Fujifilm USA began offering its small allotment of limited edition X100VI cameras today and its website almost immediately buckled under the weight of the traffic surge. At the time of publication, the store remains inaccessible to many.
While Fujifilm USA’s main website remains online, its online shop either will not load or, for the lucky, loads exceptionally slowly. As PetaPixel readers report, the online store started experiencing problems about a minute before the sale for the limited edition camera went live at noon eastern time.
The website has not technically crashed, but the experience for many is as if it did; the web page is suck on a “spinning wheel,” so to speak. For those with luck and patience, some pages will load although PetaPixel was unable to find a listing for the new limited edition camera linked from the store’s home page. However, thanks to Fujifilm’s links on social, the page could be navigated to.
Almost 30 minutes later though, most PetaPixel staff has been able to progress past this page. Two team members were able to click “add to cart” but were unable to progress beyond that point. One team member reports the links on that page simply do not work.
One PetaPixel editor was able to add the camera to his cart and proceed to checkout, but was notified after several minutes of loading that the camera was sold out for the day.
The surge of traffic to Fujifilm’s shop can be attributed to the extreme scarcity of the limited edition camera: Fujifilm will only sell 1,934 units worldwide as an homage to the company’s founding in 1934. The United States was allotted just 300 of those units which are set to be available to purchase starting today and for the next three days in 100 unit increments.
Fujifilm says orders will be processed within two weeks of being placed, if those orders are successful. While the company says it cannot control what happens to a camera after it is sold — it can’t control second-hand markup, basically — the company does intend to restrict orders to one per person.
“We have implemented measures that include a strict limit of one camera per order,” a Fujifilm representative told PetaPixel earlier this week. “This policy is designed to prevent any individual from purchasing multiple units in a single transaction.”
Image credits: Fujifilm