This is Elon Musk’s Twitter fire sale. The new owner of this social media platform is holding an auction to sell many of the company’s remaining assets and everything needs to be done, whether it’s a chair, a chair, or a coffee machine that weighs almost 300 pounds.
More than 600 items including Twitter office supplies, furniture, and memorabilia were put on the auction block last month as Musk began his takeover of Twitter on a mission to cut costs. The online bidding, organized by Heritage Global Partners Inc., officially began on Tuesday and will end on Wednesday morning Pacific Time.
And with such a wide variety of items on offer, casual shoppers, Twitter fans, and restaurant owners are likely to find something useful in Musk’s catalog.
Interested in not one but five authentic Italian espresso makers? A variety of meat slicing machines? An industrial size freezer? A massive neon Twitter bird display? For all of the above items and more, Elon probably has shoppers covered.
Musk’s offerings also include office supplies and furniture, but some items are more luxurious and high-end than what you’d expect in an office. The selection includes custom-made wooden tables and desks as well as high-end sofas.
But these office supplies also have sentimental value for a company that has just begun a tumultuous new chapter—and that has already seen more than half of its employees laid off. Twitter alumni took to the platform this week to reminisce about the company’s past.
Kevin Weil, former Twitter executive, write that the auctioned items remind him of “good memories from a different era.”
Some things that come in pretty money for most buyers. The electric Twitter bird display, for example, will cost $35,000. And if you’re in the market for a meat slicer, don’t expect to find one for less than $5,000.
But Musk may be hoping for more of those things, as the auction is just the latest in a string of cost-cutting measures taken by Twitter’s new owner since its $44 billion acquisition bid in October.
In the nearly three months he’s been in charge of Twitter, Musk has overhauled the company’s structure to cut costs. In November, Twitter cut about 50% of Twitter’s workforce, about 3,700 employees, while also letting outsourced content moderators and disbanding certain advisory groups. Also in November, Musk directed the Twitter team to find out how the company could save $1 billion in annual infrastructure costs by reducing cloud services and internal server space.
Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has repeatedly expressed concerns about solvency, even claiming in December that the company has been on the “fast track to bankruptcy since May.” In a live forum on Twitter last month, Musk described the company as “a plane headed for the ground at high speed with the engine on fire and the controls not working,” adding that Twitter could face a “negative cash flow situation” of about $3 billion by 2023 .
Over the past few months, Musk has led the decline in Twitter advertising revenue, which in 2021 will account for 90% of the company’s total revenue. On Tuesday, a senior Twitter manager told employees that the company’s daily revenue was 40% lower than the same day a year ago, Information reported, as more than 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers have paused spending on the platform since Musk took over. On Wednesday, Information reported that Twitter’s fourth-quarter revenue for 2022 had fallen about 35% from the previous year to $1.025 billion, citing comments from top executives at a staff meeting.
When the Twitter auction launched last month, Nick Dove, a representative for Heritage Global Partners, said: fortune that “this auction has nothing to do with our financial position.”
Warisan did not answer immediately fortune‘s request for comment after the Offer went live, although Ross Dove, chief executive of Heritage Global, told the New York Times one auction could net Twitter up to $1.5 million. That number is unlikely to “move the needle” when it comes to the company’s financial woes, he added.
Update: This post was updated on January 18th with more information about Twitter’s revenue numbers.
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