Lilly Pulitzer for Target: They Came, They Waited, They Went Home Mad
Buyers line up for Lilly Pulitzer at a Target pop-up shop at Bryant Park in New York.
Never underestimate the hunger of a barely thawed populace for a warm breeze of Palm Beach.
Last Sunday, they lined up in droves at Target stores across the country, or set alarms for predawn hours to wake up and shop Target.com. (Some New Yorkers lined up early at a Bryant Park pop-up on Thursday.)
The
object of their collective obsession was the Lilly Pulitzer for Target
collection, an affordable line of brightly printed women’s wear,
children’s wear, home goods and matching makeup.
Within
hours (even minutes in some locations), it was almost entirely sold
out, in stores and online. According to Target, it was one of the
fastest-selling collaborations it has undertaken, out of more than 150
such joint projects since introducing the program in 1999.
Jane
Schoenborn, Lilly Pulitzer’s vice president for marketing and creative
communications, saw it all firsthand. She went to her local Target, at
the Valley Forge Shopping Center in King of Prussia, Pa., and stood in
line with the company president (at the back, she said).
“It
was slim pickings,” she said this week. “I saw a couple women I work
with clinging to the umbrellas.” She herself managed to snag a few mugs.
Since
Sunday, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have trembled with the
frustration of shut-out shoppers, and pictures surfaced of racks picked
clean, bare white hangers scattered like carrion bones on the veld.
Online, the demand was such that Target briefly shut down its website
for maintenance in the early hours of Sunday. (It refutes the notion
that the site crashed.)
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