No Turn On Red

Cyber Monday is here and.. almost gone. This is a holiday created by marketers looking to capitalize online sales that may or may not one day match the phenomenon that is Black Friday. In the meantime, it still represents a day in which there area significant chunk of e-commerce sales and deep discounts.

Regardless of the hype, Cyber Monday seemingly caused an uptick in visitors to e-commerce websites throughout the industry. Web servers across the country saw their processors stretched to the limit and on-call IT technicians had their hands full. By and large, it appears that most websites were winners – with only a few retailers seeing minor downtime or sluggishness – applause and props go to the often overlooked network engineers and sysadmins who kept their servers runner.

The Cyber Monday cross hairs were aimed directly at the web servers of two retailers: J.Crew and Bloomingdale’s. Both retailers have seen significant outages today – with each website serving “System Unavailable” messages since early this afternoon.

Earlier in the year, J.Crew redeveloped their website. The site has seen problems and glitches ever since the launch. J.Crew went as far as to blame their decline in Q3 revenue on the problems they were seeing with their relaunched website. A lot of money was spent, I’m sure, on this new implementation of the website and it’s incredible to see the downtime they are still happening. Being down for a few hours on a weekday in June is bad – being down on one of the busiest days of the holiday season is unimaginable.

I don’t know what the issue is with Bloomingdale’s, but they haven’t fared much better. As with J.Crew, they’ve been serving a system error message for the better part of the afternoon. Another missed opportunity.

Additional coverage of the site outages from Computerworld and Crain’s, New York Business. I also have an on-going collection of System Maintenance screenshots over at ecommr.

Slowness and downtime issues aside, I’m hoping the rest of the industry is seeing a positive sales day. Looking forward to seeing the sales estimates over the next few days.

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A few of the stories I’m reading and wanted to share today:

John Zogby’s got a very insightful look into the political trends of retail consumers and dives behind the numbers to make sense of it all. He looks at presidential election polling numbers, the retailers the customers shop at, and how this relates to the retailers’ branding.

J.Crew’s website has had their share of mistakes and downtime lately. Church of the Customer is talking about the apology e-mail that the retailer sent out to their customers and what this means for the company.

Matt at A New Marketing presents a clean, easily digestable definition of what social media is.

.. and finally – Starbucks is offering a $2 discount on iced beverages in the afternoon when you buy a drink in the morning. I think this is a smart move that should drive repeat business throughout the day. Besides that, I’m selfish and now look forward to saving a little bit of money on my second trip to Starbucks every day.

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The New York Times on the demise of the petite department in some department stores:

[...] the love affair with little women appears to be over. Three of the country’s most influential fashion emporiums — Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s — have quietly eliminated or drastically scaled back their petite departments in the past several months, infuriating many longtime customers.

Given that manufacturers produce clothing in only a handful of standard sizes — among them, juniors, misses and plus size — the abandonment of petite sizes at the highest levels of American retailing represents a sea change in fashion, forcing some designers to either stop making special sizes for smaller women or re-evaluate how much to invest in the business.

More in today’s article, “Where’s the Petite Department? Going the Way of the Petticoat”

Is this a shift in trends or is this just a case of these three department stores missing the mark? As the Times points out, this may be a case of these stores missing the mark:

What did change is that petite departments gained a reputation for traditional — some would say frumpy — career-oriented clothing. Chic looks, clothing executives said, never made the leap from regular sizes to petite. So the very word petite became synonymous with many women who shopped there — working women over the age 50.

Over the past few years, other brands like JC Penney, Kohl’s, and Macy’s have upped the fashion offerings in their speciality size departments and have been met with positive trends. Walk into any of these stores today and you will see the traditional petite department, anchored by career-orientated clothing, alongside the more fashionable petite offerings. More so, these stores are also boosting their bottom line by offering this contemporary assortment under their private labels (see JC Penney’s a.n.a, Kohl’s apt. 9 & Sonoma, and Macy’s INC).

I don’t predict the downsizing of the petite department by Neiman Marcus, Sak’s and Bloomingdales is the beginning of a larger trend. JC Penney, Kohl’s, and Macy’s are still doing it right. Just because you are short, doesn’t mean you are also 50.

Besides, if a shorter woman can’t shop in your store – who’s to say she’s going to stick around to pick out clothes for her husband and her kids?

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

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