BJ's Wholesale Club is the leading membership-based warehouse club in the eastern United States, selling high-quality brand-name, as well as private label, food and general merchandise at everyday low prices. BJ’s first introduced the warehouse club concept to New England in 1984 and has since expanded to operate more than185 Clubs in 15 states.
Client:
BJ's Wholesale Club
Practices:
Consumer/Retail
Expertise:
Public Relations,Corporate Communications
Our Work
Rasky Baerlein’s work with BJ's Wholesale Club, which spans more than a decade, has been dedicated to providing strategic communications counsel to the company’s executive leadership, media relations, investor relations, human resources and legal teams on a broad range of internal and external initiatives and issues.
In 2004, BJ's Wholesale Club worked with credit card companies and law enforcement to investigate a possible compromise of its computer system that may have resulted in credit card information theft. RBSC provided crisis communications counsel to the publicly-held retailer. At the time, it was not industry practice to bring data breach information to the public, but we advised the Company to be forthcoming with the information about a possible breach. This counsel enabled BJ’s to reinforce the company's position as a consumer advocate while close cooperation with in-house and outside counsel ensured that BJ’s legal defenses were protected. We assisted with all facets of BJ's internal and external communications related to this incident, including serving as spokesperson on the vast majority of national and local media inquiries relating to the disclosure. Our work around this incident helped protect BJ's reputation, share price, and bottom line while fulfilling regulatory disclosure requirements.
