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Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy” or “Policy”) describes how www.softsidemerch.com (the “Site” or “we”) collects, uses, and discloses your Personal Information as a visitor, user, or customer when you visit or use our websites, applications, services or any related products, sites, features or functionalities (each a “Service”, collectively the “Services”).

In this Privacy Policy, we refer to any information that can uniquely identify an individual as “Personal Information.” We collect and use your Personal Information in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws.

Collecting Personal Information

When you visit the Site, we may collect certain information about your device (including the version of your web browser, timezone, search terms, IP address, and device location), your interaction with the Site (including what websites or search terms referred you to the Site, products and pages you view, content you upload and submit, and information necessary to process your purchases and/or set up your earnings for payments (including your name, shipping address, billing address, credit card and/or related banking information, email address, and phone number)). We may collect additional information if you contact us for customer support, sign up for our email subscriber list, or are approved for a merchandise partnership.

Sources of collection include: automatic collections when you access our Site, log files (which track actions occurring on the Site and collect data including your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, and date/time stamps), web beacons/tags/pixels (which are electronic files used to record information about how you browse the Site), account creation, earnings set-up, purchasing orders, attempts to purchase orders, signing up for an email or SMS subscriber list, and uploading and publishing content within our website such as to submit information for a merchandise partnership or to build your user profile.

Publicly Shared Personal Information

If you post, upload, submit or publish Personal Information on your user profile or other public areas of our Services, such as within your user portfolio, product reviews, comments, and user content, that information may be collected and used by Softside, its Partners, other users or visitors of the Services, and the general public. We strongly recommend that you do not post or publish any Personal Information through our Services that allows others to locate you or any other individual, or that you otherwise do not want to share with the public. Information you made public may remain visible to others or in copies outside our control even after you delete it or your account.

How We Use Your Personal Information

Purposes of collection include: to perform analytics on Site to optimize for best usage and assess marketing and advertising campaigns, load the Site correctly, provide customer support and other services, communicate with you, display your local currency, process your payment information, facilitate partnerships between you and our platform Partners, pay you earnings, fulfill and arrange your order for shipping, send you invoices and/or order confirmations, filter orders and other communications for potential viruses, risk or fraud, and provide you with information and/or promotional relating messaging for our products, offers, updates, and other company announcements. We may use information you provide on your profile (such as uploaded content, selected favorite music artists, and other customized preferences) to better understand user interests, identify trends and demand across our community, personalize your experience, and inform which artists, content, and opportunities we prioritize on the platform. This may include analyzing patterns across users to understand shared interests or overlapping taste profiles. If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to receive promotional/advertising communications from Softside, please follow the unsubscribe instructions provided in any of the communications you receive from us. You may also contact us at legal@softsidemerch.com at any time.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use minimal cookies and similar technologies to operate and maintain our Services.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We use strictly necessary cookies to enable core functionality of the Services, such as:

  • authenticating users and maintaining secure login sessions;
  • verifying account activity and associating requests with user accounts;
  • protecting the integrity and security of our platform and APIs.

These cookies are essential for the Services to function properly and cannot be disabled.

Some of these cookies may be set as HttpOnly cookies, meaning they are not accessible via client-side scripts and help protect against unauthorized access or misuse. Because these cookies are required to provide the Services requested by you, they do not require your consent under applicable data protection laws.

These cookies do not track your activity across third-party websites and are not used for advertising purposes.

Minors

The Site is not intended for individuals under the age of 13 years old. We do not intentionally collect Personal Information from children. If you are the parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with Personal Information, please contact us at legal@softsidemerch.com to request deletion.

Sharing Your Personal Information

We share certain Personal Information with service providers and third parties to help us use your Personal Information for those services. Such Personal Information may include your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, banking or payment information, and other information depending on the type of service utilized. In addition, our platform may contain links to third party websites, services, platforms, or apps (collectively, “Third Party Links”). You may need to access those Third Party Links in order to utilize our services. We have no responsibility or control over the information, content, terms of use, or policies of these Third Party Links. Your engagement with any Third Party Links within our platform is done so at your own risk. Some examples include but are not limited to:

  • We use Stripe to power transactions and payments within the Site. You can read more about how Stripe uses your Personal Information here: https://stripe.com/privacy
  • We use Docusign to facilitate partnership documentation. You can read more about how Docusign uses your Personal Information here: https://www.docusign.com/privacy
  • We use AWS to host our website and other programming services. You can read more about how AWS uses your Personal Information here: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/
  • We use Umami to help us understand how our customers use the Site. You can read more about how Umami uses your Personal Information here: https://umami.is/privacy
  • We use Shopify to connect our Services with Partners' own online stores through our Softside Connect app. You can read more about how Shopify uses your Personal Information here: https://www.shopify.com/legal/privacy
  • We partner with music artists, entertainers, festivals, brands, and other intellectual property holders (collectively, “Partners”) for our partnerships. If you choose to opt in to receive updates from a Partner - for example, by selecting an opt-in option when submitting a collaboration request, following a Partner's shop, or making a purchase - we may share limited contact information, such as your email address, opt-in source, and country, with that Partner so they can send you marketing communications directly. These opt-in emails will come from Partners, not Softside. Partners who receive contact information through the Services are independently responsible for complying with applicable privacy and marketing laws when contacting you. Certain information from your profile or submissions may be visible to Partners within the Services to facilitate discovery and collaborations.
  • We may share information about your use of the Site, your purchases, your content uploads & submissions, and your interaction with our ads on other websites with our marketing/advertising partners. We collect and share some of this information directly with our advertising partners in an effort to serve more relevant ads and enhance the customer experience. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative's (“NAI”) educational page at http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work. For more information on how you can hide/opt out of targeted advertising, please visit:

We may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.

Collection of your information by third parties is not governed by this Privacy Policy. Please review and consult the privacy policies of those third parties to determine how they collect and use your information.

Orders through Partner Stores

Some Partners sell Softside merchandise through their own Shopify stores connected to our Services (“Connected Stores”). If you purchase from a Connected Store, the Partner collects your payment and order information through its own checkout and is responsible for that information under its own privacy policy. Shopify, which powers the checkout, also processes that information under its own privacy policy. We receive the order details needed to produce, fulfill, and ship your order, such as your name, shipping address, email address, and items ordered, and we use them only for those purposes, customer support, and our legal and accounting records.

If you are a Creator with an approved product in the Platform, product listings synced to a Connected Store may include your name or username as the design's creator. If you delete your account, we remove your name from listings on the Site, but it may continue to appear on Connected Stores, which are operated by Partners.

Lawful Basis

Pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), if you are a resident of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), we process your personal information under the following lawful bases:
  • Your consent;
  • The performance of the contract between you and the Site;
  • Compliance with our legal obligations;
  • To protect your vital interests;
  • To perform a task carried out in the public interest;
  • For our legitimate interests, which do not override your fundamental rights and freedoms.

Retention

We retain your Personal Information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Services. When you delete your account, we delete or de-identify your Personal Information, except as described below.

We keep certain information after account deletion where needed to comply with legal, tax, and accounting obligations, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, and enforce our agreements. This includes payout and transaction records, signed partnership documents, any royalty waiver confirmation, legal name, address, and tax information, and a minimal record of the deletion request (such as its date and the IP address used). This information is stored with restricted access and deleted when the applicable retention period ends, generally up to seven (7) years. Residual copies of deleted data may remain in routine system backups for up to thirty-five (35) days before being overwritten.

If you order through the Site or subscribe to our email or SMS list without creating an account, we retain that information for our records unless and until you ask us to erase it, subject to the same legal retention obligations.

Account Deletion

Users can delete their account at any time from their account settings or by contacting hello@softsidemerch.com if they cannot access their account (we may ask you to verify your identity). Deletion is permanent and begins once confirmed. When an account is deleted:

  • your login, profile, portfolio, unapproved submissions, and Platform activity (such as favorites, requests, and similar interactions) are deleted;
  • merchandise featuring designs you transferred to a Partner may remain on sale, with your name removed from listings on the Site;
  • messages with Partners are kept for the Partner's records, with your name replaced by “Deleted User” or similar verbiage;
  • your Stripe account is disconnected from Softside once pending payouts are complete, but is not deleted, because it is governed by Stripe's own terms and privacy policy.

Some information may remain outside our control after deletion. For example, your name may still appear on listings previously synced to a Partner's online store outside of Softside, content previously shared publicly (such as in past social media posts) may persist, and contact information you previously chose to share with a Partner is held by that Partner under its own privacy practices. See our Terms of Service for details on how account deletion affects approved merchandise and earnings.

Automatic decision-making

If you are a resident of the EEA, you have the right to object to processing based solely on automated decision-making (which includes profiling), when that decision-making has a legal effect on you or otherwise significantly affects you. We do not engage in fully automated decision-making that has a legal or otherwise significant effect using customer data.

Selling Personal Information

We do not sell your Personal Information.

Your Rights: GDPR

If you are a resident of the EEA, you have the right to access the Personal Information we hold about you, to port it to a new service, and to ask that your Personal Information be corrected, updated, or erased. Creators can delete their account directly from their account settings. We may retain certain information where required or permitted by law, as described under Retention. If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us through the contact information below.

If you are a European resident we note that we are processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example if you make an order through the Site), or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above.

California Residents

If you are a resident of California, you have the right to access the Personal Information we hold about you (also known as the 'Right to Know'), to port it to a new service, and to ask that your Personal Information be corrected, updated, or erased. Creators can delete their account directly from their account settings. We may retain certain information where required or permitted by law, as described under Retention. If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us at legal@softsidemerch.com. If you would like to designate an authorized agent to submit these requests on your behalf, please contact us at legal@softsidemerch.com.

Nevada Residents

If you are a resident of Nevada, you may submit a request directing us not to make certain disclosures of your Personal Information. You have the right to direct us not to sell any “covered information” (as defined by Chapter 603A - Security and Privacy of Personal Information, Section NRS 603A.340) that we have collected or will collect about you. If you would like to exercise these rights, please contact us at legal@softsidemerch.com.

Do Not Track

Please note: there is no consistent industry understanding of how to respond to “Do Not Track” signals. As a result we do not alter our Site's data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser.

Transferring of Personal Information

We may disclose, assign, or transfer your Personal Information to other businesses in the event of a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other sale of all or a portion of our assets or any business (“Business Event”). Other than to the extent ordered by a bankruptcy or other court, the use and disclosure of all transferred Personal Information will be subject to this Privacy Policy. Any Personal Information you submit or is collected after a Business Event may be subject to a new or updated privacy policy.

Updates to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time in order to reflect any changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. We will alert you of material updates by sending a notification to the email associated with your account and/or through an in-platform notice when you next log in. The updated Policy will also be available on the Site with a revised “Last updated” date. If you do not agree to any changes following such notice, you may discontinue your use of our Services or delete your account. If you continue using our Services forty-eight (48) hours after our updated Privacy Policy takes effect, the updated Privacy Policy will govern any further collection or processing of your Personal Information.

Contact

For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by email at legal@softsidemerch.com or by mail at 275 South 1st Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211. If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint, you have the right to lodge your complaint with the relevant data protection authority.

Last updated: October 20, 2026