Privacy Policy

PERSONAL DATA STORAGE PROMISE

Our personal data storage promise is a summary of how we look after your personal data.

We collect, use and store your personal data so that we can offer you the products and services you expect from us. We see your personal data as just that: it's yours. So we will always be clear and upfront with you about what we do with your personal data, and you have control over it.

We collect your personal data for three main reasons:

• To process any orders you make and to deliver those orders to you.
• To personalise, report on and improve the products and services we provide to you.
• To send you special offers and offer the best deals on the products that you use.

We promise:

• That you can control the personal data you provide us with and that we will always be transparent about how we collect and use it.
• We will always tell you, on request, what personal data we are collecting from you, the means by which we will collect it and how we will use it. We will only use your personal data for the purposes we originally told you about.
• We will always use market-leading technology and software to ensure that your personal data is secure. We shall not share your personal data with third parties without your permission except in the normal conducting of business such as giving your address to carrier companies for the purpose of carrying out deliveries. See below.
• We will send you marketing communications as we believe they are of genuine interest and benefit to you. However, we will always offer you a clear and simple means of changing your preferences whenever you want to.

WHO WE ARE

Vibram Academy, London is a subsidiary of Charles Birch Ltd and is registered in England with company number 01161150

Our registered head office is: Vibram Academy, care of Charles Birch Ltd, 4 Brown Lane West, Leeds LS12 6BH

Our Vibram Academy branch address is: Vibram Academy, 215 City Road, London, EC1V 1JN

Charles Birch Ltd is a national wholesale distributor to the shoe, shoe repair, key cutting, hardware and sports trades. The company trades out of two warehouses in Leeds and Rochford, Essex and are distributors for major brands such as Vibram, Bama, Silca and its in house brand BIRCH.

The family-owned business dates back to 1965 and today has over 50 employees across the United Kingdom who aim to offer the highest possible service and product quality to our large customer base of retailers and distributors.

If you have any questions about how we look after your personal data, you can contact us:

• In writing, at the address above. Please mark your letter for the attention of the Data Protection Officer.
• By email to this address: vibramacademy@charlesbirch.com
• By telephone on 020 7251 8658

HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

We collect your personal data in two main ways:

(1) When you give it to us directly.

When you create a customer account, visit our website, communicate with us or purchase our products or services, you may choose to give us certain information. For example, when you give us your name and address, tell us about your product preferences or when clicking on active buttons such as 'continue' when making an online purchase.

(2) When our systems collect information or personal data as you use our website.

Whenever you use the website, information gets recorded automatically by the IT systems used to operate the website. The most common type of information collected is in the form of cookies (small text files sent by your computer each time you visit our website) but can also include personal data transferred by the electronic device you use to access our website and its settings. The manufacturer of your device, or the provider of the operating system, will have details about what information your device shares with us.

Links

This website contains links to other sites and Charles Birch Limited nor any subsidiary of Charles Birch Limited is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware of this and when they leave our site to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by our website.

WHAT CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL DATA DO WE COLLECT?

We may collect the following information about you:

• Your name and contact details.
  This can include your postal, billing and delivery addresses, your telephone number(s), including, if you provide it, your mobile number; and your email address.
• Purchases and orders made by you.
• Your payment card details when you purchase our products or services.
• When you set up an account with us, your password (which we encrypt) and your marketing preferences.
• Your on-line browsing history on our website.
• Your correspondence with us.

In some instances, we may need to collect additional personal data for the purposes set out in this privacy policy.

PERSONAL DATA WE WILL PROCESS TO FULFIL YOUR ORDERS AND TO COMPLY WITH THE LAW

We will need to process some of your personal data to fulfil any orders you place and to comply with the law. For example:

• We will share your name, address and, where applicable, telephone number with our carriers.
• We will share your payment details with our bank or clearing house so that we can process payment for your order.

HOW AND WHY DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

We use your personal data:

• To send you the products and services you have purchased.
• To improve the range of offers and associated products we offer you and to help identify new products and services in the future.
• To allow you to post links to our products on social media.
• To manage any accounts you have registered with us so that (i) we can provide you with products and services; (ii) you can place orders; and (iii) we can fulfil those orders and communicate with you about them.
• To verify your identity.
• To detect and prevent fraud and other illegal activities (and to assist regulators, trade bodies and law enforcement agencies in relation to the same).
• To carry out research to better understand your views on our products and services.
• To allow you to continue enjoying our excellent customer service.
• To comply with the law.

Our legitimate interests

"Legitimate Interests" means the interests of our company in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best products and services, and the best and most secure experience.For example, we have an interest in marketing our products and services to you, and making sure our marketing is relevant for you. Therefore, we may process your information to send you marketing that is tailored to your interests.

It can also apply to processing that is in your interests as well. For example, we may process your information to protect you against fraud when transacting on our website, and to ensure our websites and systems are secure.

When we process your personal information for our legitimate interests, we make sure to consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests - we will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

Where we rely on our legitimate interests to send you marketing communications, we shall tell you when you become a customer how we would like to market our products and services to you, and offer you a means of opting out of those communications. You can opt out of our marketing communications at any time clicking the “unsubscribe” button or by contacting us on 0207 2518658 or vibramacademy@charlesbirch.com.

In addition to sending you marketing communications, we rely on our legitimate interests to process your personal data so that we can:

• Improve our existing products and services, and develop new ones.
• Provide you with a quality customer service experience.
• Protect you, our employees and our business.

WHEN DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

We do not rent or sell your personal information to anyone. We may share and disclose information about our customers in the following limited circumstances.

When we share your personal data, we make sure that it remains secure:

We will only send to third parties the personal data that is necessary for the purposes it is required for.

We share your data as follows:

With core service providers to enable our business to function

We rely on a set of external companies to provide us with services that enable our business to run properly. Our core service providers include: a) the courier companies we use to deliver our products to you, b) banks and clearing houses to process your payments, c) companies we use to carry out fraud protection and credit control checks, d) IT services providers; companies to help us with our marketing;

With regulators and law enforcement agencies when required to do so by law

We are required to co-operate with regulators (like the Information Commissioner's Office or HMRC) and law enforcement agencies (like the police or the Serious Fraud Office). Although it does not happen often, regulators and law enforcement agencies can require us to share information with them as part of an investigation; this may include your personal data. We would have to disclose your personal data where we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the regulator or crime enforcement agency's demand.

When we think it is reasonably necessary to protect you or us

Occasionally businesses are subject to attempted criminal activities; this can affect both us and you. We will take all reasonable steps to protect you and our business but sometimes we may need to share your personal data where we think it is reasonably necessary to:

• Detect, monitor, investigate or prevent any suspected illegal activities, fraud or security issues.
• Enforce our terms and conditions and to protect your and our rights and property.
• Investigate and defend any third party claims or allegations.

HOW LONG DO WE HOLD YOUR PERSONAL DATA FOR?

We will not keep your personal data for longer than is necessary for the purposes described in this policy.

As a guide:

• we will keep personal data while your account is active.
• we may keep certain categories of personal data after your account is closed in order to meet any legal or regulatory requirements, or to resolve a legal dispute.
• and, because of this, we may keep different types of personal data for different lengths of time (for instance, we may need to keep certain personal data relating to your purchases in order to comply with HMRC's VAT reporting requirements).

YOUR RIGHTS

You have a number of rights under data protection laws; these are summarised below.

The right to be informed

We need to be clear with you about how we process your personal data. We do this through this Privacy Policy and your contact with our Data Protection Officer.

The right of access

You can access the personal data we hold on you by contacting us on 020 7251 8658 or vibramacademy@charlesbirch.com. To process your request, we will ask you to send us two forms of proof of identity so that we can be sure we are releasing your personal data to the right person.

We will process your request within one month or, if the request is particularly complex, two months. We can provide you with a copy of your personal data in electronic format or hard copy.

If we consider the frequency of your requests is unreasonable, we may refuse to comply with your request. In those circumstances, we would notify you of your right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

The right to rectification

We welcome feedback from you to ensure our records are as accurate and up-to-date as possible. If you think that the information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete please ask us to correct it by contacting us on 020 7251 8658 or vibramacademy@charlesbirch.com or by updating your details at any time through your online account. We will process your request within one month of receipt at the latest.

The right to erasure

You can ask us to delete your personal data; however, this is not an absolute right. We can refuse to erase personal data which we need to keep (i) to comply with a legal obligation (for instance, we are required by HMRC to keep certain personal data for up to 6 years for VAT reporting purposes); and (ii) in relation to the exercise or defence of any legal claims.

When you ask us to delete your personal data, we assume that you do not want to hear from us again. To ensure that we do not send you any special offers in the future we will retain just enough of your personal data solely for suppression purposes.

Other than as described above, we will always comply with your request and do so promptly. We would also notify any third parties with whom we have shared your personal data (for instance, our carriers for the purposes of delivering your orders to you) about your request so that they could also comply.

Some customers would still like to order our products but do not want to receive any marketing communications from us. This is not a problem as you can simply update your marketing preferences by contacting us on 020 7251 8658 or vibramacademy@charlesbirch.com.

The right to transfer your personal data (known as data portability)

You have the right to move, copy or transfer your personal data from one organisation to another. We hold little information that would be much use to another supplier but if you do wish to transfer your personal data we would be happy to help.

If you ask for a data transfer, we will give you a copy of your personal data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable form (for instance, in a CSV file format). We can provide the personal data to you directly or, if you request, to another organisation. Please note that we are not required to adopt processing systems that are compatible with another organisation, so it may be that the recipient organisation cannot automatically use the personal data we provide.

When making a transfer request, it would be helpful if you can identify exactly what personal data you wish us to transfer. We will comply with your request within one month or, if the request is complex or there are a number of requests from you, within two months.

The right to object

If you would like us to stop processing your personal data for marketing purposes simply let us know by contacting us on 020 7251 8658 or vibramacademy@charlesbirch.com.

UPDATE

We may update this policy from time to time to take account of any new business activity or to reflect any changes in law or best practice in relation to data protection. We will notify you if we do so by, for example, placing a notice on our Websites and/or by sending you an email (if you have registered your e-mail details with us). You can see when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the date below. You are responsible for periodically reviewing this Privacy Policy.

This policy was last updated on 13^th September 2019

COOKIES

What are cookies?

Cookies are tiny text files stored on your computer when you visit certain web pages. At charlesbirch.com we use cookies to keep track of what you have in your basket, and to remember you when you return to our site.

To order products on charlesbirch.com, you need to have cookies enabled. If you don't wish to enable cookies, you'll still be able to browse the site and use it for research purposes.

Please note that cookies can't harm your computer. We don't store personally identifiable information such as credit card details in cookies. We create, but we do use encrypted information gathered from them to help improve your experience of the site. For example, they help us to identify and resolve errors, or to determine relevant related products to show you when you're browsing.

3rd Party Cookies

Vibram.co.uk makes use of Google Analytics to get an overview of activity and trends on site; If you wish to block our use of Google Analytics you will find all required information by following the link: http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html

If you'd like to opt out, please go to the Network Advertising Initiative website (please note that we're not responsible for the content of external websites).

We're giving you this information as part of our initiative to comply with recent legislation, and to make sure we're honest and clear about your privacy when using our website.