Talk about an overwhelming response. The much-anticipated launch of a new collaborative line between Italian designer Missoni and Target caused the retailer's website to crash several times Tuesday. "Target.com is seeing greater item demand than we do on a typical Black Friday, and the excitement for this limited-time designer collection is unprecedented," the store said in a statement. "We are slowly bringing the site back online to ensure we can provide a positive shopping experience to our guests." By Wednesday, the site was back up and running, but many of the colorful, zigzag designs were out of stock. Between 7:47 and 8 a.m. ET Tuesday, the Target.com homepage was completely down with a connection timeout error, according to AlertSite, a Web performance monitoring business. For most of Tuesday afternoon and evening, the homepage displayed a courtesy page of the Target dog letting visitors know the site was overloaded.
@highlight
Target.com up and running after periodic outages Tuesday amid launch of Missoni line
@highlight
Stores across country report selling out of stock within hours of opening
@highlight
Retailer says demand for zigzag designs exceeds typical Black Friday activity
@highlight
Clothing, housewares from iconic Italian designer typically sell for thousands of dollars
The collection was scheduled to be available from Tuesday through October 22 at Target stores and @placeholder.