Unprecedented demand for what's being described as 'this season's must have drinks item' have seen the Edinburgh-based gin company struggle to cope with the sheer volume of people trying to buy the baubles online.
The ornaments proved so popular that the combined force of the distillery’s fans downed a server built to handle capacity for major arena concerts, with an estimated 15,000 people trying to buy the product at any given time, the website halted to a stop.
Hundreds of gin fans took to Twitter to complain as the brand's website went down under the strain.
Answering the hundreds of Tweets individually, the Pickering's account could only apologise for the problems.
The craft gin producer thanked customers for their patience and said that they hoped they would be able to resolve the problem in due course.
The brand then created a new website with larger capacity, and the remainder of the 30,000 baubles were sold in just 82 seconds.
The baubles, which are filled with 50ml of Pickering’s Gin, have proven so popular that production has risen from 3,000 last year to 30,000 this year.
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The distillery is set to maximise on this year’s success with production set to begin in February for Christmas 2017. Having originally estimated a 300,000-bauble production next year, the distillery has now unveiled plans to expand its premises and increase production into six figures as new export markets open.
Marcus Pickering, co-founder of Pickering’s Gin, remarked, “I would like to heartily apologise to anyone who was disappointed this year. Rest assured that we are starting work in January to ensure we’ve enough Christmas spirit to go around next year”.
Matt Gammell, co-founder and Head of Production added, “The success of our gin-filled Christmas baubles is a brilliant end to a monumental year for Pickering’s, which saw us increase capacity, expand to new international markets and launch Ginerosity, the first social enterprise gin.
“We’re already gearing up to meet demand for next Christmas, not just in the UK where they’ve proved so popular but in the export markets of Denmark, Australia and the USA. 2017 is going to be an exciting year for us”.
