Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

This website is operated by APPAREL CONNECT LIMITED, a private company limited by shares registered in England & Wales under company number 09101545, whose registered office is at 20 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7GU, United Kingdom ("we", "us", "our").

For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, APPAREL CONNECT LIMITED is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. That means we decide why and how your personal data is processed, and we are responsible for looking after it.

Questions about this policy, or about how we handle your data, should be sent to apparelconnectlimited@gmail.com or by post to our registered office marked "Data Protection".

2. Personal data we collect

We collect only what we need in order to respond to you and to run our business.

Category	What it includes	Where it comes from
Enquiry data	Your name, company name, email address, telephone number, country or market, enquiry type and the content of your message.	Submitted by you through our enquiry form.
Correspondence data	Emails, WhatsApp messages, letters and notes of telephone calls between us.	You, and our own records of the exchange.
Business contact data	Job title, business address and business contact details of the people we deal with at customer and supplier organisations.	You or your organisation.
Transaction data	Order details, invoices, shipping and customs documents and payment references. Bank details we hold relate to businesses, but may identify sole traders.	You, and generated in the course of an order.
Trade account data	Where you open a trade account with us: company registration details and the business information we need to set the account up.	You, and public registers such as Companies House.
Technical data	Limited information generated when you visit — IP address, browser type and pages requested — recorded in our hosting provider's server logs.	Your browser, automatically.

We do not deliberately collect special category data (such as information about health, race, religion, political opinion or trade union membership) and we ask that you do not include such information in your enquiry.

3. The enquiry form

Because the enquiry form on our contact page is the main way we collect personal data from this website, we set out separately how it works.

What is collected. Full name and email address are required. Company name, telephone number, country or market, enquiry type and your message are optional or selected by you. The form also includes a hidden anti-spam field that must remain empty; it collects nothing about you.
What happens when you submit it. Your entries are validated in your browser and then delivered to our company inbox at apparelconnectlimited@gmail.com. Depending on how the form is configured, this is either through a form-delivery provider acting as our processor, or by opening a pre-addressed message in your own email application, in which case the message is sent by you and travels via your own email provider.
Consent. You must tick the consent box confirming you are happy for us to use your details to respond. You can withdraw that consent at any time by emailing us; withdrawal does not affect anything done beforehand.
What we do with it. We read the enquiry, reply to you, and keep the exchange on file so that we have a record of what was discussed and quoted. We do not add you to a marketing list on the strength of an enquiry, and we do not sell or rent your details to anybody.
How long we keep it. Enquiries that do not lead to a business relationship are deleted no later than 24 months after our last contact. Enquiries that become orders are retained under the transaction periods in section 5.

4. Why we use your data and our lawful basis

Purpose	Data used	Lawful basis (UK GDPR Art. 6)
Responding to an enquiry made through our form	Enquiry data	Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), given by ticking the consent box
Responding to enquiries made by email, telephone or WhatsApp	Correspondence data	Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — answering people who approach our business
Quoting for, agreeing and performing an order	Business contact and transaction data	Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)), or legitimate interests where our contract is with your employer
Managing supplier and customer relationships	Business contact and correspondence data	Legitimate interests — running and developing our business
Opening and maintaining a trade account	Trade account data	Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and legitimate interests in trading with businesses we can identify
Accounting, tax, customs and statutory record keeping	Transaction data	Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c))
Keeping the website available and secure	Technical data	Legitimate interests — security and reliability of our site
Establishing, exercising or defending legal claims	Any of the above, as relevant	Legitimate interests and, where applicable, legal obligation

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have considered whether those interests are overridden by your rights and freedoms, and concluded that they are not — the processing is limited to business contact information used for the purpose you would reasonably expect. You may object to this processing at any time (see section 9).

5. How long we keep it

Enquiries that do not become business: up to 24 months from our last contact with you.
Customer and supplier correspondence: for the duration of the relationship and 6 years afterwards, matching the limitation period for contract claims in England & Wales.
Accounting, invoicing, customs and tax records: at least 6 years from the end of the relevant accounting period, as required by UK law.
Trade account records: for the life of the account and 6 years after it closes.
Server logs: retained by our hosting provider for a short period, typically no more than 12 months.

At the end of these periods we delete the data or anonymise it so that it can no longer be linked to you. Where deletion is not immediately possible — for example in a secure backup — we isolate the data and delete it on the next backup cycle.

6. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We share it only with:

Service providers acting on our instructions — website hosting, form delivery, email and office software, and IT support. These act as processors under a written contract that requires them to keep the data secure and to use it only for the service they provide to us.
Professional advisers — accountants, auditors, insurers and lawyers, where they need it to advise us.
Banks and payment providers — to make and receive payment for orders.
Logistics partners and customs authorities — freight forwarders, carriers and customs brokers, where a shipment requires contact details or documentation.
Suppliers and warehousing partners — limited to what is needed to fulfil, store or deliver your order. We do not pass on your commercial terms.
Regulators, law enforcement and courts — where we are legally required to disclose, or where disclosure is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
A buyer of our business — if we sell or reorganise the company, in which case the recipient is bound by this policy.

7. International transfers

We are a UK company but we trade internationally, so some personal data — usually no more than a business name, contact name and shipping detail — is transferred outside the United Kingdom, including to suppliers, warehousing and logistics providers in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and North America.

Where we transfer personal data outside the UK, we make sure a lawful transfer mechanism is in place: transfer to a country covered by UK adequacy regulations; or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK Addendum; together with any additional safeguards a transfer risk assessment shows to be necessary. You may ask us for details of the safeguards used for a particular transfer by writing to apparelconnectlimited@gmail.com.

8. How we protect your data

We use technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including:

encryption in transit — this website is served over HTTPS;
access to enquiry and customer records limited to staff who need it;
multi-factor authentication on our company email and business systems;
reputable, security-maintained hosting and software providers;
written confidentiality obligations on our staff and contractors; and
a procedure for assessing personal data breaches and, where the criteria are met, reporting them to the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours and informing affected individuals without undue delay.

No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed completely secure. Please do not send us identification documents, bank details or other sensitive material through the website form — ask us and we will arrange a secure route.

9. Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

be informed about how we use your data — which is the purpose of this policy;
access a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
rectification of data that is inaccurate or incomplete;
erasure of your data where we no longer have a good reason to keep it (this does not override records we must retain by law);
restrict processing while a concern you have raised is investigated;
data portability — to receive data you gave us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, where processing is based on consent or a contract and is automated;
object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and to object at any time to direct marketing;
withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent, such as the enquiry form; and
not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing — we do not carry out automated decision-making or profiling.

To exercise any of these rights, email apparelconnectlimited@gmail.com or write to our registered office. We will respond within one month. There is no charge, unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. We may ask you for proof of identity so that we do not disclose data to the wrong person.

10. Cookies and this website

This website does not set any cookies. We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, third-party analytics or social media trackers, which is why you are not asked to accept a cookie banner.

The site does use two things worth mentioning:

Server logs. Our hosting provider records standard request information, including IP addresses, for security and diagnostics. This is not used to build a profile of you.
A web font service. Typefaces are loaded from Google Fonts. That request tells Google the IP address of your device. If you prefer to avoid it, most browsers and content blockers can block third-party font requests; the site remains fully readable in a system font.

If we ever introduce cookies that are not strictly necessary, we will ask for your consent first and update this policy.

11. Children

This is a business-to-business website. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has submitted data to us, contact apparelconnectlimited@gmail.com and we will delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes in how we work or in the law. The version number and date at the top of this page show when it was last revised. Material changes will be highlighted on this page; where the change affects processing we carry out on the basis of your consent, we will ask for consent again.

13. Contact and complaints

For anything in this policy, contact us:

Data controller	APPAREL CONNECT LIMITED
Company number	09101545 (England & Wales)
Registered office	20 Wenlock Road London, England N1 7GU United Kingdom
Email	apparelconnectlimited@gmail.com
Telephone	+44 7861 113458

We are not required to appoint a statutory Data Protection Officer. Data protection matters are handled by the directors, who can be reached at the address above.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please tell us first so we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the UK supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF, telephone 0303 123 1113, ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. Complaining to the ICO does not affect any other legal remedy available to you.