.30am this morning….and god forbid trying to purchase something on the ‘shopping’ website. What a total joke i feel like a doneky being led blindly towards a carrot i will never get to taste!
shame on you OUTNET!
I actualy managed to buy two things (with different accounts). Didn’t experience any crashes everything went very smoothly (I’m abroad right now I woke up 7am lithuanian time it was 12pm in new york and started waiting). I think I was one of the very first ones so all the items were still available. I bought gorgeous jacket by Todd Lynn and his shorts (when I was placing my second order not much was left so i picked whatever was still in stock I might sell them not sure). Only few (and I mean FEW) items were left after 10 minutes. Guess I was extremely lucky!
Yeah, such a huge disappointment! The email was waiting for me and by the time I managed to log into Outnet every item was SOLD!!
I thought i was the only dissapointed by this! Checked my email and saw the notification email had come just before 4am… by the time i got to work at 8am the sale was over… big huge bummer.
Same in the UK. Though, the sale started at 9am. I was just about to checkout with a pair of Chloe jeans and I got the “Sale is now closed” sign. It took me an HOUR to get on! Annnnoyed.