Only a few days old and the public already want to know: “What is little Prince George wearing and where can I get one?”
It turns out that baby George was wrapped in a baby blanket from the New York based company known as aden + anais when he was carried from the hospital to the car for his first royal ride.
When the photo of the prince in his swaddling hit the media the website of aden + anais crashed due to over-visiting. On the following day the site crashed again. By the ninth day after the photo appeared sales for that item had skyrocketed by 600 percent, to an amazing 7,000 orders.
The company says no press release was issued. Customers got to their web site just by Googling “royal swaddle.”
The chief executive of aden + anais, Raegan Moya-Jones was about to begin a meeting when a colleague showed her the picture of the prince in his blanket.
Moya-Jones gazed at the photo in disbelief. “I thought it was photo-shopped,” she said.
The company is still struggling to fill orders for the product, which is part of a set of four swaddles called the Jungle Jam pack. In Britain the set sells for 44.95 pounds ($68).
The average daily visits to the company’s web site were phenomenal. In Britain there was an increase of 1,960 percent; in Australia visits climbed 892 percent; Japan saw a 791 percent increase in site visits and in the US people visited 458 percent more.
Anyone who was not in the first or second wave of swaddle purchases must now wait it out as Jungle Jam is sold out for the time being in Britain and the US. Desperate shoppers might still be able to get the set from the Australian branch of the site if they waste no time. All others will simply have to wait until the factory in China produces the 10,000 swaddles which were just ordered.