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
Target.com
Target.com
The collection was scheduled to be available from Tuesday through October 22 at Target stores and @placeholder.