Target.com Crashes After Missoni Launch

Target's website seems to have crashed under the weight of demand of "Missoni for Target," a fashion clothing line that launched Tuesday morning in its stores and online.

Target's Twitter account has been apologizing to customers for more than two hours over difficulties on its website.

The "Missoni for Target" line is a collaboration between the retailer and an iconic Italian fashion house.

A message on the Target.com 's splash page at 11 a.m. featured a doll of the company's red-bullseyed, canine mascot and this message: " Hello, We are hard at work making the site better. Sorry for inconvenience - we'll be back up and running shortly."

A short time later, the message turned to: "woof! We are suddenly extremely popular. You may not be able to access our site momentarily due to unusually high traffic. Please stay here and we'll try to get you in as soon as we can!"

The site was up and running again by 11:30 a.m.

Among the @Target account's responses to customers during the outage were, "Target.com appears to be having some issues right now. Please hang tight and check back later," and, "We understand your frustrations. We’ve added the issues you’ve had to the top of our list. We’re on it. Promise."

More: Twitter Search For #Missoni

Target was bragging of long lines for a launch at a pop-up store last Thursday in New York City, an event for which the company lined up celebrity designers like Emma Roberts, Alesandra Ambrosio and Michelle Trachtenberg to talk fashion.

Tuesday morning on Twitter, customers were mentioning that stores in various locales had sold out just hours into Tuesday's launch. Others said they were already finding items with higher prices on auction sites like eBay.com .