Privacy Policy

At Selvedge, we ensure that any data we hold is safe.  We never share your email addresses with third parties unless it is to fulfil a contract or legal obligation. We will use your address only to notify you about activities related to Selvedge Magazine.  Third parties (such as AdRoll) may place cookies on your browsers for targeted advertising.  The site will collect the following types of data: IP addresses, cookie identifiers, and website activity.  For instructions on how to opt out of receiving targeted advertising, please visit www.aboutads.info networkadvertising.org/choices or youronlinechoices.eu (Europe only).  

The law on data protection set out several different reasons (lawful bases) for which a company may collect and process your data, including:

Consent
In specific situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent, for example, when you subscribe to receive newsletters or information about our events.

Contract
In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligation; for example, if you order an item from us for postal delivery, we will collect your address details to deliver your purchase. We would pass these on to our courier or to an artisan if your order were to be fulfilled by a particular artisan.  Subscription contracts will be fulfilled by Selvedge Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under registered number 04953181 and managed by PayWhirl, a subscription app that we use to manage recurring payments and subscriptions.  You can read Paywhirl’s privacy policy here.  It is important that customers read our Terms and Conditions before purchasing a subscription here.  Selvedge provides a platform for buyers to discover and purchase unique goods from sellers around the world. It is not a part of any transaction when an artisan order is placed with us.  By shopping for artisan goods, you understand that you are not buying directly from Selvedge but from an artisan; thus, your contract is with the artisan.  You can read more about our Artisan Product Policy here.

Legal obligation

If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data for example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity affecting Selvedge to law enforcement.

Legitimate interests

In specific situations, we use your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business, and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests, for example, we may use your purchase history or specified interests to send you or make available personalised offers, or may also use your email address to send you direct marketing information, telling you about products and events that we think might interest you.  We will always include the option to unsubscribe from these marketing emails, or you can contact us directly to be unsubscribed from these types of emails.

When do we collect your personal data?

We use the above lawful bases when collecting your data: consent (such as when you subscribe to one of our newsletters), contract (when you transact or enter into a contract with us for example when you become a subscriber to the magazine), legal obligation (when data use is required by law) and legitimate interests (such as when we make personalised offers available to you).

• When you create or update an account with us
• When you visit our website
• When you make a purchase with us
• When you book to attend any of our events online or in person 
• When you purchase a product or service, in person or by phone, but do not have (or do not use) an account
• When you make a donation
• When you supply us with a product or service
• When you engage with us on social media
• When you communicate with us by post, email, telephone, social media, via our website, or in person
• When you enter prize draws or competitions
• When you enter a promotion
• When you choose to complete a survey, we send you
• When you comment on or review us publicly
• When you have given a third-party permission to share with us the information they hold about you
• When you ask us to send you marketing communications
• When you apply for a job with Selvedge

6. What sort of personal data do we collect?

Our website store is hosted on Shopify Inc. They provide us with the online e-commerce platform that allows us to sell our products and services to you.  Your data is stored through Shopify’s data storage, databases and the general Shopify application. They store your data on a secure server behind a firewall.  If you choose a direct payment gateway to complete your purchase, then Shopify stores your credit card data.  It is encrypted through the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). Your purchase transaction data is stored only as long as is necessary to complete your purchase transaction.  After that is complete, your purchase transaction information is deleted. If you have a recurring subscription, your card details will be stored to process the recurring payment.   All direct payment gateways adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.  PCI-DSS requirements help ensure that our store and its service providers handle credit card information securely

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You may also want to read Shopify’s Terms of Service or Privacy Statement For more information. When you click on links on our website, they may direct you away from our site. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites and encourage you to read their privacy statements.

To protect your personal information, we take reasonable precautions and follow industry best practices to ensure it is not inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed. If you provide us with your credit card information, the information is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL) and stored with AES-256 encryption. Although no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, we follow all PCI-DSS requirements and implement additional, generally accepted industry standards.

When you place an order, we’ll collect:

• Title, first name and last name
• Contact details including organisation/company name, postal address (billing/delivery), email address and contact telephone number(s).  Please note that when you purchase a subscription online, you will receive the digital download of issues via our Third-Party email provider Mailchimp.  For this to happen, your email marketing preferences must be set to receive our marketing emails, which would subscribe you to our newsletter.  You can unsubscribe any time by clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of emails from Mailchimp.
• If you have a web account with us, we will keep your order details
• Your communication preferences
• Information is gathered by the use of cookies in your web browser.  
• Transaction history, including billing and payment card information (last four digits)
• Bank details (for example, for invoicing purposes if you are a supplier or if you set up a recurring subscription with us
• Your comments and product reviews
• To deliver the best possible online experience, we collect technical information about your internet connection and browser, the country and telephone code where your computer is located, the web pages viewed during your visit, the images you clicked on, and any search terms you entered. This includes your IP address if you visited our websites from a link in one of our marketing communications.  
• If you are a job applicant, we may ask for details about your experience and qualifications.
• We may collect details of your interactions with us online, on the phone, or at a live event. For example, we may collect notes from our conversations with you, details of any complaints or comments you make, details of purchases you made, items, web pages you visit, and how and when you contact us.
• Your social media username, if you interact with us through those channels, to help us respond to your comments, questions or feedback.
• We use a third-party provider to send our e-newsletters.  You can find out more about Mailchimp and their privacy policy here.  We collect statistics, including email opens and clicks, to help us improve our e-newsletter content, making it more interesting and relevant.

How and why do we use your personal data?

We want to give you the best possible customer experience. One way to achieve that is to build the best picture we can of who you are by combining the data we have about you.  We may then use this information to offer you promotions, products, and events most likely to interest you.

The data protection law allows this to be part of our legitimate interest in understanding our customers and providing the highest levels of service.

Here is how we may use your personal data and why:

• To process any orders that you make by using our website, on the phone or in person at our live events.  If we do not collect your personal data during checkout, we will not be able to process your order and comply with our legal obligations; for example, your details may need to be passed to a third party to supply or deliver the product that you ordered, and we may keep your details for a reasonable period afterwards in order to fulfil any contractual obligations such as refunds, guarantees and so on.
• To administer our prize draws or competitions that you enter, based on your consent given at the time of entering.  In addition, Selvedge Ltd pass your personal information to the partners and their data processors. However, we demand that those parties adhere to the same security procedures that we follow.  By entering the promotion, the winner(s) consent to any publicity generated on selvedge.org, Selvedge Magazine and our social media sites. 
• To respond to your queries, requests and complaints. Handling the information you sent enables us to respond. We may also keep a record of these to inform future communication with us and to demonstrate how we communicated with you throughout. We do this on the basis of our contractual obligations to you, our legal obligations, and our legitimate interests in providing you with the best service and understanding how we can improve our service based on your experience.
• To protect our business and your account from fraud and other illegal activities. This may include using your personal data to maintain, update and safeguard your account. We may also monitor your browsing activity with us to quickly identify and resolve any problems and protect the integrity of our websites. We will do all of this in our legitimate interests. 
• To process payments and to prevent fraudulent transactions. We do this because of our legitimate business interests. This also helps to protect our customers from fraud.
• If we discover any criminal activity or alleged criminal activity through our use of fraud monitoring, or suspicious transaction monitoring, we will process this data for the purposes of preventing or detecting unlawful acts. We aim to protect the individuals we interact with from criminal activities.
• On the basis of legitimate interest, we may use your personal data, preferences and details of your transactions to keep you informed by email about relevant products and services, including tailored special offers, discounts, promotions, events, competitions and so on. Of course, you are free to opt out of hearing from us by any of these channels at any time by using the unsubscribe link provided in an email or by contacting us directly.
• To send you relevant, personalised communications by post in relation to updates, offers, services and products. We will do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests. Since 2004, we have compiled databases through direct contact with our customers at our live events, via the sign-up form on our website and via sales from our website.  We have not or do not plan to acquire a third-party database.  If you wish to unsubscribe, you can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each email we send.
• To send you communications required by law or which are necessary to inform you about changes to the services we provide you. For example, updates to this privacy policy and legally required information relating to your orders. These service messages will not include any promotional content and do not require prior consent when sent by email, text message, or telephone. If we do not use your personal data for these purposes, we would be unable to comply with our legal obligations.
• To display the most relevant content to you on our websites, we may use data we hold about where you live, your interests and so on. We do so on the basis of your consent for our website to place cookies or similar technology on your device for example, we might show you an advert for an event you have previously shown an interest in.  
• To develop, test and improve the systems, services and products we provide to you. We will do this on the basis of our legitimate business interests.  For example, we may record your browser’s Session ID to help us understand more when you leave us online feedback about any problems you are having. 
• To comply with our contractual or legal obligations to share data with law enforcement Government departments.
• To send you survey and feedback requests to help improve our services. These messages will not include any promotional content and do not require prior consent. We have a legitimate interest in doing so as this helps make our products or services more relevant to you. Of course, you are free to opt out of receiving these requests from us at any time by contacting us.

How can you stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing?

There are several ways you can stop direct marketing communications from us:

• If an email communication from us comes via Mailchimp, click the ‘unsubscribe’ link. If it comes from us directly, please reply to the email with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line. 
• Email support@selvedge.org  or contact us by telephone on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9.15- 4.45 GMT (BST) T: +44 7723 465522

Please note that you may continue to receive communications for a short period after changing your preferences while our systems are fully updated.

How long will we retain your data?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of a dispute in respect to our relationship with you or for our legitimate interests such as fraud prevention and enhancing users’ safety and security.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

By law, we must keep basic information about our customers for six years after they cease to be customers for tax purposes. In some circumstances, we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

If you live outside the UK

The third-party providers used by us will only collect, use and disclose your information to the extent necessary to allow them to perform the services they provide to us.  However, certain third-party service providers, such as payment gateways and other payment transaction processors, have their own privacy policies with respect to the information we are required to provide to them for your purchase-related transactions.  For these providers, we recommend that you read their privacy policies so you can understand the manner in which these providers will handle your personal information.  In particular, remember that certain providers may be located in or have facilities that are located in a different jurisdiction than either you or us.  So if you elect to proceed with a transaction that involves the services of a third-party service provider, then your information may become subject to the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which that service provider or its facilities are located.  For example, if you are located in Canada and your transaction is processed by a payment gateway in the United States, then your personal information used in completing that transaction may be subject to disclosure under United States legislation, including the Patriot Act.  Once you leave our store’s website or are redirected to a third-party website or application, you are no longer governed by this Privacy Policy or our website’s Terms of Service.

For all non-UK customers, by using our services or providing your personal data to us, you expressly consent to processing your personal data by us or on our behalf. Of course, you still have the right to ask us not to process your data in specific ways, and if you do so, we will respect your wishes unless we are processing your data to fulfil a contract and/or legal obligation.

Sometimes ,we will need to transfer your personal data between countries to enable us to supply the services you have requested. In the ordinary course of business, we may transfer your personal data from your country of residence to ourselves and to third parties in the UK or elsewhere.

By dealing with us, you consent to this overseas use, transfer, and disclosure of your personal data outside your country of residence for our ordinary business purposes.

This may occur because our information technology storage facilities and servers are located outside your country of residence. This could include storing your personal data on servers in the UK or elsewhere.

We will ensure that reasonable steps are taken to prevent third parties outside your country of residence from using your personal data in any way that is not set out in this privacy policy. We will also ensure that we adequately protect the confidentiality and privacy of your personal data.

This policy was last updated on 10th March 2025

By submitting your information, you are agreeing to our privacy policy.