Privacy Policy

This policy explains how Retrove ("we", "us") collects and uses your personal information when you use our website or app, buy or sell through us, or post on Retrove. Retrove is operated by Retrove Clothing Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17342272. Retrove Clothing Ltd is the data controller for the information described below. It is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, registration number ZC275630. Our contact address is 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. For anything privacy-related, contact us at info@retroveclothing.com.

In short: we never sell your data, we run no advertising trackers or analytics scripts, and you can download a copy of your data, or ask for your account to be deleted, at any time from Your data & privacy in your account.

What we collect

• Account details: your email address and name. Signing in works by one-time links and codes sent to your email, so we never hold a password for you.
• Order and delivery details: your name, delivery address, what you bought, and your order, return and refund history.
• Shop business details: the selling trader's legal and trading names, business contact address and email, an optional telephone number, plus company and VAT registration details where applicable. The shop owner reviews and confirms these details before publication. Suitable business support contacts from Stripe can fill missing fields for that review; private verification addresses are not used. Confirmed details are shown at checkout before payment and in the order confirmation, and are retained with the purchase. Piece pages and the bag show only the shop or trading name. Branches identify their home selling business. An unpublished draft is not shown to shoppers.
• Private seller parcel contacts: dispatch and return contacts and addresses used to create courier labels and arrange returns. These are collected separately and are not automatically published as a trader's business address. A label recipient may see the parcel address needed for their delivery or return. Tax identifiers, identity documents and bank details are not copied into public business profiles.
• Payment information, handled directly by Stripe, our payment processor. We never see or store your full card details. If you re-sell on Retrove, Stripe also collects identity information from you directly for its own checks before you can be paid; we hold only a reference to your connected account, not your documents.
• Photos you give our AI features: photos of yourself for virtual try-on, and photos of your own clothes for your wardrobe. Wardrobe photos live in private storage that only you (and the systems that power the feature) can access. If you search by photo, the matching fingerprint is computed on your own device and only that fingerprint, not the photo, is sent to us.
• Content you post: reels and captions, plus your follows, blocks and any reports you make or that are made about your content.
• A device identifier (app only): when the app uses a free AI allowance, it sends a device identifier (Apple's identifierForVendor on iOS, the Android ID on Android) so a free allowance cannot be reset by creating fresh accounts on the same phone. It is stored on our servers, used only for this, and never used for advertising or to track you across other apps.
• Messages: anything you send us by email or through the site or app.
• Email choices: whether you want message reminders and news from us, and when you last changed the news choice, so we can show you agreed before sending any.
• The opening list: if you join it from a piece that cannot be bought yet, your email address, so we can tell you when orders open.
• Technical data: basic information your browser or device provides so the service works. We do not use advertising trackers or cross-site tracking, and the site currently runs no analytics scripts at all.

Playing the Runway also creates a record of your entries, coin balance and prizes (including any discount vouchers you win), kept as an append-only ledger so balances always add up. Messages to a shop before buying or about an order are visible to you and that shop's authorised staff. Private resale conversations are visible to the buyer and the reseller. Reporting a conversation saves the relevant messages for Retrove's review. Reporting a reel, a look or an account also stores your report so our team can act on it.

How we use it, and our legal basis

• To take payment, fulfil your order, arrange delivery, and handle returns, refunds and disputes (basis: performance of our contract with you).
• To identify the selling trader before purchase and keep a record of the business details supplied with that contract (basis: legal obligation). Private dispatch and return contacts support delivery and returns (basis: performance of our contract).
• To pay shops, and members who re-sell, their share of a sale (basis: performance of our contract, and our legitimate interest in running the marketplace).
• To provide the AI features you choose to use, described below (basis: performance of our contract; for photos of you, we only process what you deliberately upload for that purpose).
• To review reels before they publish, act on reports and blocks, and keep the community safe (basis: our legitimate interest in a safe, honest platform).
• To prevent abuse of free allowances using the device identifier above (basis: our legitimate interest in keeping free features fair).
• To answer your questions and provide customer service (basis: our legitimate interest in running Retrove well).
• To send marketing emails, only if you have opted in (basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time).
• To tell you when orders open if you joined the opening list (basis: your consent; ask us and we remove you).
• To meet our legal and tax obligations (basis: legal obligation).

AI features, in plain terms

• Virtual try-on: the photo you upload is sent to Google Cloud (Vertex AI) to generate the render. It may also be checked by Anthropic to confirm that it contains a person. The render is stored so you can see it again. Try-on renders made from your own photo are shown only to you; they are never published or shown to other members.
• The Runway: competing in a run works differently, and it is 18 or over only. Your full-body photo is checked by Anthropic's Claude (to confirm it is a genuine photo rather than a picture of a screen or of someone else) and sent to Google Cloud (Vertex AI) to create your look. The judge, an AI, sees your look to score it. If you switch on "show my looks in the public reveal" when you enter, your looks are published to everyone watching when each round closes and on the results page; if you switch it off, spectators see only the pieces you styled, never your photo. Winning a piece asks for a delivery address, which we share with the shop that posts it.
• Wardrobe: your wardrobe photos are stored privately, visible only to you. When you add an item, the photo is analysed by Anthropic's Claude to describe it (things like garment type, colour and era) and to confirm it is a photo of a garment; photos that are not clothing are rejected and deleted.
• AI stylist: text descriptions of your wardrobe and our catalogue, never your photos, are sent to Anthropic's Claude to compose outfit suggestions.
• Search by photo: the image fingerprint is computed on your own device; the photo itself is not uploaded for the search.

• Reels: before a reel appears, a frame from it is checked by Amazon Rekognition for explicit, violent or hateful content, and the frame and caption by Anthropic's Claude to confirm it is about clothing. Unclear cases are held for a person to review.
• Sellers' listings: photos and descriptions of pieces a shop adds, or brings across from eBay, can be analysed by Anthropic's Claude to describe the piece and confirm it is clothing.

Google, Anthropic and Amazon process this data on our instructions to deliver the feature. We do not sell your photos or use them for advertising.

Runway results are decided automatically by the AI judge. If you think a result is wrong, you can ask for a person to review it, as set out in our terms.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your data. We share it only with the partners that make Retrove work:

• The seller of your piece, whether an independent shop or, for pre-loved pieces, the member selling it: they receive what they need to fulfil your order, such as your name and delivery address.
• Stripe, to process payments, subscriptions and payouts, and to run identity checks on members who sell.
• Delivery partners: Shippo, which books our postage, and its carriers: Evri and DPD in the UK, and carriers such as USPS, Canada Post and CouriersPlease for the US, Canada and Australia. They receive your name, address and contact details to deliver your parcel. International parcels also carry a customs declaration describing the items and their value, which is shared with carriers and customs authorities.
• Google Cloud (Vertex AI), to generate virtual try-on renders.
• Anthropic (Claude), to describe wardrobe items and listings, compose stylist suggestions, judge Runway looks and check reels.
• Amazon Web Services (Rekognition), to check reels for harmful content before they appear.
• eBay, for sellers who connect their eBay account: we read their listings and sales to keep stock in step, and tell eBay when a piece sells on Retrove.
• Supabase, which hosts our database, storage and sign-in, in London (its eu-west-2 region).
• Netlify, which hosts the website.
• Resend, which sends our transactional emails, such as order confirmations from orders@retroveclothing.com.
• Currency services: ExchangeRate-API supplies indicative exchange rates and GeoJS estimates a country from your IP address. Your browser connects to these services, so they receive your IP address and normal request information. This supports our legitimate interest in showing useful display estimates. It does not change the currency charged at checkout.
• Script and font delivery: pages can load libraries from jsDelivr and fonts from Google Fonts. These services receive the normal browser request information, including your IP address.
• HMRC, which receives seller details and sales totals where the law requires it. This applies to sellers only, and the detail is under "Seller tax details and HMRC reporting" below.

Our own small team sees only what it needs to run Retrove, for example the moderation queue for reels and reported content, and order details when helping with support.

International transfers

Some of our providers, including Stripe, Google, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, eBay, Shippo, Netlify and Resend, are based in the United States or process data there. Where data leaves the UK we rely on safeguards recognised by UK data protection law, such as the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the ICO's International Data Transfer Addendum to standard contractual clauses. Delivery details for an international order necessarily travel to carriers and customs authorities in the destination country.

Seller tax details and HMRC reporting

We ask a seller for tax details only when they near the reporting limit: 20 sales, or £1,200 received, in a calendar year. The request arrives by email and in their seller settings, explains why the details are needed, and gives a date to add them by. A shop that misses the date stops taking new orders until they are added; pieces already sold, and their payouts, are not affected. Buyers are never asked for seller tax details.

Where the UK's digital platform reporting rules require us to collect seller information, our lawful basis is legal obligation. Required information can include a seller's legal name, home or main business address and tax identifier. For UK individuals, this includes their date of birth and National Insurance number; UK limited companies use their company registration number. These details are not for public profiles or marketing. They are stored separately from public business details, only the seller and Retrove's administrators can see them, tax numbers are shown back to the seller only as their last characters, and every administrator view of the full report is logged.

Reportable information goes to HMRC, which may share it with relevant overseas tax authorities. Reporting does not automatically mean a seller owes tax. Sellers must receive a copy of the information reported about them. See HMRC's guidance for sellers.

Platform-reporting due-diligence records have a specific retention requirement: five years after the end of the reporting period to which they relate. This is separate from retention of general order and accounting records. We keep seller tax details for that period and then delete them.

How long we keep it

• Order, payment and payout records: as long as needed to provide the service and meet legal and tax requirements, generally up to six years.
• Seller agreement evidence: the accepted version, account reference and date are retained to establish the agreement and handle legal claims, generally up to six years after the agreement ends. Older records without a known signer are not represented as newly accepted terms.
• Wardrobe photos and try-on renders: until you delete them or your account.
• Reels: until you delete them. Reports and moderation decisions are kept for as long as we need them to keep the platform safe.
• Device allowance counters: for as long as needed to enforce free allowances fairly.
• The opening list: until orders open and we have told you, or until you ask us to remove you.
• Account deletion requests: the date you asked and the date we finished, kept for six years as a record that we did what you asked.

We delete or anonymise data we no longer need. Item passports show only anonymised ownership steps ("Owner 1", "Owner 2", with month and year) and never identify you.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access your data, correct it, ask us to delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, and request a copy in a portable format. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. You can download your data, change your email choices and ask for your account to be deleted yourself in your account; we finish a deletion within one month. For anything else, email info@retroveclothing.com.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

Retrove is for adults. You must be 18 or over to buy, sell, post content or compete in the Runway, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you think a child has given us their details, tell us and we will delete them.

Cookies

We use cookies and browser local and session storage. The detail, and how to change your choice, is in our Cookie Policy.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it last changed.