Unbelievable. I mean _really_ unbelievable. “The Gap”:http://www.gap.com, Gap Kids, Baby Gap, Gap Maternity, Gap Body, and “Old Navy”:http://www.oldnavy.com web sites are offline and according to “USA Today”:http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-08-31-gap-offline_x.htm?csp=34 have been for a while now:
bq.. Hoping to minimize the customer inconvenience, Gap Inc. waited until after most back-to-school shopping had been finished before launching a “soup-to-nuts” overhaul of its major e-commerce sites, said company spokeswoman Kris Marubio.
“We think this is going to make for a more compelling and exciting experience for shoppers,” Marubio said.
The San Francisco-based company isn’t disclosing when the sites will reopen. Instead, visitors are being asked to leave their e-mail addresses with Gap.com and Oldnavy.com so they can be informed when the sites are selling clothes again.
“It’s major project for us so we know it’s going to take some time,” Marubio said. She warned the company may still have to fix some bugs even after the sites reopen.
The continuing closure of Gap.com and Oldnavy.com is likely to put another small dent in Gap Inc.’s sales, which have been sagging in recent months. The slump already has prompted management to lower its profit projections for this year.
Gap.com and OldNavy.com each generated online sales of $236 million last year, accounting for 3% of Gap Inc.’s total revenue of $16.3 billion. Oldnavy.com attracted 4.2 million visitors in July while Gap.com drew 2.6 million visitors, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a research firm.
p. As “Eric Peterson”:http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/peterson/archives/010218.html at Jupiter Research points out, they’re losing over a million dollars _a day_.
And they can’t say when it will be open again!
Haven’t they heard of a staging server?
(Note that “Banana Republic’s new site”:http://www.bananarepublic.com has reopened and “gives a tour of new features”:http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/info.do?cid=7852&mlink=5001,144331&clink=144331 at the site. One can only guess that similar features will be seen at the “Grand Reopening” of gap.com and oldnavy.com sometime this fall.)
5 Comments
Comments are closed.
The only way I can possibly understand this is if they discovered a MAJOR security hole and determined the potential lost sales due to being closed during back to school outweighed the potential breach.
But at $1 million a day and an indefinite return, it would have to be some hole.
This reminds me of a retail client I had many years ago. In their infinite wisdom, and against my advice, they decided to ‘upgrade’ their e-commerce Website’s back-end — in December, the busiest shopping month of the year! Of course, the upgrade screwed up and the Website was down for days at a time. In addition to the online campaign we were running, the client had spent a fortune on transit ads on the sides of public buses in Toronto, all pointing to a Website that was down for most of the time the campaign was running. Brilliant.
It’s rather a machiavellian way to collect email addresses and extra press.
I can understand needing to work on a live server to ensure it’s all up and running, but all week? What are they unveiling?
Ha! Another part of the scheme? Build up mass curiosity?
I just attempted to access the site, and got in. There was a DHTML “pop-up” that claimed I was one of a select few chosen to have ‘preview’ access to their website.
It looks like they’ve moved from using a Microsoft-based solution to something that uses Java and Struts; I base that on the fact that the URL ended “/browse/home.do”.
OK, now it looks like Homedepot.ca has adopted this same ridiculous approach!
All I wanted to do was to check on which wash machines they carry (mine has decided not to spin). Telling me they are re-doing their site to make it better really, really does NOT help me.
I can not see anything good about this approach except for ensuring I DON’T buy from home depot.