SITKAGEAR.COM PRIVACY NOTICE

Effective Date:August 2023

Scope

This Privacy Notice applies to your use of www.sitkagear.com. SITKA is a brand of W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc.

Introduction

W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. is a global company, providing a variety of services and products to consumers, customers, vendors, and suppliers.

We are committed to the privacy and security of the personal information (PI) entrusted to us and process it in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we operate or conduct business. Our commitment to privacy extends beyond compliance to ensure we are collecting and processing PI in a transparent and ethical manner.

This Gore Privacy Notice describes how W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. and its affiliate and subsidiary companies globally (together, “Gore”, “we”, “us”, “our”) process personal information which is subject to applicable laws.

For questions about this Notice you may contact the Gore Privacy Office.

Information We Collect

Information Collected Directly

We collect information that you provide to us or share on the sites, including:

  • Registration Information and Requests: Many of our sites and other information available on our sites can be accessed without registering. However, you will be required to register in order to use or access some of our services. The information that we collect will vary depending upon the context of your request, but for general inquiries, we require your first and last name and contact information, such as address, telephone number and email address and other relevant information relating to your request. Generally, fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory for processing your inquiry or your registration, other details are optional.
  • Communications: When you email us, call us or contact us, we maintain records about our interactions and communications with you.
  • Customer Service and Support: We also maintain records related to customer support and customer service-related requests, including the nature of the request, in order to process questions or comments directed to our customer service team, or to settle complaints. For questions or comments directed to our customer service team relating to an order or invoice, or in the event of a product complaint, we may require additional information about the product, for example, product size, gender, time and place of purchase and additional information about previous inquiries.
  • Comments and Content: Some areas of the sites may allow you to comment, share or post other content. When you view this content, we keep a record of our content, and it may be viewable by other users of the sites. You may ask us to remove such content as set out below.
  • Marketing and Surveys: If you participate in our direct marketing activities, for example, if you fill out a participation or answer card or register for a Gore newsletter, we will process the personal information required for each of these. If you used our online store and a purchase process is not completed, we may send you a reminder email. If you have signed up to participate in a competition or similar advertising campaign, we may use the personal information provided by you to process your participation. For more information, please refer to the conditions of participation for the respective campaign. Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent prior to sending you any direct marketing. If you have given consent to receive direct marketing email communications Gore will use the personal information provided by you to further discuss your interest in the company or our products and services; and to send you information that may be of interest regarding the company, its affiliates, and its partners, such as information about special offers, events, e-commerce activities, market research, consumer or customer surveys, competitions and similar advertising campaigns.
  • E-Commerce: If you purchase products from us directly, we will require additional information, such as billing and delivery address, and bank and/or credit card details. When you use our online store, we will use personal information to process contracts and orders that you have placed through our website, any inquiries relating to contracts and orders, as well as assess your creditworthiness when purchasing a product, for which we may contract a third-party service provider. When you purchase a product, we may contact you in order to ask you for your opinion on the purchase or the product.
Collected from other sources
  • Business Relationship Information: We work with external professionals, contractors, suppliers, experts, consultants and others in the operation of our business. For example, when we deliver our services and otherwise make our products and services available, we may engage with suppliers, contractors, consultants and others who provide services or products to us. We also engage with customers and partners related to the provision of our products and services. We may collect information through these third parties. We collect information such as business contact information, accounting and payment related information and other information related to our business relationship with a third party. We may also conduct due diligence and background checks subject to applicable law to ensure the reliability of third parties with whom we conduct business.

Automatically Collected Information

When you visit the sites, some data is automatically transferred from your browser to our server, in order to offer you a better service with personalized information and to make it easier for you to use our sites. We use cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, and similar technologies to automatically collect information when users access or use the sites unless you update your tracking preferences through our cookie banner, which can be found under Cookie Settings in the footer of this page. This data is collected and processed by us or by external service providers on our behalf and includes: information about you collected through your use of our services, including log files, IP address, app and device identifier, advertising ID, location info, email address, browser type and operating system, device type, domain name, the website that led you to our services, the website to which you go after leaving our services, the dates and times you access our services, and the links you click and your other activities within the services.

Monitoring of Communications

With your consent and subject to applicable laws we may monitor and record your calls, emails, and other communications with us. We do this for a variety of purposes which include the following: to maintain the security of our communications systems and procedures, for quality control and staff training purposes, fraud detection and prevention, and when We need to review our communications to provide you with a better customer service experience.

Use of Personal Information

In the course of conducting our business, we use (with your consent where required by applicable law) personal information to provide and improve our services, to process employment inquiries, to provide information about our products and services, to respond to requests and to otherwise communicate with you and others.

  • Providing Support and Services: to provide and operate our services and the sites, communicate with you about your use of the sites, respond to your inquiries, provide troubleshooting, fulfill your orders and requests, process your payments, and complaints and inquiries, provide technical support, and for other customer service and support purposes.
  • Operating our Business: we may use your information to identify usage trends in the use of our sites and analyze the effectiveness of our communications; to detect, prevent, investigate fraud and including (cyber) security monitoring and prevention; to validate your ability to access or use certain products or services; to operate and expand our business activities; where necessary to the administration of our general business, accounting, record keeping and legal functions; and as part of our routine business administration, such as training, compliance auditing and similar internal activities.

  • Research, Development and Reporting: we may use information to develop, enhance, improve or modify our products and services; to better understand how our products and services impact you and those for whom you care; to track and respond to concerns, including engaging in regulatory monitoring and reporting obligations related to adverse events, product complaints and patient safety, or to conduct data analysis and audits.

  • Personalization: to tailor content we send or display on the sites in order to offer location customization and personalized help and instructions, and to otherwise personalize your experiences.

  • Analytics and Improvement: to better understand how users access and use the sites and other products and services, and for other research and analytical purposes, such as to evaluate and improve our services and business operations and to develop additional products, services and features.
  • Evaluating and Engaging With Third Parties: to identify, evaluate and engage with third parties such as contractors, suppliers and business partners; to conduct due diligence, such as background checks on contractors and suppliers in accordance with applicable law.
  • General Business Operations: where necessary for the administration of our general business, accounting, record keeping and legal functions.
  • Anonymous and De-identified Information: We may de-identify information and create anonymous and aggregated data sets and reports in order to assess, improve and develop our business, products and services, prepare benchmarking reports on our industry, and for other research and analytics purposes.
  • Marketing, Surveys and Promotions: for direct marketing and promotional purposes, to send you newsletters, special offers or promotions, and contact you about our products or services, or information we think may interest you. If you are located in a jurisdiction that requires opt-in consent to receive electronic marketing messages, we will only send you such messages if you opt-in to receive them.
  • Protect Our Rights: to protect the sites and our business operations; to prevent and detect fraud, unauthorized activities and access, and other misuse; where we believe necessary to investigate, prevent or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety or legal rights of any person or third party, or violations of our Terms of Use or this Notice..
  • Legally Required: to comply with the law or legal proceedings, such as subpoenas, court orders, and other lawful requests by regulators and law enforcement, including responding to national security or law enforcement disclosure requirements.

We will, where required by applicable law, obtain consent from you if we wish to use your personal information for purposes other than those stated in this Notice.

Disclosure of Information

Gore is a global enterprise that consists of numerous and various entities worldwide. To facilitate Gore’s global operations, personal information may need to be shared with and transferred between Gore affiliates. Gore affiliates may access and use your personal information as described in this Notice. In general, we disclose the personal information we collect as follows:

 
  • Gore Affiliates:As a global company, your personal information may be shared amongst our affiliated and subsidiary companies, who are subject to this Notice when processing your personal information.
  • Service Providers: We may share your information with third party service providers, whose services we use for data storage and analytics, for web hosting, data analysis, IT technology, infrastructure, and security, including without limitation with third parties whose services we use to provide customer services, for example for communicating with you by email or phone, for market research, carrying out surveys, handling payment transfers, advisory services, maintenance, and other similar services. We take steps to confirm that our service providers are capable of providing appropriate security and protection and will agree to adequate privacy and security contractual terms.
  • Third-Party Advertising and Marketing: Third-party companies that we work with to display advertising and conduct direct marketing that is more relevant may collect cookie IDs, IP address and other identifiers as well as information about the pages you visit on our sites and other websites, to enable them to display and offer direct advertising such as mailings for products and services that may be of interest to you when you visit our website or other websites.
  • Business Transfers: We may disclose or transfer information, including personal information, as part of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets, or stock (including without limitation in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), including related to due diligence conducted prior to such event were permitted by law.
  • Legally Required: We may disclose your information if we are required to do so by the law (e.g., to law enforcement, courts, or others, e.g., in response to a subpoena or court order) of any jurisdiction.
  • Protect our Rights: We may disclose information where we believe it necessary to respond to claims asserted against us or, comply with legal process (e.g., subpoenas or warrants), enforce or administer our agreements and terms, for fraud prevention, risk assessment, investigation, and protect the rights, property or safety of Gore, our customers, or others.
  • Anonymized and Aggregated Data: We may share aggregate or de-identified information with third parties for research, marketing, analytics, and other purposes, provided such information does not identify a particular individual.

Cookies, Analytics and Targeted Ads

We and our service providers use cookies, pixels, java script and other tracking mechanisms to track information about your use of our sites and services, and we may combine this information with other information, including personal information, we collect about you. We may also work with third party ad networks, analytics companies, measurement services and others to display advertising on our sites, and to manage our advertising on third party sites, mobile apps and online services.

Do-Not-Track Signals

Our sites do not currently respond to do-not-track signals. For more information about do-not-track signals, please click here. However, you may choose to, disable certain tracking mechanisms (such as cookies) as discussed above.

Interest-Based Advertising

On some of our sites, we may work with third party ad networks, analytics companies, measurement services and others (collectively “ad companies”) to display advertising on our sites, and to manage our advertising on third party sites, mobile apps and online services.

Direct Marketing

From time to time, we may send periodic promotional content that we think may be of interest to you, including newsletters, catalogs, special offers, or promotions.

We may also share your name and email address with other entities within Gore so that we or they may send you information that may be of interest regarding them and their special offers, events, e-commerce activities, market research, consumer or customer surveys, competitions and similar promotional campaigns. You may opt-out of these communications at any time, and where required by law we will obtain your prior consent to send you such communications.We may engage service providers to combine your information with other sources of information to provide you with relevant promotional content via direct mail.

If you would like to opt-out of receiving further communication from Gore, and/or wish to stop Gore from disclosing your personal information for marketing purposes you may opt-out of such communications by following the opt-out instructions contained in the communication, or you can contact us to withdraw your consent. If you opt-out of receiving communications about recommendations or other information we think may interest you, we may still communicate information relating to your account or any services you have requested or received from us.

International Transfers

As a global company, we may transfer your personal information to, access or store it in in which we (or our service providers) operate. Some of these jurisdictions, may not provide equivalent levels of data protection as your jurisdiction. We will take steps to ensure that your personal information receives an adequate level of protection comparable to the protection under applicable law in the jurisdiction from which we collect such personal information, including through appropriate written data processing terms and/or data transfer agreements.

Security

We have implemented specific organizational, technical, and physical security measures to protect personal information under our control. While the security safeguards we have put in place are routinely reviewed and updated, the security of any data transmissions and data storage systems cannot be completely guaranteed.

Further information on our data protection approach can be found here.

Retention

In accordance with our data retention practices, we will retain your personal information as long as needed to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Notice, and as otherwise necessary to fulfill our legal obligations, resolve disputes, maintain appropriate business records, enforce our agreements or for such longer period as required by applicable law. The retention period depends on the information and the reason for which we have collected it.

Third-Party Sites

This Notice does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy practices, information collected or other activities and practices of any third parties. The inclusion of a link on the website does not imply endorsement of the linked site by us or by our affiliates. In some cases, we may permit you to use third-party payment services to make payments. If you wish to make a payment using a payment service, you will be directed to a webpage that is hosted by the payment service and not by us. Any information that you provide through this page will be subject to the applicable payment service’s privacy policy, rather than this Notice. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, any payment service’s use of information collected through any payment service page.

Use of Website by Children

Our sites are not directed towards minors, and we do not encourage minors to participate in providing us with any personal information. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from minors without verifiable parental consent. If you have reason to believe that a minor, without a parent or guardian's consent, has provided personal information to us through the sites, please contact us at  DataPrivacyOffice@wlgore.com. We will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible.

SMS Marketing

At Sitka, we value your privacy and have developed policies and procedures to keep the information you share with us safe. If you have opted-in to receive SMS marketing from us, we will use this information solely to send SMS short code messages about your order, including shipping notifications, current offers, and other marketing content related to Sitka. This website may use cookies to help keep track of items you put into your shopping cart including when you have abandoned your cart and this information is used to determine when to send cart reminder messages via SMS. You can turn off cookies by clicking the Cookie Settings link in the footer of this page.

Here are our SMS principles:

  • We do not sell or share your mobile number with any third parties unless it is required to provide you with the SMS service.
  • Any third-party vendor(s) we engage to provide you with SMS short code messages are required to protect your personal information using both physical and operational controls.
  • You will only receive SMS after providing your consent to receive such messages. You can easily opt out of receiving these messages by texting [STOP to 50262]. Please review our SMS Terms & Conditions here: here
  • .

Your Rights

Gore takes reasonable steps to keep your personal information accurate, up to date and complete. under certain circumstances and subject to applicable law You may have a right to request access to, correction of, and deletion of your personal information. Subject to applicable law, you may also have the right to withdraw your consent or change your scope of consent. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with us and with a supervisory authority if you consider that the processing of your personal information infringes applicable law.

Residents of some states are entitled to request and obtain from us once per calendar year information about any of your personal information shared with third parties for their own direct marketing purposes, including the categories of information and the names and addresses of those businesses with which we have shared such information. To request this information and for any other questions about our privacy practices, please contact us as explained below.

Residents of some are entitled to additional rights with respect to your personal information, as described below:

  • • The right to know what personal information we have collected, used, disclosed and sold about you. To submit a request to know, you may call us at +1 888 914 4673 or visit https://www.gore.com/privacy/contact. You also may designate an authorized agent to make a request for access on your behalf on our website at https://www.gore.com/privacy/contact.
  • • The right to request that we delete any personal information we have collected about you. To submit a request for deletion, you may call us at +1 888 914 4673 or visit https://www.gore.com/privacy/contact. You also may designate an authorized agent to make a request for deletion on your behalf on our website at https://www.gore.com/privacy/contact.
  • • The right to request the correction of any inaccurate information we may have about you. To submit a request for correction, you may call us at +1 888 914 4673 or visit https://www.gore.com/privacy/contact.
  • .

As a resident of some states, you have the right to limit the sale or sharing of your personal information. To opt-out of the selling and/or sharing of your personal information, please visit the Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information link in the footer of this page.

When you exercise these rights and submit a request to us, we will ask that you verify your identity. We also may use a third-party verification provider to verify your identity.

Your exercising of these rights will have no adverse effect on the price and quality of our goods or services.

Data Collection Practices

Some state laws require us to identify, for the 12-month period prior to the date of this Privacy Notice, what information Gore has sold or shared about you. Gore may sell or share personal information we have about you. The purpose of this practice is to provide customers of its Sitka brand with personalized services and customized offers to improve your online shopping experiences on the website. Your state law might provide you with the right to request that we stop selling or sharing your personal information.

Categories of Personal Information Collected & Data Retention Practices

At Sitka, we operate with data minimization as a privacy principle, collecting, processing and maintaining the minimum necessary Personal Information. Personal Information is retained as long as necessary to fulfill the original purpose. Gore’s criteria to determine data retention periods are based on legal, regulatory, and operational requirements. The following categories of Personal Information are retained for website visitors:

  • Identifiers
  • Customer records information
  • Characteristics of protected classifications under federal or California law
  • Commercial information
  • Internet or other electronic network activity information
  • Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information
  • Professional or employment-related information
  • Inferences
Categories of Sensitive Personal Information Collected & Data Retention Practices

At Sitka, at the time of this Notice, we do not collect sensitive personal information from our website visitors.

Third-Party Disclosures

In the course of our business relationship with you, we may collect, use, share, sell, and/or disclose your information with the following category of third-party businesses:

  • Business communication and collaboration tool(s)
  • Data analytics provider(s)
  • Cloud service provider(s)
  • Data storage service provider(s)
  • Payment processor(s)
  • Ad network(s)
  • Sales and marketing tool(s)
  • Order fulfillment service(s)
  • eCommerce platform(s)
  • Data broker(s)

To opt-out of the selling and/or sharing of your personal information, please visit the Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information link in the footer of this page.

Changes to this Privacy Notice

We may update this Notice from time to time to reflect changes and will indicate changes by updating the Notice (and effective date) on this page. We encourage you to periodically review this website and our Notice to understand how Gore protects your personal information.

Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns regarding this Notice or complaints regarding the processing of your personal information, please contact the Gore Privacy Office at DataPrivacyOffice@wlgore.com.

It Works, Guaranteed
Our Retailers
Expert Support