Privacy Policy

Optimal Branding (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2015/288784/07 ("Optimal Branding", "we", "us"), supplies and brands corporate clothing, headwear, PPE, promotional gifts, signage, displays and printed material. We are based at 45 Maison Crescent, Victoire Village Estate, Sonkring, Brackenfell, Western Cape.

We are the responsible party for the personal information in this policy. Our Information Officer is Morné Meyer. You can reach him at morne@optimalbranding.co.za.

This policy covers our website, our quotes and our orders, whether you contact us through the website, by email, on WhatsApp or by phone. It applies to individuals and to companies, because POPIA protects information about both. This includes the buyers, accounts staff and delivery contacts of our business customers.

When you ask for a quote or place an order, we collect:

• your name, company name, email address and phone number
• the products, quantities, colours, branding positions and deadlines you ask about
• your logo and artwork files, and the layouts we prepare from them
• the delivery address and the person who will receive the order
• the billing details we need for an invoice, such as your company's registration and VAT numbers
• the messages you send us by email, on WhatsApp or through the website

The quote form on our website asks for your full name, company name, email address, contact number, the service you're interested in and a message. Name, email, contact number and service are required, because we can't send you a quote without a way to reach you. The other fields are optional. For an order, we need the details listed above to price, make, deliver and invoice it, and if you don't give them we may not be able to complete the order.

Most of this information comes from you. If you work for a company, we may also get your details from your employer or colleagues, and we may be given the name, address and phone number of the person who will receive the order. If you give us another person's details, please make sure you are allowed to share them.

When you visit the website, the company that hosts it records technical details such as your IP address, browser type and the pages you open, so the site works and stays secure.

We don't ask for ID numbers, card details or banking passwords. If you pay by bank transfer, we see the reference and amount your bank sends with the payment.

We use your information only for the reason you gave it to us, or a closely related one, and only where section 11 of POPIA allows it.

We share only what each party needs to do its part:

• Suppliers and branding partners who make and brand your products. They get your artwork and branding instructions, and the delivery details when they deliver for us.
• Courier companies, who get the delivery name, address and phone number.
• Our designer, an independent contractor who prepares layouts from your artwork under a written agreement with us.
• Companies that run our systems: website hosting, email, accounting software and WhatsApp.
• Trustpilot, if we invite you to review us through Trustpilot's invitation service. Trustpilot gets your name, email address and an order reference so it can send the invitation.
• Our accountants and auditors, for financial records.
• Authorities, when the law requires it.

Companies that process information on our behalf, such as those that run our systems, are operators under POPIA. Under sections 20 and 21 they may use it only with our knowledge and on our instructions, must keep it confidential and secure, and must tell us immediately if they believe it has been accessed without permission. We must have a written contract with each operator that requires this. We do not sell personal information.

Some of the companies we use store or process information outside South Africa. Our website is built and hosted on Base44, which stores the site's files and form entries with an overseas cloud provider. WhatsApp is run by Meta. Trustpilot is based in Denmark. Our email and other online tools may also keep data on servers abroad.

Section 72 of POPIA sets the rules for this. You can ask our Information Officer in which countries your information is held and what protection applies there. We send personal information outside South Africa only where:

• the company receiving it is bound by a law, binding corporate rules or an agreement that protects it to a standard substantially similar to POPIA, including limits on passing it on to others abroad;
• you have agreed to the transfer; or
• the transfer is needed to perform our contract with you, or to take steps you asked for before one.

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the reason we collected it, or for as long as the law requires.

When that time is up, we delete or destroy the information, or remove what identifies you, in a way that stops anyone rebuilding it in a readable form, as section 14 of POPIA requires.

Section 19 of POPIA requires reasonable technical and organisational measures to keep personal information safe. We limit access to the people who need it to do their work, protect our accounts and devices with passwords, and use reputable providers for hosting, email and storage.

No website or email system is completely secure, so we can't promise that information will never be exposed. If we have reasonable grounds to believe someone has accessed your information without permission, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as soon as reasonably possible, as section 22 requires.

Under POPIA you can:

• ask whether we hold information about you, see it, and learn who it has been shared with (section 23);
• ask us to correct or delete information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading or obtained unlawfully, or to delete information we are no longer allowed to keep (section 24);
• object, on reasonable grounds, to us using your information where we rely on a legitimate interest (section 11(3)), unless the law allows us to continue;
• object at any time, free of charge, to direct marketing (sections 11(3)(b) and 69);
• withdraw any consent you gave, which won't affect what we did before you withdrew it;
• complain to the Information Regulator (see Complaints).

To do any of this, contact our Information Officer at morne@optimalbranding.co.za. We may ask you to prove who you are before we act, so we don't hand your information to someone else. We'll reply within a reasonable time and tell you what we have done.

Objections and requests to correct or delete information are made on the forms in the POPIA Regulations (Form 1 and Form 2). We can send you the forms and help you complete them. Confirming whether we hold your information is free, but a prescribed fee may apply for a copy. Requests for access follow the process in the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (PAIA), as sections 23 and 25 of POPIA provide.

We only send you marketing by email, SMS or WhatsApp if you said yes to it, or if you are already a customer and the message is about products or services like the ones you bought from us (section 69 of POPIA). In that case we gave you a chance to say no, free of charge, when we first collected your details, and every message gives you an easy way to stop. If we need your consent, we will ask for it only once, and not if you have already refused, using the prescribed consent form (section 69(2)).

Messages about your quote, artwork proofs, order or delivery are part of the service you asked for. They are not marketing.

Our website runs on the Base44 platform, which uses the cookies and browser storage the site needs to work. Base44 also gives us basic visit statistics: the pages viewed, how long a visit lasts, your approximate country, your device type and operating system, and the website that sent you to us. We use these only to understand how the site is used and to improve it, under our legitimate interest (section 11(1)(f)). We don't use advertising cookies, and we don't record visitors' sessions. If we add other analytics or tracking, we will update this policy and ask for your permission where the law requires it. Some images on the site load from other services, and those services can see your IP address when your browser fetches them.

We may ask you to review us on Trustpilot. If we ask by email, SMS or WhatsApp, we do so only on the same terms as our other marketing (see Direct marketing). Leaving a review is your choice. Trustpilot is a separate company and handles your review under its own privacy policy.

Our site links to WhatsApp and other websites. They have their own privacy policies, and we are not responsible for how they handle your information.

We sell to businesses and organisations, and our website is not aimed at children. We do sell children's sizes, but those orders are placed by adults or organisations. We don't knowingly collect information about children, meaning anyone under 18. If we ever need to, we will first get the consent of a parent, guardian or other competent person, unless section 35 of POPIA allows us to process it without consent (sections 34 and 35 of POPIA). If an order includes details of learners or young team members, such as names for personalised items, the school, club or company placing the order must be entitled to give them to us, and we use them only to fill that order.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your information, please talk to us so we can try to fix it. You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator at any time, and you do not have to come to us first (section 74). The Regulator also deals with complaints under PAIA:

• Address: Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191
• Complaints: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
• General enquiries: enquiries@inforegulator.org.za
• Phone: 010 023 5200 or toll free 0800 017 160
• Website: www.inforegulator.org.za

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version will always be on this page, with the date it took effect.

Optimal Branding (Pty) Ltd
Registration number: 2015/288784/07
Information Officer: Morné Meyer
Email: morne@optimalbranding.co.za
Phone: +27 83 778 4107
Address: 45 Maison Crescent, Victoire Village Estate, Sonkring, Brackenfell
Website: www.optimalbranding.co.za