J. Crew got a nice little bump when the Obama girls showed up outfitted in head-to-toe garb from the prepster retailer on inauguration day and mom Michelle sported some gloves and a scarf from the Crew. President Barack Obama even got in on the family fashion, tying on a bow-tie from the store to attend a few balls. So all the Obama love really drove traffic to the retailer's website. And all that traffic really crashed the website.
Americans love themselves some online shopping. How much? According to a recently released survey by the World Internet Project only 12 percent of us have never made an online purchase, the next closest "never" answer is from the UK, with 12 percent of internet users claiming to never have made an online purchase. And 32 percent of Americans say they make at least one online purchase a month, so you can see how something like this could easily happen.
But what of it? It's still all good, right? Not so much. The site has been intermittently up and down for the past two days. Seems the crashing website has crashed the stock. After an early upgrade from Barclays right after inauguration day the stock is falling with all the website problems. Just what jumpy brokers needed. Imagine the boiler rooms boiling over with J. Crew fever. Even as the secretarial pool collectively bitch about not being able to click to buy "those adorable leather gloves" Michelle wore, the analysts are slapping their foreheads over the tanking stock. And right after a rare retail glimmer of hope, too.
