This is the Privacy Notice & Policy (“Privacy Policy”) for Atelier Consulting B.V. ("Atelier & Avenue"). This Privacy Policy was last updated in March 2020.
Atelier & Avenue understands that your privacy is important. Atelier & Avenue is committed to protecting your privacy and personal information (Personal Information) you provide as you access and use materials on atelierandavenue.com (the "Site"), including the Site subscription pages and Observations pages. In addition, information that you submit to Atelier & Avenue in response to an email request for information or other outreach from Atelier & Avenue, or through Atelier & Avenue’s employment application processes, will be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
We operate in accordance with the latest data protection principles enshrined in Article 5 of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (“GDPR”). These include the principles of purpose-limitation, storage-limitation, data accuracy, data security and integrity, and data minimisation.
YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By browsing our Site you agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy. Atelier & Avenue may, in its discretion, amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. To ensure you are able to remain informed about the information we collect and how we use it, material changes to our statement will be reflected here. You should make yourself familiar with our Site and check back periodically.
This Site may contain links to external sites which are not governed by this Privacy Policy. Atelier & Avenue does not take responsibility for the privacy practices of any third party sites to which we link. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any such sites before you submit information there.
OUR LAWFUL BASIS FOR COLLECTING INFORMATION ABOUT YOU
Atelier & Avenue does not collect or process any of your personal data unless it is satisfied that there is a legitimate interest established under the terms of Article 6 (2) of the GDPR. This means in addition to having several contractual arrangements in place governing what we need to do and deliver, we will also regularly appraise the three elements of the ‘legitimate interests’ test – as a further lawful basis:
Purpose - The delivery of a secure, swift and effective e-commerce consultancy business, which benefits our direct customers from brands, retail and investment firms.
Necessity - Only by processing various items of personal data (email addresses, phone and contact information, IP addresses for example) can we deliver the responsive services to individuals or necessarily involving individuals. These cut across our off-the-rack services and our tailor made extensive services for retailers, brands and venture capital / funding firms.
Balancing of rights – we have balanced the privacy rights and interests of the individuals we come into contact with and these include all kinds of identifiable individuals: from individual client representatives, our consultants, subscribers and providers of testimonials for example. We conclude that because of the various agreements we have in place with all these individuals in our network, because of the nature of our business as a highly personalised e-commerce consultancy business we take the informed view that it is fully within the reasonable expectation of all our individual contacts that Atelier & Avenue should have recourse to use their personal data.
Our legitimate interest is prudently counterbalanced by the constant right of an individual to make a data access, cessation of processing or erasure request to us so that we can stop such processing and render inactive their account and data as soon as possible.
THE KINDS OF INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT,
Atelier & Avenue collects information from you when you subscribe or create your account for the Site, request copies of publications, engage with our Observations, insights and blogs, seek additional information regarding our services or employment opportunities, or register for conferences and other Atelier & Avenue-sponsored events (or public speaking forums).
If you do not provide such information, you will not be able to get the most from the Site, request copies of publications, seek additional information regarding our services or employment opportunities. Some of Atelier & Avenue’s registration, subscription account setup and other forms may ask you to give us contact information, unique personal identifiers, financial information, subject areas of interest and/or demographic information. We may use this data to tailor your experience at the Site with relevant Atelier & Avenue materials or, if applicable, to assess candidacy and qualifications for employment with Atelier & Avenue.
We sometimes aggregate demographic information, and the types of systems and browsers of users for internal purposes, so that we may better understand the Site’s user population, identify subject areas of interest, and determine whether the Site is designed to work with the computer settings of a majority of our visitors. Atelier & Avenue also may conduct user surveys on the Web or use technologies to provide Atelier & Avenue with information on a number of areas, such as user identity, user viewing habits, whether or not users found what they were searching for, whether the Site content is relevant to user needs, and the like. Atelier & Avenue uses the information gathered from such surveys to improve our web content, navigation, and overall visitor experience and to provide you with relevant Atelier & Avenue materials.
Any personal information that is provided, such as names, addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, subject areas of interest, etc., allows Atelier & Avenue to inform you about updates to the service and to notify you about other products and services offered by Atelier & Avenue that may be of interest to you. We will not sell, share, or rent or otherwise make available any of that information to other parties, except that we may disclose the information to third parties who perform services on our behalf and have a need to access the information in connection with those services. Any third parties will only process this information to the extent to which and within the limits that Atelier & Avenue itself is permitted to process that data. In addition, Atelier & Avenue may disclose your contact information in response to inquiries by bona-fide rights owners in connection with allegations of infringement of copyright or other proprietary rights arising from information that you have posted on the Site or otherwise provided to Atelier & Avenue.
HOW WE USE & SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
The third parties with whom we may need to share personal information to help us provide services and products to you and to run our Site include:
our consultants,
our financial and legal advisors;
our third party service providers who process information on our behalf to help run some of our internal business operations including email distribution, IT services and marketing and events services (for example Intsec for IT support, and our other core service providers such as Dropbox, Mailchimp and Google);
law enforcement bodies in order to comply with any legal obligation or court order, and
any proposed purchaser or funder of the business in the context of a sale, acquisition, fund-raise or related corporate, restructuring or financial process.
Adhering to the purpose for which we collected your personal information
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
COMPLIANT MARKETING
From time to time, we may send you as a client information regarding services, publications, products and events that we perceive may be of interest to you or your business. We are aware of the rules on the EU’s ePrivacy directive from 2002 (Directive 2002/58/EC) and the EU’s latest plans to update these rules and we will at all times comply with any legally binding and applicable rules.
You may receive this information by hard copy mailing or email. If, at any time, you prefer not to receive further communications from us in any or all forms (except in connection with information, products, publications, events or services that you specifically request), you will have the ability to unsubscribe from such communications by means of a link provided in every e-mail that is sent to you by us.
E-MAIL ADDRESSES
We may collect e-mail addresses at the point of subscription from users who wish to receive e-mail notification of publications and press releases in identified subject areas of interest, and/or those who send us e-mail messages or express interest regarding our services or employment opportunities, or register for conferences and other Atelier & Avenue-sponsored events. We will not, however, share any e-mail addresses with any third party or send unsolicited e-mail to any of the addresses we collect, except in very limited circumstances as set forth in this Privacy Policy.
COOKIES
Our Site uses a widget from Elf Sight to enhance the consumer experience of our Site and service offer. Elfsight Cookie Consent is a simple and customizable extension, which allows Atelier & Avenue to shape a custom cookie notification for our valued Site visitors. More details are available here: https://elfsight.com/cookie-consent-widget/
Atelier & Avenue uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our Site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our Site and also allows us to improve our site. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.
The GDPR contains reference to cookies. When cookies can identify an individual through their device, this will be considered to be personal data.
Recital 30 of the GDPR says, inter alia,
“Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.”
We currently use or reserve the right to use in future the following cookies:
• Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Site. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to subscribe to our Observations (blog posts) on our Site.
• Analytical or performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our Site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our Site works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. Because we use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google"), Google Analytics uses "cookies". The information generated by the cookie about your use of the Site (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the Site, compiling reports on Site activity for Site operators and providing other services relating to Site activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. By using this Site, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above. To find out more about Google Analytics, Google's privacy policy and opting out of its cookies please visit: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our Site. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
• Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our Site, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our Site and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. In future, and in line with future expansion of the business, Atelier & Avenue may deploy “targeting” cookies when we work with Instagram, Facebook and Google posts and platforms.
With most internet browsers, you can erase cookies from your computer hard drive, block all cookies, or receive a warning before a cookie is stored on your computer. Please refer to your browser instructions. To disable cookies on your mobile device's browser you may need to consult your device's manual. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting to refuse cookies our system will issue cookies via the Elf Sight Cookie consent when you visit our Site. Once you have given your consent to use cookies we shall store a cookie on your computer or device to remember this for next time. If you wish to withdraw consent at any time you will need to delete our cookies using your web browsers settings. Please be advised that certain sections or functionalities of the Site may be inaccessible to you if your browser does not accept cookies.
SECURITY PROCESSES
Atelier & Avenue has in place appropriate organisational and technical measures (as called in the GDPR) designed to protect personally identifiable information from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. Only authorized employees and contractors will have access to any data provided by you, and that access is limited by need. Each employee or contractor having access to any personally-identifiable information is obligated to maintain its confidentiality. Although we take steps that are generally accepted as industry standard to protect your personally-identifiable information, Atelier & Avenue cannot guarantee that your personally-identifiable information will not become accessible to unauthorized persons and Atelier & Avenue cannot be responsible for any actions resulting from a breach of security when information is supplied over the internet or any public computer network. It is partly for this reason and to ensure all our partners, consultants, stakeholders and clients that we have updated and codified our data breach response procedures in a new protocol to be issued to all team members, so on-one is in the dark and unaware about what they need to do should a cyber crime, hack or human error occur.
LINKS TO OTHER WEB SITES AND OTHER SERVICES
This Site contains links to other Web sites (for example one by Black Rooster web design) which are not operated by Atelier & Avenue and WE TAKE ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEM.
Atelier & Avenue is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any non-Atelier & Avenue web sites to which we link from the Site. We are not responsible for the protection and privacy of any information you provide whilst visiting other Sites and sites not governed by our Privacy Policy. We cannot control the content or security of such Sites. We cannot be held responsible for any loss or damage incurred by a user as a result of visiting such Sites. No links are intended to be, nor should be construed as, an endorsement of any kind by us of that other Site.
COMPLIANCE WITH LAW
Atelier & Avenue complies with all applicable privacy laws and regulations and will keep up to date with amended law and practice as it evolves on a no less than annual basis. Atelier & Avenue may be compelled to surrender personal user or customer information to legal authorities if presented with a court subpoena or similar legal or administrative order, or as required or permitted by the laws, rules and regulations of any nation, state or other applicable jurisdiction. Also, in the event of a violation of the terms and conditions of use of the Site or a violation of any restrictions on use of materials provided in or through the Site, we may disclose personal user information to our affected business partners or legal authorities.
ACCESS RIGHTS
Your rights under modern data protection principles
Article 5 of the GDPR codifies several key principles which provide you the individual, with key rights. Atelier & Avenue as a modern, progressive and professional e-commerce consultancy follows the spirit of these leading data protection principles for your benefit. Principles such as purpose-limitation, storage-limitation, data accuracy, data security and integrity and data minimisation are honoured by Atelier & Avenue in the following expression of your rights:
(a) The right to request a copy of any Personal Information that we hold about you (essentially your “subject access rights”);
(b) The right to be told, where any information is not collected directly by us, what available information exists as to the source of the information about you;
(c) The right to be told of the existence of automated decision-making (and any personal profiling which we conduct for the purposes of matching people with the right recruitment opportunities);
(d) The right to object to the processing of data where the processing is based on either the conditions of public interest or our legitimate business interests;
(e) The right to have all Personal Information erased (in other words, the right to be forgotten) which practically involves the removal of your data and any account you may have with us (but please be aware it will be impossible to use the Atelier & Avenue services once you trigger such rights);
(f) The right to restrict processing where you have objected to the processing;
(g) The right to have inaccurate data amended or destroyed; and
(h) The right to prevent processing that is likely to cause unwarranted substantial damage or distress to you.
How to make a subject access request – to edit, delete, or access your personal information:
As you will note above, you have the right to ask for a copy of any Personal Information that Atelier & Avenue holds about you in our records, to correct any inaccuracies and to update any out-of-date information. We will provide you with a copy of the Personal Information undergoing processing in electronic emailable form. Any additional copies will incur a fee to cover our reasonable costs (including our employee’s time to assist with this additional work).
CHILDREN
Atelier & Avenue understands the importance of protecting children's privacy, particularly in their online interactions. This Site is not designed for and does not intentionally target or solicit to children 18 years of age and younger.
HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will only retain your Personal Information 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 Information for a longer period in the event of a complaint, regulatory request to us, or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in connection with the data we hold.
To determine the appropriate retention periods for each kind of Data, we consider (i) the amount, nature and sensitivity of the Personal Information, (ii) the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of those personal details, (iii) the purposes for which they are processed, (iv) whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and (v) the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
CONTACT OUR DATA PROTECTION CHAMPION
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or Atelier & Avenue's collection and use of information, or you think we may have incorrect personal information, or would like a copy of the personal information we hold on you, or concerns about how we have handled your personal information, please write to our data protection champion: saverio.bianchi@atelierandavenue.com. Please note that we need you to prove who you are before we can provide you with any information.
MARCH 2020
