Wal-Mart's Event Planner

The company that Wal-Mart chose to take over promotions at its Sam’s Club stores, at a cost of about 10,000 jobs, is already almost exclusively devoted to serving the Bentonville, Arkansas, retail giant.

Shopper Events LLC already manages events like product demonstrations and tastings at Wal-Mart’s flagship retail stores. According to its website and LinkedIn profile, its mission is: “to apply a standard of excellence to the in-store event in order to increase customer demand, align with key branding initiatives, and enhance the shopping experience at Wal-Mart.”

The privately-held company, founded in 2008, has been handling promotions in Wal-Mart Supercenters since Super Bowl Sunday, 2009. Now, it will be doing the same kind of thing for Sam’s Club.

Sam’s Club announced over the weekend that it would be off-loading 11,000 employees and outsourcing its in-store demonstrations to Shopper Events LLC, based in Rogers, Arkansas, not far from Wal-Mart’s Bentonville headquarters. Sam’s officials said employees losing their jobs would have the opportunity to apply for similar positions with Shopper Events.

Shopper Events, owned by marketing firms Advantage Sales and Marketing LLC and Crossmark Inc., will offer an opportunity for Sam’s Club employees to continue to do promotional work in the stores, said Brian Pear, vice president and general manager for Shopper Events.

“All of the existing Sam’s Club demo associates will have opportunities to apply…it’s too early to tell how many of those would be hired for the new program,” he said.

Wal-Mart has been looking to cut costs at Sam’s Club, which is the second-largest warehouse club store chain in the nation (after Costco). Scott Testa, a retail expert with Cabrini University, pointed out that Costco already outsources its event planning as well.