For anyone who happened to be awake between the hours of 6AM and 7AM ET, we hope you grabbed something great (in between the server crashing). If you missed it, well, join the masses.
The Outnet -- Net-a-Porter's much obsessed-over sample sale offshoot -- had a simple, yet brilliant, plan to ramp up publicity for its first birthday: Host a special sale on its designer goods where everything is just one dollar. (Yes, really, one dollar). Needless to say, we were as thrilled as everyone else, even coming up with various tactics on the best ways to plan an attack.
Imagine our surprise, then, to discover an e-mail in our inbox this morning, dated 6:45AM, time-stamped 6:45AM, saying simply, "The 1st birthday sale starts now!" Panicked, we jumped on the site (it was already 7:30AM!) and find that the sale was already closed. Needless to say, we were frustrated, and we weren't alone.
While some folks in the UK managed to log on and nab some of the prized goods, though even the Guardian posted a story about how the "Outnet's servers promptly crashed," leaving many shoppers abroad seriously discouraged.
On the stateside front, shoppers were equally exasperated, and many have taken to Twitter to vent their frustrations, especially those on the West Coast: ClosetAmbitions posted, "So annoyed that The Outnet's birthday sale opened at 4AM PST ... Why market it to me? Why waste my time? Stupid." Pinkkitty31, on the other hand, insisted she "stayed up all night for the outnet sale," but still couldn't log on. Even so, it seems plenty of folks did manage to get some goods: The Purse Forum set up a forum dedicated to The Outnet Sale Success Stories, and our pals over at Refinery29, who landed an "Aquascutum dress with ruffles." Jealous!
UPDATE: The Outnet folks were kind enough to clarify the facts of the sale. The biggest thing is that the U.S. sale site was separate from the UK site, so the sale that went live at 6:45AM did, in fact, have new $1 stock just for us. They also pointed out that thousands of shoppers did manage to score deals on spectacular clothes, so there are, we're sure, plenty of customers who arrived at work satisfied this morning. Alas, would that we had woken up an hour earlier to be among them.
