If you are a parent of a young child, lover of Kpop, or happen to browse Netflix regularly, chances are that you have heard of Kpop Demon Hunters. As a parent with a child in elementary school, I can tell you that this movie has completely taken over. At a Halloween event for the school, I counted no less than 20 Rumi’s, a handful of Zoey and Mira’s, and even a few Saja Boys. The kids are even singing and choreographing the songs together at recess. There was still an extreme lack of merchandise for this movie at the time due to the fact that Netflix and Sony didn’t anticipate it being such a huge success.
So, when Vans announced their exclusive collab with Kpop Demon Hunters on December 2nd, it was abundantly clear to me that these shoes were going to be hard to get and I expected them to sell out. The shoes released in stores on December 5th, 2025, and my husband and I were lucky enough to buy a pair from our local store. By the time it was our turn in line, they had sold out of another pair we hoped to buy, so we made the decision to buy them when they were available online on December 8th, 2025.
When the digital doors opened on Vans.com the morning of the 8th, the website completely buckled under the pressure. Pages wouldn’t load, shopping carts crashed, and frustrated customers (like me) watched helplessly as their chance to snag a pair evaporated in a sea of error messages. Frustrated shoppers were flocking to the Vans subreddit and posting on social media to see if anyone was successful in purchasing or if the website was down for everyone. The cycle of not being able to ‘add to cart’ continued for several hours before Vans finally took the website down and put up an error splashscreen.
This was not a minor hiccup. It was a full-scale failure at the worst possible moment.
Why Infrastructure Planning Matters More Than Ever
The Kpop Demon Hunters debacle highlights a fundamental truth that many companies learn the hard way: your infrastructure needs to be ready before the hype arrives, not after.
Proper infrastructure planning should include:
Load Testing and Capacity Planning: You need to know your breaking point before customers find it for you. Begin stress testing your systems with (realistic and worst-case) traffic scenarios to help identify bottlenecks before they become disasters.
Scalable Architecture: Modern cloud infrastructure allows for auto-scaling, but only if you’ve built your systems to take advantage of it. Your architecture should be able to handle 10x your normal traffic without breaking a sweat.
CDN and Caching Strategies: Static assets, product images, and other content should be distributed globally and cached effectively. Every millisecond of load time matters when thousands of users are competing for limited inventory.
Queue Management Systems: When demand exceeds capacity, a proper queuing system ensures fairness and prevents the mad rush that crashes servers. Customers may not love waiting in line, but they hate error pages even more.
Monitoring and Alerting: You need real-time visibility into your system’s health. When things start to degrade, you need to know immediately – and not after you learn about it on social media.
Disaster Recovery Plans: Even with perfect planning, things can go wrong. Having a documented plan for when (not if) issues arise can minimize damage and speed recovery.
The Real Investment: Prevention vs. Damage Control
When evaluating the cost of creating robust infrastructure, many executives or board members will ask, “why spend money on capacity that we’ll only need a few times a year?” This question misses the bigger picture. The cost of building proper infrastructure is predictable and controllable. The cost of a failed launch includes:
- Emergency engineering hours at premium rates
- Rushed upgrades under pressure
- Customer service working overtime handling angry customers
- Increased marketing spend to repair brand damage
- Lost sale opportunities that can never be recovered
When you frame it this way, infrastructure investment isn’t an expense, it is your insurance against catastrophic failures at the moments that matter most.
Lessons for Your Next Big Launch
Whether you’re launching an exclusive collab for shoes, concert tickets, or the next must-have gadget, the principles remain the same:
- Start Early: Infrastructure planning should begin weeks or months before launch.
- Test Realistically: Your testing should simulate worst-case scenarios.
- Build Redundancy: Single points of failure are disasters waiting to happen.
- Partner Wisely: If you don’t have in-house expertise, work with infrastructure partners who’ve handled high-traffic events before.
- Have a Rollback Plan: Know how to gracefully degrade features or postpone the launch if systems start failing.
- Communicate Proactively: If issues do arise, transparent communication can preserve customer relationships even when technology fails.
The Bottom Line
The Vans Demon Hunters launch failure wasn’t unique—it’s a story that plays out across industries whenever hype outpaces infrastructure readiness.
This doesn’t have to be your story. In today’s digital economy, your infrastructure isn’t just a technical concern, it’s your competitive advantage. Positive Impact Organizations that can reliably execute high-stakes launches build trust, capture market share, and create positive momentum.
So remember, the next time you have an event or a product that generates real excitement and anticipation, your infrastructure will be the only thing standing between triumph and disaster.
Make sure it’s Golden.