For those of you who don’t know, Tesco (4th largest retailer in the world) is the British equivalent of Wal-mart (largest retailer in the world), with a seemingly never-ending ability to increase profits and increase its dominance over other retailers (30% of supermarket sales and rising). “Across all categories, over £1 in every £8 of UK retail sales is spent at Tesco“… now that’s dominance. 
Tesco is launching a new service, “Tesco Direct”, which is a combined website, catalogue and phone service for ordering up to 8,000 products. (Tesco don’t seem to think big… they think huge).
Unfortunately, things haven’t gone to plan with the new website, “rumoured to cost £35m ($65 million) to set up”…according to this article…
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“Tesco’s plan to take on Argos and other online retailers has been delayed due to technical problems.
The new service, Tesco Direct, will offer a range of non-food products that includes everything from beds to golf clubs, and was due to go live yesterday.
However the supermarket missed the launch date due to IT problems. It has not announced a new date for opening.
The site is rumoured to cost £35m to set up and, when live, will offer more than 8,000 products including furniture, kitchenware and electrical goods.
People will be able to order online, from a catalogue phone service, or at dedicated Tesco Direct desks at selected stores.
The retailer has also promised to introduce a delivery system that will let most people get next day delivery and even choose a two-hour time slot for smaller products.
Larger items such as beds or sofas will take longer to get to consumers, although Tesco has pledged to get all products delivered between five and ten days.” (source)
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So if you’re struggling to launch an online business, an ebook or even get a webpage online, consider that even the biggest and the best sometimes struggle with this new-fangled web technology!