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Privacy Policy
This Varda Privacy Notice ("Privacy Notice") applies to personal data that is collected and used by Varda AG, Holbeinstrasse 48, 4051 Basel, Switzerland, ("we") when you use this website (the "Site") or otherwise interact with us as described below.
Varda AG operates the Site and is the controller for the processing of your personal data when you use the Site.
This Privacy Notice explains how Varda collects, uses and discloses personal data when you use the Site and otherwise interact with us as described below. In the case that we interact with you in ways that are not described below, we will provide you with information regarding use of your personal data in relation to that specific interaction. If you have any additional questions, please contact us at info@varda.ag.
1. How and when we collect personal data
We collect information about you when you use the Site and when you otherwise interact with us, for example if you are a customer or a supplier of Varda. We receive your information from the following sources, depending on how you interact with us:
1.1. From our websites or mobile applications:
We collect personal data through our websites or mobile applications, for example when you subscribe to a subscribe to one of our mobile applications, set up a user profile or interact with our connected devices. As a point of departure, you can use the Site without revealing your identity. When you visit the Site or otherwise interact with us online, we collect information about your computer and your use of our website and applications by using cookies. We use this information for measuring, at an aggregated level, use of the Site, in order to improve its content.
We also collect personal data when you use our mobile applications or contact us through the website or application, such as for customer service purposes. Please see the section below about Cookies and similar technologies.
1.2. Directly from you:
We collect personal data directly from you when you interact with us, and choose to submit certain information to us, such as when you sign up to receive a newsletter, login in to one of our websites or apps, fill out one of our digital or physical forms, make a purchase, place an order or upload information to one of our portals.
We may also collect your personal data when we receive an inquiry from you (for example in relation to customer service), when processing your orders and when you attend our fairs or events. Note that we are legally required to process some information (such as in relation to certain purchases) and sometimes we must ask you to provide certain information in order to
be able to enter into and perform a contract with you.
We also collect personal data directly from you when you act as a supplier in order to be able to perform the contract with the supplier and for supplier relationship management.
On some occasions we conduct online surveys to gain a better understanding of the needs and preferences of our users, visitors, contacts, leads and customers for example by measuring customer satisfaction and enriching data through net promoter score. Prior to conducting a survey, we will inform you of how we will use your personal data. Participating in a survey is voluntary and where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent to the processing. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
1.3. From our group of companies, dealers, suppliers, business partners and other third parties:
When you purchase or sell a product or service, we may collect personal data relating to the transaction for fulfilling the transaction and managing the business relationship. On your request or in order to pursue our legitimate interests in doing segmentation or supplier relationship management, we may also import information from our dealers, suppliers, business partners and other third parties.
1.4. From your equipment:
If you have signed up to use services that allow you to upload information from your device to one of our portals or applications, we collect equipment data from your equipment or devices.
We may also receive location data from your smartphone or other geo-aware device, provided that the equipment this is linked to a mobile application that you have downloaded or a user profile that you have registered with us.
1.5. From other sources:
For example through commercial partners who provide Varda products.
2. Types of information and data we collect
When you use the website, we collect personal data and device information to the extent permitted by law. Personal data is information, or a combination of pieces of information, that can be used to identify you on an individual basis. Depending on the services you use and how you use the Site, we may collect the following categories of data:
2.1. Contact information such as your name, address and e-mail address that you providewhen you create a user account or fill out one of our digital or physical forms. This information allows us to identify and communicate with you;
2.2. Business data that allows us to help you optimize your businesses' operations, if you have a registered user account. This includes but is not limited to data relating to the name, location, size of your business, and other business-related information which will only be directly linked to you if you have a registered user account;
2.3. Relationship information that helps us understand who you are and what you want in order to offer you products, technologies and services that may interest you, such as property, business information, your general location, and other demographic information in accordance with the rule of law. We collect this information when you interact with us or have a registered user account;
2.4. Recruitment information that helps us determine your eligibility for the job that you apply for if you apply for a job with us, such as general contact information, CV, information about your education, competencies and skills, career and work experiences and other information such as picture, social security number, job certificates, work history, references and other relevant background information.
2.5. Transaction and product information about how you interact with us, our dealers and business partners, including purchases, inquiries and customer accounts and preferences;
2.6. ID information about your identity, such as your birthdate and ID document, only when needed to identify you;
2.7. Financial account information only as needed to complete your purchase;
2.8. Device information and analysis such as information about the computers, phones or other devices that you use to visit the Site, depending on the permissions you have granted. We may associate the information we collect from your different devices, which helps us provide consistent service across your devices. This may for example be attributes such as your IP address, operating system, hardware version, device settings, and types and device identifiers. We may also collect connection information such as the name of your mobile operator or ISP, mobile advertising ID and mobile application ID, browser type, language, geo-location, connection time zone and date and time of visit on the Site together with use trends. We may also collect information about your behaviour on the Site, such as how long you stay and information about your scrolling and sharing behaviour.
2.9. Equipment data that is generated by, collected by, or stored in your equipment (software or hardware) or device interfacing with your equipment, including but not limited to the location of your equipment.
3. How Varda uses personal data
We use your personal data for the following purposes:
3.1. Provide the functionality of the requested products and services and customer service:
• Provide the functionality, products, technologies and services you request and to provide other services.
• Creating, managing and allowing access to your account, for services/products where you register an account.
• Complete and record your transactions.
• Send you administrative information, such as changes to our terms and policies.
• Respond to your inquiries and requests, for example when you send us questions or suggestions.
3.2. Product and Customer Support:
• to provide you with support, including to deliver upgrades and product improvement program communications, and for diagnostics and repairs;
• to provide you with other technical assistance.
3.3. Supplier relationship management
3.4. Contract management, such as managing all interactions and transactions with third parties that supply good and/or services to us in order to maximize the value of such interactions and transactions;
3.5. Performance management, such as performance review setup;
3.6. Risk management, such as strategies to respond to supply chain disruptions;
3.7. Data management such as validating supplier requests; and
3.8. To build better relationships and communicate better with suppliers and outside organisations in order to make the business run smoothly and more cost effectively.
3.9. Marketing and communications and offering tailored services:
• Provide you with communications, information and direct marketing of Varda's products, technologies and services, including for creating a profile that we use in order to provide you with targeted marketing offers, personalized offerings, newsletters, product information, company magazines, catalogues, announcements or event invitations etc. that we believe may be of interest to you.
• Provide you with tailored advice and agronomical tips.
• Depending on your choices, we send such marketing through Social media channels, email and/or SMS. Such marketing may for example consist of agronomic and commercial advice, newsletters, surveys, campaigns, invitations and information about diverse arrangements, events at fairs, meetings, trainings or webinars.
• We also sometimes use your personal data to administer and manage surveys, polls, loyalty programs and other promotional events and to allow our customers to participate in polls and surveys, so that we can improve our service offerings.
• We also process personal data for pursuing our legitimate interest in providing our customers with tailored marketing by using information about relating to the customer’s purchase history, preferences, behaviour and other related information, in order to better understand their challenges and needs.
• We further do segmentation and use personal data for analytics in order to improve and offer relevant products, communication and services and for increasing our agronomic knowledge. We also use segmentation and profiling to determine if leads are interested in a specific products or communication from us.
• Share information with other marketers if you want them to send you marketing, depending on your choices.
• Enable the posting of comments and testimonies from you on our websites, social media and mobile applications.
• When required by applicable law, we obtain your consent to such marketing and to surveys that have marketing as purpose. You may at any time reserve yourself from marketing via electronic communication by following instructions in those messages or by contacting us at info@varda.ag.
• Providing you with promotional opportunities and facilitate social sharing
• Allow you to participate in promotions, rewards and loyalty programs.
• Facilitate social sharing functionality if you choose to do so. Additional rules may apply to such promotions or social sharing. Please make sure to read those rules.
3.10. Recruitment:
• for recruiting new Varda employees, if you have filed a job application through our job application portal accessible on Varda.ag or otherwise filed a job application with us.
• We use the information you include in your job application for determining your eligibility for the job that you apply for by assessing whether you are the ideal candidate for the position in question.
3.11. Manage our everyday business needs and conduct business reporting:
• Analyse our customers’ use of our products and services in order to prepare aggregated trend reports.
• Managing our websites and services, contract management, analytics and fraud prevention.
• Business intelligence, such as compiling general market insights.
• Product improvement, to develop new products, or enhance our current products.
• Governance and audit, for example by implementing internal audits, business analysis, controls and reporting (for example, whistleblowing procedures).
• Business transactions, including a reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition. For example, in a case of a merger with or acquisition by another company, we may be required to disclose personal data to that company.
• Protect Varda assets, for example for health and safety reasons, or to manage access rights and security (to prevent fraud, cyberattacks and identity theft).
• Comply with legal obligations, for example we need to retain invoices for accounting purposes or disclose some data to comply with requests from public authorities.
4. What is the legal basis on which Varda relies to process your data?
4.1. Contract
In the cases when we enter into a contract with you regarding sale, purchase or delivery of products or services, our legal basis for the processing is that it is necessary for fulfilling an agreement with you, or for taking measures on your request prior to enter into a contract.
This legal basis applies to all processing that is necessary for the administration and performance of such contract, and any processing necessary to enter into such a contract. This may for example include customer service, customer relationship management and billing purposes, and other processing necessary for providing the requested functionality, products and services.
Where we require personal data to comply with legal or contractual obligations, then provision of such data is mandatory: if such data is not provided, then we will not be able to manage our contractual relationship, or to meet obligations placed on us. In all other cases, provision of requested personal data is optional.
4.2. Legal obligation
In some instances, we process your personal data because we are required to do this by law (for example to comply with accounting and bookkeeping obligations).
4.3. Legitimate interests
We also process your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests are not overridden by your rights to data protection. Such interests are typically to improve our products, technologies and services in order to increase customer satisfaction and to tailor our services to your particular preferences and needs.
We also process your data on the basis of our legitimate interests in processing your request when you fill out one of our digital or physical forms and for enabling our customers to apply with applicable legal obligations
Sometimes (for example when we do profiling) our legal basis for the processing is that it is necessary for purposes relating to our legitimate interest in marketing and in creating a profile about our customers for tailoring our offers and services to their needs, as long as this interest is not overridden by the customer’s rights that require protection of personal data.
When we have an existing customer relationship with our customers, we sometimes send out digital marketing about products and/or services corresponding to the ones that the existing customer relationship is based on and rely on our legitimate interest in doing so. Before doing so, we provide you with the possibility of opting out of such digital marketing.
For segmentation and analytics, we rely on our legitimate interest in improving our products and services and in offering relevant products, communication and services to our customers/leads and in increasing our agronomic knowledge, as a legal basis.
We also rely on legitimate interests as a legal basis when accomplishing some of our business purposes, such as business intelligence, product improvement, governance and audits, business transactions and protecting Varda assets.
Note that you have a right to object to processing that relies on legitimate interests as a legal basis and also to processing that has direct marketing as a purpose, as further explained in section 8 below.
4.4. Consent
On some occasions, we process your data with your consent (for example, when you wish to receive newsletters or other marketing material from us). In such cases, you are free to withdraw your consent at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions set out in the marketing message you receive. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of the processing that has taken place on the basis of a consent prior to the withdrawal.
5. Why personal data are disclosed by Varda
We do not sell your personal data to marketing companies outside of Varda. We may only share your personal data as follows:
5.1. Group companies of the Varda AG group, for the purposes set out in this Privacy Notice
5.2. Optimizing our shared processes. Within a group of companies, it is sometimes necessary to use and leverage resources effectively. In this context, we support each other within our group in optimizing our shared processes.
5.3. Our cross-affiliate initiatives, such as research and development, system administration, statistics, analysis, marketing and finding new prospects. This can for example be sharing where necessary to meet a request from you, for assessing your job application for recruitment purposes or for entering into an employment contract with you or in other circumstances where sharing is necessary in order to meet your inquiry or for analytics and research to the extent such disclosure is necessary for achieving our legitimate interest in improving our products, technologies and services.
5.4. Service providers to facilitate services they provide to us. For purposes indicated in this Privacy Notice and in the relevant data processing agreement. These services include for example hosting data, processing payments, delivering shipments, email delivery, distribution, customer support and technical assistance, web analytics, IT performance monitoring, customer relationship management, evaluating, running an optimizing user experience or our growth campaigns, polls and surveys, legal compliance, as well as to secure our business operations, such as identifying and resolving malfunctions.
5.5. Public authorities or governments where disclosure is appropriate
5.6. To address a dispute with a third party.
5.7. Where we respond to enforceable law enforcement or governmental requests and orders.
5.8. When required by law, regulation or legal process. To provide information we believe is important.
5.9. Partners and commercial relationships to accomplish our business with them. In connection with collaboration initiatives and contracts entered into with such parties, for example as part of the sale and distribution process. We have a legitimate interest in disclosing or transferring our personal data to a third party in the event of a business transaction.
5.10. If you connect your mobile application with your social media account or share content from one of our websites on your social media account, you will share information with your friends associated with your social media account, with other users, and with your social media account provider. By doing so, you authorize us to facilitate this sharing of information, and you understand that the use of shared information will be governed by the social media provider’s privacy policy.
5.11. We also share your personal data to comply with applicable law and regulations, to enforce our (and our representatives’ and group’s) rights, terms and conditions, privacy, safety and property.
6. Cookies and similar technologies
We use cookies on our websites. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer when you visit our websites. Cookies help us identify your computer so that we can tailor your user experience.
They also help us observe how our visitors use our web pages, and they enable us to design more usable pages and useful content.
We use first party cookies, third party cookies and third-party requests. First party cookies are cookies set by us and can only be read by our site. By default, first-party cookies are allowed in every web browser. If you disable first-party cookies, a web site cannot keep track of your activity as you move from page to page.
Third party cookies are set by third parties, mainly advertising networks. These cookies get re-read during a visit on other sites if they do business with these companies as well.
Third party requests are made from a user to an external service. Despite the fact that these requests do not set any cookies, they can still transfer information to third parties. For example, Google Analytics – a common tool for website analysis – which works through third party requests.
You may manage your cookies preferences in the settings by making a choice on the cookie banner or afterwards on the cookie icon on the websites or by making changes to your web browser. Note that blocking cookies might stop our website from functioning properly.
The cookies on our sites are listed here and through the cookie icon on our websites.
7. Your choices
We give you choices about how we communicate with you.
Email communications: You can stop receiving promotional email communications from Varda by following the opt-out instructions provided in such messages.
Please note that we will honour your request to stop receiving promotional electronic communications from Varda. However, we may continue to send you service-related communications such as emails confirming purchases through our websites. And we may keep information for record keeping, such as to ensure we fulfil the consumer requests and to send particular types of messages.
Note that you can manage how your mobile device can share location information with Varda, as well as how your mobile browser handles cookies and related technologies by adjusting your mobile device privacy and security settings. Please refer to the instructions provided by your mobile service provider or the manufacturer of your device to learn how to adjust your settings.
8. Your rights
To the extent provided by applicable law, you may be entitled to request:
(a) Right of access
To obtain confirmation from us as to whether or not we hold personal data about you, access such data and other information in regard to such data.
To obtain a copy of your personal data.
(b) Right of rectification
The modification of personal data if they are incorrect or incomplete.
(c) Right to deletion
The deletion of personal data under certain instances, for example where you consented to their use and have since withdrawn your consent, or where they are illegally used.
(d) Right to restriction
The limitation of the use of personal data under certain circumstances.
(e) Right to portability
The receipt of the personal data which you provided to Varda, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.
Transmitting such personal data, or having them transmitted where technically feasible, to another company responsible for their use, under certain circumstances.
(f) Right to object or opt-out
To object to the use of your personal data under certain circumstances, including in relation to direct marketing and where your personal data are used based on a legitimate interest of Varda.
You also have the right to opt-out from any direct marketing and can do so by clicking on the “unsubscribe” button in the messages you receive.
(g) Right to withdraw consent
To withdraw your consent at any time if the use of your personal data is based on consent. Note that withdrawing your consent will not make the use of your data before your withdrawal unlawful.
If you would like to exercise your rights, do not hesitate to contact us at info@varda.ag. Please note that the rights above may be restricted in line with applicable law.
You may also file a complaint with a data protection authority for your country, or where an alleged infringement of applicable data protection law occurs. A list of data protection authorities is available on the European Commission website.
9. How we retain your data
We retain your personal data for as long as needed or permitted in light of the purpose(s) for which they were obtained and consistent with applicable law. The criteria used to determine our retention periods include:
9.1. The length of time we have an ongoing relationship with you and provide the requested products/services to you (for example, for as long as you have an account with us or keep using the services/mobile applications), or to enable you to conduct your activities and meet your retention requirements. For example, as a rule of thumb regarding customer personal data, we seek to re-assess the need to retain your data couple years after you cease to be a registered customer (for example, to allow us to answer complaints or inquiries that may still arise). However, there are also other factors that may influence that period as set out below.
9.2. Whether there is a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, certain laws require us to keep records of your transactions for a certain period before we can delete them).
9.3. Whether retention is advisable considering our legal position (such as, regarding applicable statutes of limitations, litigation or regulatory investigations).
10. Information security
Varda is concerned about your privacy and are committed to keeping personal data secure. We have implemented appropriate technical, physical and organizational measures to protect your personal data from loss, misuse or alteration. We limit access to personal data to those who have a business need.
11. Transfer of personal data to other countries
Transfer of personal data to a third country outside of the EEA that does not provide adequate protection will only take place if appropriate safeguards are provided, e.g., by entering into EU Standard Contractual Clauses or if the receiving party is certified under a valid international transfer mechanism.
When disclosing information to other parties as described in Section 5, we sometimes need to transfer personal data to a country outside the EEA, in order to be able to fulfil one of the purposes set out in Section 5. As an example, we may use a sub-processor established in the USA when you fill out an online form, in order to meet your request.
Varda may transfer aggregated data to third parties (domestic and/or foreign) for the purposes of i) improving or developing the Site or any equipment related to specific services and ii) for the proper functioning of the Site and of the equipment.
12. Privacy Policies of third parties
This Privacy Notice only addresses the collection, use and disclosure of personal data by Varda. Other websites that may be accessible through this website have their own privacy policies and practices. Our independent dealers, suppliers, and business partners have their own privacy policies and practices too. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the privacy policies provided by all third parties prior to providing them with information or taking advantage of an offer or promotion. Although we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not in any way responsible for the content, or the privacy practices employed by other sites.
13. Changes and amendments to this Notice
If we have your email, we will notify you through e-mail or in another clear way if we make and fundamental changes to this Privacy Statement or changes that may be relevant for and affect your rights, prior to making such changes. Any such change will be published in this Privacy Notice.
If you do not want to continue your use of the Site following the said changes, you must discontinue your use of the Site and request Varda to close your account by contacting us at info@varda.ag or through the relevant portal, where applicable.
14. Jurisdiction and applicable law
This Privacy Notice shall, save for mandatory local law, be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Switzerland and be subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Switzerland.
15. How to contact us
Please contact us if you have any questions or comments about our privacy practices or this Privacy Notice. You can reach us online at info@varda.ag
If you have unresolved concerns you also have the right to complain to the supervisory authority competent to resolve such concerns according to applicable law.