Misticon – the unlikely winner of the Outnet £1 Sale

Urban clothing company Misticon capitalised on the frustration of thousands of fashion fans who failed to buy anything in The Outnet’s £1 birthday event on Friday by responding with their own no-barrier-entry sale.

Designer discount site The Outnet celebrated it’s first birthday by holding a £1 sale for those who had RSVPd to the event, keeping the start time a secret. However, when the sale opened at 7.24am, The Outnet said that it “did not anticipate the speed in which shoppers would come to the site” and thousands of fashionistas were left disappointed as the server crashed during several stages of transaction.

‘#outnetfail’ soon became a popular Twitter trending topic and a clever marketing tactic quickly turned into somewhat of a PR disaster.
Seeing the response, and feeling personally frustrated with the site, Misticon decided to put one of their own items up for £1 to attract attention from the quickly-formed ‘Outnet Outrage’ community, and found the response so positive that they added four more styles.

“I originally put that one item up thinking it might stoke up the odd order with our regular customer who would feel a bit better - we know it's not the same as that yummy McQueen dress - but after seeing all the hits and having a Guardian journalist write about us I pushed the boat out and for one day only thought ‘why the hell not’”, explained Misticon’s marketing manager Hannah Newman.

“We reduced five styles in total - no duds, all stuff that's been in the press and sold well - and soon had orders flooding in from across the globe.”

The campaign, which Mistion promoted via Twitter, Facebook and which was picked up by guardian.co.uk in an article comment, resulted in the highest earning day in the history of the company.

“We've built our database, engaged new customers and help turn some people’s days from bad to good,” said Hannah.