Terms & Conditions

Welcome to My Cottage Industry. To make sure you have a really positive experience while you’re here, please play by the rules!

    1. Accepting These Terms
    2. The Other Documents We Mention
    3. Your Privacy
    4. Your Account with My Cottage Industry
    5. Your Content
    6. Your Use of Our Services
    7. Termination
    8. Warranties and Limitation of Liability 
    9. Indemnification
    10. Disputes with Customers or Other Users
    11. Disputes with My Cottage Industry
    12. Changes to the Terms
    13. And finally…
    14. Contact Information

Accepting These Terms

This document and the other documents that we reference below make up our terms & conditions, Terms of Use, or “Terms” for short.

These Terms are a legally binding contract between you and My Cottage Industry.

This contract sets out your rights and responsibilities when you use My Cottage Industry.co.uk, as a customer or a seller, including any apps associated with the website (there will collectively referred to as “Services”). By using any of our Services you’re agreeing to the Terms. If, for whatever reason, you don’t agree with any of our terms, then you’re not allowed to use our Services. If you’re okay with that, let’s move on!

The Other Documents We Mention

My Cottage Industry connects makers, sellers, entrepreneurs and small business owners across the UK so they can buy and sell their quality products to people who appreciate their goods. Our Terms apply to everyone who users our Services, and so does our Privacy policy. Please revise all of our policies regularly to make sure you still agree to them.

Your Privacy

Your personal information is very important to you and, as it should be, is really important to us too!

Our Privacy Policy lays out how we use your information when using our Services. By making use of our Services, you also agree that we can use your information in the ways described in our Privacy Policy, so please take some time to read it!

My Cottage Industry processes customer personal information (e.g. a buyer’s delivery address, name and email address) but so do Sellers. Therefore, My Cottage Industry and Sellers are considered separate, independent data controllers under EU law (hey, I know we’re out of the EU, but some of their laws still make pretty good sense!). What does this mean? Well, this means that each data controller is responsible for the personal information used when providing a service. For example, if a seller discloses a buyer’s name and address by accident, maybe when getting muddled up when sending out invoices, the Seller, not My Cottage Industry is responsible for the unauthorized disclosure of personal information, make sense?

In the instance that a Seller and My Cottage Industry are proved to be joint data controllers or personal information, and if we are fined, sued, or otherwise incur expenses due to something you did, you agree to defend and indemnify My Cottage Industry for any expenses occurred with regards to the processing of the personal information.

Your Account with My Cottage Industry

Not bored yet? Okay, let’s keep going! To use some of our Services, you’ll need to make an account/ Here are a few rules you’ll need to follow about your account with My Cottage Industry:

    1. You must be 18 years of age, or older, to use our Services. Children under 18 years are not permitted to use My Cottage Industry or our Services. As the responsible adult, you are responsible for any activities conducted by someone under the age of 18 on your account.
    2. Honesty is the best policy. You must be honest with us and provide accurate information about yourself. Impersonating another person, or company, through your account in prohibited.
    3. Choose an appropriate name/ username/ store name. You don’t have to use your real name for your account, but it must be appropriate, not use offensive language, language that is considered vulgar, discriminatory, or that breaches someone’s intellectual property or copy rights, or that otherwise infringes on the Terms.
    4. You are responsible for your account. The person, or entity, whose financial information the account is set up with is responsible for any activity on their account. If the account is registered as a business, you personally guarantee that you have the right and authority to accept these Terms on behalf of that business. Accounts are not transferable.
    5. Do your bit to protect your account. As mentioned above, you are responsible for the activity on your account. It’s very important that you safeguard your account password.
    6. Let’s keep this professional. Creating an account or using our Services does not create a franchisee relationship, employment, joint venture, partnership or agency with My Cottage Industry.

Your Content

The content that you post when using our Services belongs to you, we do not make any claim to it. This includes anything you post when using our website (like usernames, videos, reviews, comments, listing descriptions, photos, profile pictures or shop names etc.). We will refer to this as “Your Content” in these Terms.

Responsibility. You are solely responsible for Your Content and it is implied that you have the rights to it and that you are not violating or infringing any other party’s rights by using it.

Permission. You grant My Cottage Industry license to use Your Content when using it on our Services. My Cottage Industry does not own Your Content, but you give us permission to use it to help our site to function and grown. We promise not to infringe any rights you have in Your Content and we are allowed to use it in our promotions, ads and social media posts. For example, you acknowledge and agree to allow My Cottage Industry to publish a post on social media promoting your products, promoting My Cottage Industry and our Services, or promoting your store.

Rights You Grant Us. (A little more detail on the last point).By posting Your Content on our Services, you grant My Cottage Industry a non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, sub-licensable, perpetual license to use, edit, modify display, store, distribute, reproduce and prepare derivative works for Your Content worldwide.

By granting this permission, this allows My Cottage Industry to provide the Services and to promote My Cottage Industry, as a whole, your store and products, in any formats we feel appropriate, through any channels we feel are best, including third-party websites, partners (including social media influencers) or other advertising medium. You recognise the value of this use of Your Content and agree to not assert any rights of publicity or moral rights against us for this use. You also acknowledge and recognise that our interest in using Your Content is strictly legitimate and in accordance with the scope of this agreement, to the extent that Your Content contains your personal information.

That seems like a lot, we need it to ensure My Cottage Industry can continue to function. Here are a few examples illustrating how we’re likely to use Your Content: if you write a great “About My Store” we may choose to feature it in our Newsletter to inspire store owners to get their great stories on their pages: if you upload a professional looking photo, we may choose to list it on our Home Page so visitors can get a good first impression of our site; we may choose to resize one of your photos so it looks great on a mobile phone screen as well as on desktop and tablet; If we thought your store looked particularly fantastic, we may choose to take a combination of your photos, descriptions and “About My Store” section to feature in an off-site ad to promote your store.

Unauthorised Content. My Cottage Industry respects individuals’ intellectual property rights, and is committed to remove offending content from our Services. If content or products that you have own the intellectual rights for is posted to our Services without permission from yourselves, and you would like it removed, please inform us by filling out a Service Ticket on the Support Hub and we will endeavour to investigate. Likewise, if any of Your Content infringes the intellectual property of another person, we will act appropriately to remove it, or terminating your account (In rare cases, and those of repeat offenders). We’ll let you know if this happens.

Inappropriate Content. Mostly common sense, but certain types of content are not allowed on My Cottage Industry’s Services (for professional, reputational, legal or other reasons). You agree not to post any content that is defamatory, vulgar, threatening, abusive, obscene or contained within our prohibited items listed below. We appreciate that the lines may be blurred in some cases, such as the use of a swastika in a religious context, so consider getting in touch with us if you are unsure.

    • Alcohol, Tobacco, Drugs, Drug Paraphernalia, and Medical Drugs
    • Dangerous Items: Hazardous Materials, Recalled Items, and Weapons
    • Pornography and Mature Content
    • Violent Items: Items that Promote, Support, or Glorify Violence
    • Animal Products and Human Remains
    • Hate Items: Items that Promote, Support, or Glorify Hatred
    • Illegal Items, Items Promoting Illegal Activity, and Highly Regulated Items
    • Internationally Regulated Items

You also agree not to post content containing misleading or false or use our platforms in order to conduct fraudulent or deceptive activities.

Your Use of Our Services

License of Use. My Cottage Industry grants you a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable licence to use our Services. We grant you this use subject to our Terms, and the following restrictions:

    • Don’t Break the Law. You agree not to break any laws when using our Services. This includes any international, local or other laws which may apply to you and your region.
    • Pay your subscription. It is your responsibility to pay any and all fees owed to My Cottage Industry. You accept that it is your responsibility for paying applicable taxes for any purchases or sales you make through our Services.
    • Don’t Steal Our Code. You agree not to spider, scrape or crawl crawl any page of our Services or reverse-engineer or attempt to obtain the source code of our Services.
    • Don’t attempt to harm our Services. You agree not to attempt to disrupt our Services by, for example, attempting unauthorised access, or distribute computer viruses or other harmful computer attacks.
    • Respect our Trade Mark. The name “My Cottage Industry” and the other My Cottage Industry marks, phrases, logos, and designs that we use in connection with our Services (the My Cottage Industry Trademarks), are trademarks or My Cottage Industry.
    • Give us your feedback. We don’t have all the ideas! We love hearing your suggestions on how to improve, and make My Cottage Industry a true reflection of the traders, makers and entrepreneurs who we value so much! Any suggestions you make to us (not including items you sell or information from Your Content) can be considered non-proprietary and non-confidential to you. You grant us royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, sub-licensable, perpetual license to use those ideas and suggestions or the purposes we see most useful without compensation to you.
    • Online communications. Now and then, My Cottage Industry will need to get in touch with you to provide certain information in writing, this may be legal, contractual or otherwise. By using our Services, you agree to allow us to provide you with this information. This includes electronically sending you this information in the form of a Newsletter or email, instead of sending paper mail by post (Think of the trees!). You also agree that your electronic agreement equates to your signature on paper.

Termination

Termination By You. We hope the day will never come, but you have the right to cancel your account with My Cottage Industry at any time, and can do so via the account settings when you log into your account. Cancelling your account will not affect the availability of parts of Your Content you published prior to cancelling. You’ll need to pay anything you owe us too.

Termination By My Cottage Industry. Should we have any reason to believe that you have violated our Terms of Use, this includes, any of Your Content, accounts, or accounts believed to be related to yours, My Cottage Industry may suspend, or permanently terminate your account. If this happens, you understand that you do not have a legal or contractual right to continue to post, access or use our Services. This means you will not be able to buy or sell on My Cottage Industry, or any of our Services. Unless you repeatedly violate our Terms of Use, we will notify you of the termination. If we have important, or legal, information we need you to acknowledge, and you do not respond, we may also decide to pause your account until such acknowledgment is gained. In the event of your account being terminated, either by you or by us, you may lose Your Content or other information held on your account.

My Cottage Industry may discontinue Services, or add new ones, and we reserve the right to adapt, pause or discontinue any Service for any or all users, for any reason, at any time. My Cottage Industry is not liable for any effect such changes may incur on you, including your ability to generate revenue from products sold on our Services.

Warranties and Limitation of Liability

Items You Purchase. My Cottage Industry provides a platform where sellers, independent from us can list items they have created, procured or modified themselves and we do not store, inspect, guarantee or manufacture any of the products sold via our Services. For that reason My Cottage Industry cannot and does not make warranties regarding the safely, quality or legality of products. Legal claims regarding a product purchases from our Service must be directed against the seller, and not My Cottage Industry. By using our Services, you release My Cottage Industry form any legal claims related to items listed through the platform, this includes misrepresentations by the seller, those which have cause injury, or defective items.

Content you come across. We do our best to take down inappropriate content should it be posted on our Services, but if you get there before us, you may come across materials you may find offensive. My Cottage Industry makes no representation regarding content posted by sellers on our Services. We are not responsible for the decency, accuracy, compliance or legality of content posted by sellers or users you may access through our Services. You release My Cottage Industry from all liability regarding user or sellers’ content. If you see any such content, please report it using the Report Product option, or email us direct.

Interacting with other Users. As a User and a Seller, you ca interact with other Users, customers or Sellers either through the Service, on other platforms linked to our Service, in person, in chat services or via contact information provided by individuals. My Cottage Industry does not filter users of our Services and you understand that we are not liable for your interactions with individuals on our Services. Please exercise good judgment and caution when interacting with other users, particularly if you decide to meet in person, for example at a Craft Fair they may be attending.

Third-Party Services. There may be links to third-party websites, which we don’t have control over, throughout our Services. These may include links to Pinterest, Facebook, or other Sellers’ own websites. You may need to use a third-party service or product to access some of our Services too, such as owning a mobile device that is compatible to use an app. You access these third-party services, and links, at your own risk and may be required to accept their terms & conditions. My Cottage Industry is not involved in agreements you make with third-parties.

Indemnification

In the event that something you did cause My Cottage Industry to get sued, you agree to indemnify and defend us. That means you agree to hold us harmless from legal demands or clams, inclusive of solicitor fees, and you will defend My Cottage Industry, and any employees, should legal action be brought against you for your actions on our Services. My Cottage Industry reserves the right to handle our legal defence however we feel necessary, including if you indemnify us, in such a case you agree to cooperate with us fully.

Disputes with Customers or Other Users

If you raise a dispute, or have a dispute raised against you by another user of My Cottage Industry’s Services or a third-party, we advise you to resolve the dispute amicably between your parties.

We want customer and Sellers to have a positive buying and selling experience when using our Services. My Cottage Industry will attempt to help disputing parties to resolve disagreements in good faith basing our judgment on the interpretation of our Terms and Policies, and will not make judgments with regards to claims or legal issues raised by either side. My Cottage Industry has no obligation to resolve any disputes and you agree to release us from any demands, claims or damages deriving from disputes with other parties.

Disputes with My Cottage Industry

If you’re not happy with us or our Services, please let us know and we’ll do our best to fix the issue.

Changes to the Terms

From time to time it may be necessary for us to update these Terms. If we think these changes are significant, we will let you know via email or our regular Newsletter. You can decide if you’d like to continue using our Services once you’ve seen what we’ve changed. Amendments to the Terms will be effective upon their publishing, unless otherwise stated. You are encouraged to familiarise yourself with our Terms, and responsible for reviewing any changes we publish. If you continue to use the Services after the changes to the Terms constitutes your acceptance of the amended Terms.

And finally…

These Terms, including policies that make up these Terms, supersede any agreements between My Cottage Industry and yourself with regards to our Services. If any section of these Terms & Conditions is deemed unenforceable, that section will be limited to the minimum extent to ensure the Terms are otherwise maintained in full effect. The failure for My Cottage Industry to enforce any sections of the Terms & Conditions does not waive our right to enforce part of the Terms at a later date. My Cottage Industry may exercise our right to assign any of our obligations under these Terms.

Contact Information

If you have any questions about our Terms & Conditions, please email us at info@My Cottage Industry.co.uk