What started out as a laid back quest to find the best reusable diapers that would fit our lifestyle, ended in a frenetic feeding frenzy to purchase them today.
I credit Jason with having discovered gDiapers in one of my pregnancy magazines a couple of months ago, and after falling in love, I set out to educate myself on what we would need for our little one to get started. Alas, the “new baby bundle.” Outfitted with 12 tiny gPants (for newborns), six little gPants in gender neutral colors, and one case of gRefills, this bundle is only available via gDiapers’ website and retails for $149.99. Sure other retailers carry gDiapers, but they don’t carry the precious new baby bundle, whose main attraction is the tough-to-get tiny gPant for newborns.
Delighted to purchase a bundle for us to get started, I was met with a message in red that said, “Sorry, but we are currently sold out of the new baby bundle. Click here to be notified when they are back.” Even though there was a lot of time left in my pregnancy for me to purchase them, my heart sank and I regrettably filled out the form to be notified. This was a couple of months ago.
Today at 2:30pm, I received an email from Kelli McKee at gDiapers alerting me that at 1:00pm (PST) the new baby bundle would be back in stock and ready for purchase, but that there was still a very limited stock. Yikes! I had an hour and a half until I could pull the trigger. “Should I go food shopping before, or after?” Dinner would have to wait. I did not want to miss the 4:00 door opener. And apparently, I was not the only one.
I checked in with gDiaper’s Facebook page, of which there are nearly 14,000 fans, and noticed a post from gDiapers at noon that said, “Before Dec of 2009 we only sold three sizes: sm, med, and lg. No tiny g’s just yet. So for 4 years folks (including parents on the gTeam) started their babies in small. And guess what? Diapers.com has an amazing deal on size small everyday g’s and sweet bundle (and individual pants, too!). Check it out.”
“Oh no, they are already trying to create diversion,” I thought. This is going to be war. And sure enough, at 4:00 my time and 1:00 PST, their website crashed. Thinking it would be temporary I refreshed the page frantically to no avail. Thanks to Facebook, though, I was able to stay apprised of what was going on. Almost immediately, fans (myself included) began to post to their wall that they were having problems. Then came the first update by gDiapers an hour later: “We’re experiencing technical difficulties because so many people are logging in to our shop at the same time. Please bear with us. We’re working through this as quickly as possible.” That update received almost 60 comments – some humorous, some annoyed, some sympathetic – within minutes. Sounds crazy, I know, but let’s not forget that the majority of customers are desperate pregnant women with wild and raging hormones!
So after several status updates and pleas by gDiapers staff to layoff the refresh button, I went food shopping. I mean a pregnant woman’s gotta eat, right?! Upon coming home I checked their Facebook page and saw that several users were rejoicing in the fact that they were finally able to buy their bundle. And so, at 5:51pm, nearly two hours after the gDiapers new baby bundle feeding frenzy began, I was able to buy ours!
It does sort of bring to question why there is such little supply for such high demand for the tiny gPants. As one Facebook fan by the name of Tammy suggested to me, “perhaps gdiapers is afraid of going too big too fast. making mass quantities of terrible products might not be worth it to them. in keeping it small, perhaps they’re able to do better quality control.” Point taken, but when there is overwhelming demand and clearly not enough supply, isn’t that when you want to uh, I don’t know, get big-ger? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want them to sell out to Procter & Gamble, but create the supply to meet the demand already!
At last glance, gDiapers staff posted a YouTube video to let us know that they were indeed hard at work to resolve the website crash. Aren’t they happy that this didn’t happen on a Friday!
wow! nice!!!
I’m so glad they’re sold at other places now! I do, however, wish tinyG’s could be sold by themselves instead of in bundles! My husband is worried I’m going to put us in financial ruin to get a stockpile for our little guy! We’re trying to find more tinyG’s than small because Jaydon is so underweight.
Hey Robyn! Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog. A follow-up post on what I think of G’s now that my son is 8 months old is LONG overdue. I hope to share something with you all this week about it. In any case, I take it you like them and that they are working pretty well for Jaydon albeit his tininess? Did you wind up getting the tiny G’s or just the smalls? And do you need inserts? I have three packages of disposables in size small, brand new…