Dive Brief:

• Apple’s Watch debut is increasingly being clouded by inventory issues that are wreaking havoc on its official launch date and irritating customers.

• The Watch is only available for order online and not in stores and will see delivery delays through May.

• Earlier several customers and journalists had noticed that the company had quietly changed the launch date on its U.S. site from April 24 to “coming soon.” 

Dive Insight:

Last week Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts seemed to have a new vision for the retailer’s approach to brick-and-mortar retail and its customary drama-filled launches, but things are looking like more of a mess than a vision at this point.

It’s hard to know how much the Watch’s limited availability in stores has been a real strategy (as seemed to be implied by an earlier internal Ahrendts memo) or more a consequence of production snafus that have left the retailer with a dearth of supply. In any case, customers are getting annoyed.

In a new memo, Ahrendts seems to say that the Watch’s limited availability is a consequence of surging demand and the uniqueness of a wearable — that the variables like style of bands make it a unique piece of merchandise for the company and its customers. 

Still, it could be that Ahrendts had underestimated the importance of Apple stores to its customers. In her latest memo to employees, she says that the in-store launches of old will be returning.

“Are we going to launch every product this way from now on?” she writes. “No. We all love those blockbuster Apple product launch days—and there will be many more to come. They’re the moments where you, our teams, shine. And our customers love them as well!”