Twitter stiffed advertising and marketing agency $7,000 for a ‘swag reward field’ for Elon Musk that included a $689 Japanese whiskey and a branded cheese board, a lawsuit claims

• A branded-merch firm claims it is owed $6,784 for a “swag reward field” Twitter ordered for Elon Musk.

• Canary Advertising and marketing says in a lawsuit that Twitter abruptly stopped paying its payments in September.

• The bill for Musk’s reward field features a $689 bottle of whiskey and a custom-engraved cheese board.

Twitter ordered a virtually $7,000 “swag reward field” for its new proprietor Elon Musk — full with two custom-branded bomber jackets, a particular cheese board, and a $689 bottle of whiskey — after which walked out on the invoice, a advertising and marketing firm claims in a lawsuit.

California-based Canary Advertising and marketing, which says it labored with Twitter for a decade on promotional objects, like branded T-shirts, claimed in a lawsuit filed in California state court docket that Twitter abruptly stopped paying its payments in September 2022. It sued Twitter in January for breach of contract, claiming the social-media big owed it greater than $390,000.

One of many funds Canary claims Twitter owes is the order from late September for a “swag reward field for Elon” value $6,783.99, to be despatched to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The bill, a duplicate of which was included in a court docket submitting, says the order was positioned by a procurement supervisor at Twitter.

The bill lists an engraved cheese board and $215 value of cheese, the bottle of Nikka Japanese whiskey, and a few space-themed merchandise, referencing Musk’s ardour for area exploration: an engraved rocket-shaped cocktail shaker and a moon ice mould.

The Wall Road Journal earlier reported on the items seemingly ordered for Musk. Twitter and Canary did not instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark, made outdoors of regular US working hours.

The tech mogul purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late October. Since then, his management of the corporate has been characterised by some as chaos. Musk has been making an attempt to chop Twitter’s prices, which he is branded as out-of-control, by shedding hundreds of staff, reducing again on free meals, and allegedly stopping paying lease. Twitter had been hit by a swath of lawsuits, together with by former staff and actual property corporations.

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Lauren Borelli, a vice chairman at Canary, mentioned in a declaration final month that the corporate had delivered greater than $10 million of Twitter-branded merchandise between 2013, when the businesses began working collectively, and August 2022. However since September, Twitter has stopped paying invoices, the lawsuit alleges.

The most important bill talked about within the lawsuit, from mid-September, involves nearly $250,000 together with $67,000 in delivery prices. The order included round 2,000 bundles every consisting of a hoodie, T-shirt, socks, and sticker, wrapped in {custom} tissue. The socks alone value Twitter $10.45 a pair, the bill says.

Different objects included within the invoices embrace water bottles, candles, cleaning soap, slippers, tub salts, and cookie cutters.

In a court docket submitting final week, Twitter mentioned it wanted “a number of extra weeks” to research the allegations. The corporate has till March 17 to answer the claims.

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