Luxer-than-thou retailer J. Crew has mostly avoided the economic pinch, since its customers barely notice that they're paying $4 a gallon for gas. Instead, the retailer has been laid low by buggy software, reports the Business Technology blog. One outraged customer, shown here, was billed $9,208.50 and shipped baby-size shirts, not the mediums he'd ordered. J. Crew's net income in its most recent quarter fell 12 percent from the same period last year to $18.1 million, and the company said it spent $3 million to fix the problem. Do the math: Had J. Crew not had the software problem, its income would have been up 2.5 percent. It's a shameful comeuppance for J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler."Retail is detail; Mickey lives that," a Wall Street analyst told the New York Times in March for a profile which tracked Drexler's obsessive visits to stores, where he talked to customers at length about style and fit. Alas, no such attention to detail was on display when it came to J. Crew's website — which increasingly is how customers interact with the company. Drexler reads and answers a lot of email, according to the Times. But it sounds like he should spend less time in stores, and more time camped out in the datacenter.
