Privacy Policy

1. About This Policy

Shaw Hill Pottery (“we,” “us,” or “Karen”) is a small Canadian ceramics studio operating from Ontario. We are committed to protecting your personal information in accordance with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use and protect it, and how you can contact us about it.

2. Information We Collect

We collect personal information only when you interact with us:

• At checkout: your name, email address, shipping address, and order details (piece purchased, shipping method, amount paid). This information is necessary to process your payment and fulfil your order.
• Drop notifications: if you subscribe to be notified of new drops, we collect your email address for that purpose only.
• Contact and class inquiries: if you submit a contact or class-inquiry form, we collect your name, email, and message.
• Order history: if you opt in to save your order history, we store a link to your orders associated with your email address.

We do not collect payment card details directly — all payments are processed securely by Stripe (see Section 4).

3. How We Use Your Information

• To process and fulfil your order (including shipping or pickup coordination)
• To send you a receipt and, if you opted in, a link to your order history
• To notify Karen of a sale so she can prepare your piece for shipment
• To send drop-announcement emails if you subscribed (you can unsubscribe at any time)
• To respond to contact and class-inquiry submissions

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with any third party for marketing purposes.

4. Third-Party Processors

We use the following third-party services to operate the site:

• Stripe — payment processing. Your payment card details are handled entirely by Stripe and are never stored on our servers. Stripe is PCI-DSS compliant. See Stripe's Privacy Policy.
• Resend — transactional email delivery (receipts, order history links, drop notifications). Resend receives the recipient email address and message content in order to deliver the email.

No other third-party services currently have access to your personal information.

5. Analytics and Cookies

We currently use minimal technical cookies required for the site to function (session management for the admin area only — not set for regular visitors). We do not use third-party advertising cookies or tracking pixels.

We may add privacy-friendly analytics in a future update to understand which pages are visited. If we do, this policy will be updated to describe it, and we will choose a tool that does not share your data with advertising networks.

6. Data Retention

Order and customer information is retained as long as reasonably necessary for accounting, legal, and customer-service purposes. Drop-notification subscribers are retained until they unsubscribe. Contact-form submissions are retained for a reasonable period so Karen can respond. You may request deletion at any time (see Section 8).

7. Security

The site is self-hosted on a private server behind a firewall, with TLS encryption for all traffic. We take reasonable precautions to protect personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access. No system is perfectly secure; if you have concerns, please contact us.

8. Your Rights

Under PIPEDA, you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate information
• Request deletion of your personal information (subject to legal retention requirements)
• Withdraw consent where consent is the basis for processing (e.g. drop-notification emails)

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us via the Contact page. We will respond within a reasonable time.

To unsubscribe from drop-notification emails, use the unsubscribe link in any email we send you.

9. Contact Us

Questions or concerns about this policy? Please reach out via our Contact page. Shaw Hill Pottery is based in Ontario, Canada.