Privacy Notice

• Section 1: Sources of Personal Data
• Section 2: Types of Personal Data We Collect
• Section 3: How We Use Personal Data
• Section 4: How We Disclose Personal Data
• Section 5: Cookies
• Section 6: Data Security and Data Retention
• Section 7: Children's Privacy
• Section 8: External Links
• Section 9: Contact Information
• Section 10: Supplemental U.S. State Privacy Disclosures
• Notice of Financial Incentive

We are glad that you have chosen to shop at Sweetwater.

Sweetwater Sound, LLC together with its subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively, "Company" "us," "we," or "our") is committed to protecting the privacy of Personal Data (i.e., information reasonably related to a specific individual). As part of that commitment, this Privacy Notice describes how we process Personal Data collected through our websites, social media accounts, mobile applications, and other online interactions and communications such as email (collectively, our “Digital Properties”); in-person events and associated purchases; and other online and offline interactions such as phone calls with your Sales Engineer.

This Privacy Notice applies to information we collect about individual consumers, such as general website visitors (“Individuals”) as well as information we collect about the personnel of our business partners, including vendors and business customers, in business-to-business interactions (“Business Contacts”). This Privacy Notice does not apply to:

• Data about our current/former employees, applicants, and other individuals who interact with us for employment-related purposes.
• Data that we handle on behalf of and under the instructions of our business customers.
• Data subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”). For example, data we collect in connection with credit applications is subject to our GLBA notice instead of this privacy notice. Please see our specific GLBA Notice here.

Whenever you interact with us on behalf of another individual or entity, such as if you refer a friend to us, you must obtain their consent (or have the legal authority without consent) to share their Personal Data with us.

Changes: We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. Any updated Privacy Notice will be effective when posted. Please check this Privacy Notice periodically for updates. If required by law, we will contact you directly to provide you with an updated Privacy Notice.

We Collect Personal Data about you from the following sources:

• Directly from you. We may collect Personal Data you provide to us directly, such as when you speak to a Sales Engineer or other Sweetwater employee on the phone, when you contact us through our Digital Properties, interact with us in person at our Store or at one-time events, sign up for offers or newsletters, place or customize orders, sign up for an account or other services, or seek customer support.

• Data collected automatically and through Cookies. We may automatically collect information or inferences about you, such as through cookies, pixels, tags, scripts, and other tracking technologies (collectively "Cookies"), when you interact with our Digital Properties. This may include information about how you use and interact with our Digital Properties, information about your device, and internet usage information.

• From third parties. We may collect Personal Data from third parties, such as service and content providers, our affiliated companies and subsidiaries, business partners, data brokers, social media companies or other parties who interact with us.

• From publicly available sources. We may collect Personal Data about you from publicly available sources, such as public profiles and websites including social media.

We may combine information that we receive from the various sources described in this Privacy Notice, including third party sources, and use or disclose the combined information for the purposes identified below.

We may collect the following types of Personal Data about you. Except as otherwise specified, we may collect this Personal Data from both Individuals and Business Contacts:

• Identifiers, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, business contact information, and device identifiers (e.g., cookie IDs and IP address).

• Records about you, such as signatures; physical characteristics or a description of you; the content, timing and method of communications you have with us, such as online chats, calls, and emails; and information you share with or upload to our Digital Properties, such as reviews and comments.

• Demographic information, such as age (including birthdates) and gender.

• Commercial information, such as information related to your transactions; products or services purchased, obtained, or considered; subscription information; or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.

• Internet or other electronic network activity information, such as your browsing history, search history, preference information (including marketing and purchasing preferences), account settings (including any default preferences), and other information regarding your interactions with and use of the Digital Properties. For more information about Cookies, please see Section 5 (Cookies).

• Non-precise geolocation data, such as your location as derived from your IP address.

• Audio, electronic, visual, or other sensory information, such as photographs and audio/video recordings. We retain a recording of all phone calls made between Sweetwater and external parties.

• Professional or employment-related information (for Business Contacts), such as job title; organization; professional licenses, credentials, or affiliations; and other professional information.

• Education information, such as School District and grade level.

• Inferences drawn from any of the information we collect about your preferences or behavior, including to assess the level of interest in our products and services based on frequency of visits, content visited and contact and determine your preferred frequency for receiving offers.

• Sensitive Personal Data, including the following, if you choose to provide it:

  • Social Security number, driver’s license number, State Identification Number, or passport number.
  • Racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs.
  • Information concerning your sexual orientation.

We may use Personal Data for the following purposes:

• To provide you or your company products and services, such as making our Digital Properties, products and services available to you; registering, verifying, and maintaining your account with us; providing and delivering you the goods and services you request, including facilitating Bonus Bucks; providing customer service; processing or fulfilling orders and transactions (including processing payments); verifying customer information and eligibility for certain programs or benefits; communicating with you (including soliciting feedback or responding to requests, complaints, and inquiries); hosting informational webinars; and providing similar services or otherwise facilitating your relationship with us.

• For our internal business purposes, such as day-to-day operation of our business; maintaining internal business records, such as accounting, document management and similar activities; enforcing our policies and rules; developing and improving algorithms, artificial intelligence or machine learning tools and models; management reporting; auditing; and IT security and administration.

• For research, analysis and product improvement purposes, such as verifying or maintaining the quality or safety of our products or services; improving our products or services; designing new products and services; evaluating the effectiveness of our advertising or marketing efforts; debugging and repairing errors with our systems, networks, and equipment; and developing and improving algorithms, artificial intelligence or machine learning tools and models.

• For legal, safety or security reasons, such as complying with legal, reporting, and similar requirements; investigating and responding to claims against us, our personnel, and our customers; for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims; protecting our, your, our customers’, and other third parties’ safety, property or rights; detecting, preventing, and responding to security incidents and health and safety issues (including managing spread of communicable diseases); and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity.

• In connection with a corporate transaction, such as if we acquire assets of another business, or sell or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets including through a sale in connection with bankruptcy and other forms of corporate change.

• For marketing and targeted advertising, such as marketing our products or services or those of our affiliates, business partners, or other third parties. For example, we may use Personal Data we collect to personalize advertising to you (including by developing product, brand, or services audiences and identifying you across devices/sites); to analyze interactions with us or our Digital Properties; developing and improving algorithms, artificial intelligence or machine learning tools and models; or to send you newsletters, surveys, questionnaires, promotions, or information about events or webinars. You can unsubscribe to our email marketing via the link in the email or by contacting us using the information in Section 9 (Contact Information) below.

We may use anonymized, de-identified, or aggregated information for any purpose permitted by law.

We may disclose Personal Data to third parties, including the categories of recipients described below:

• Affiliates and subsidiaries, including parent entities, corporate affiliates, subsidiaries, business units, and other companies that share common ownership.

• Service providers that work on our behalf to provide the products and services you request or support our relationship with you, such as IT providers, internet service providers, web hosting providers, data analytics providers, and companies that provide business support services, financial administration, or event organization.

• Professional consultants, such as accountants, lawyers, financial advisors, and audit firms.

• Vendors necessary to complete transactions you request, such as shipping companies and logistics providers.

• Law enforcement, government agencies, and other recipients for legal, security, or safety purposes, such as when we share information to comply with law or legal requirements, to enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements or policies, and to protect our, our customers’, or third parties' safety, property, or rights.

• Other entities in connection with a corporate transaction, such as if we acquire assets of another entity, or sell or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets including through a sale in connection with bankruptcy and other forms of corporate change.

• Business partners that may use Personal Data for their own purposes, such as:

  • Advertisers, ad platforms and networks, and social media platforms;
  • Third parties whose Cookies we use as described in our Section 5 (Cookies) below.
  • Commercial data partners to whom we make information available for their own marketing purposes; and
  • Partners who work with us on promotional opportunities, including co-branded products and services.
  • If you purchase or sell an item on Gear Exchange, your personal information may be provided to the buyer or seller.

  All above exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

  Where required by law, we will obtain your consent prior to disclosing your Personal Data to our business partners. Where recipients use your Personal Data for their own purposes independently from us, we are not responsible for their privacy practices or personal data processing policies. You should consult the privacy notices of those third-party services for details on their practices.

• The public, such as when you have an opportunity to make comments regarding us or our products that we may share with the public, including comments on our blog posts and reviews on our product pages. Any Personal Data in comments, reviews, or other content that you share in public areas of our Digital Properties may be read, collected, or used by other users or the public.

• Entities to which you have consented to the disclosure.

Our Digital Properties and authorized third parties use Cookies to collect information about you, your device, and how you interact with our Digital Properties. This section contains additional information about:

• The types of Cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them
• The types of information we collect using Cookies
• How we disclose or make information available to others
• Choices you may have regarding Cookies

• Types of Cookies

  We and the third parties that we authorize may use:

  • Cookies, which are a type of technology that install a small amount of information on a user's computer or other device when they visit a website. Some cookies exist only during a single session and some are persistent over multiple sessions over time.
  • Pixels, web beacons, and tags, which are types of code or transparent graphics. In addition to the uses described below, these technologies provide analytical information about the user experience and help us customize our marketing activities. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user's computer hard drive, pixels, web beacons, and tags are embedded invisibly on web pages.
  • Session replay tools, which record your interactions with our Digital Properties, such as how you move throughout our Digital Properties and engage with our webforms. In addition to the uses described below, this information helps us improve our Digital Properties and identify and fix technical issues visitors may be having with our Digital Properties.
  • Embedded scripts and SDKs, which allow us to build and integrate custom apps and experiences on our Digital Properties.
• Purposes for using Cookies

  We and authorized third parties use Cookies for purposes including:

  • Personalization, such as remembering language preferences and pages and products you have viewed in order to enhance and personalize your experience when you visit our Digital Properties;
  • Improving performance, such as maintaining and improving the performance of our Digital Properties;
  • Analytics, such as analyzing how our websites are used. For example, we use Google Analytics to help us improve the user experience. Google Analytics may use Cookies to perform their services. To learn how Google Analytics collects and processes data, please visit: “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps” located at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners; To learn how Google Maps collects and processes data, please visit “Google Maps Platform Terms of Service. Located at https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms.
  • Advertising, such as conducting advertising and content personalization on our Digital Properties and those of third parties; tracking activity over time and across properties to develop a profile of your interests and advertise to you based on those interests (“interest-based advertising”); providing you with offers and online content that may be of interest to you; and measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and our communications with you, including identifying how and when you engage with one of our emails; and
  • Security, such as preventing fraud and malicious behavior.
• Information collected

  These Cookies collect data about you and your device, such as your IP address, location (both approximate and precise) cookie ID, device ID, Ad ID, operating system, browser used, browser history, search history, and information about how you interact with our Digital Properties (such as pages on our Digital Properties that you have viewed).

• Disclosures of your information

  We may disclose information to third parties or allow third parties to directly collect information using these Cookies on our Digital Properties, such as social media companies, advertising networks, companies that provide analytics including ad tracking and reporting, security providers, and others that help us operate our business and Digital Properties.

• Your choices

  As described in Section 10 (Supplemental U.S. State Privacy Disclosures) below, residents of certain states may be able to disable Cookies that constitute a “sale,” “sharing,” or “targeted advertising,” as those terms are defined under applicable laws.

  In addition, some of the third parties we work with participate with the Digital Advertising Alliance ("DAA"), which provides a mechanism for you to opt out of interest-based advertising performed by participating members at https://youradchoices.com/.

  You can also refuse or delete Cookies using your browser settings. If you refuse or delete Cookies, some of our Digital Properties’ functionality may be impaired. Please refer to your browser’s Help instructions to learn more about how to manage Cookies. If you change computers, devices, or browsers; use multiple computers, devices, or browsers; or delete your Cookies, you may need to repeat this process for each computer, device, or browser. Opting out of interest-based advertising will not opt you out of all advertising, but rather only interest-based advertising from us or our agents or representatives.

  Some browsers have incorporated Do Not Track (“DNT”) preferences. At this time, we do not honor Do Not Track signals.

Although we maintain reasonable security safeguards, no security measures or communications over the Internet can be 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of your information.

Your Personal Data will be retained as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we have outlined above unless we are required to do otherwise by applicable law. This includes retaining your Personal Data to provide you with the products or services you have requested and interact with you; maintain our business relationship with you; improve our business over time; ensure the ongoing legality, safety and security of our services and relationships; or otherwise in accordance with our internal retention procedures. Once you have terminated your relationship with us, we may retain your Personal Data in our systems and records to ensure adequate fulfillment of surviving provisions in terminated contracts or for other legitimate business purposes, such as to enable easier future user onboarding, demonstrate our business practices and contractual obligations, or provide you with information about our products and services in case of interest.

Our Digital Properties are intended for individuals 13 years of age and older. The Digital Properties are not directed at, marketed to, nor intended for, children under 13 years of age. As a general rule, we do not knowingly collect any information, including Personal Data, from children under 13 years of age. If you believe that we have inadvertently collected Personal Data from a child under the age of 13, please contact us at the address in Section 9 (Contact Information) below, and we will take prompt steps to delete the information.

Our Digital Properties may contain links to external sites or other online services that we do not control, including those embedded in third party advertisements or sponsor information. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or data collection policies of such third-party services. You should consult the privacy notices of those third-party services for details on their practices.

If you have questions regarding this Privacy Notice, please contact us at: privacy@sweetwater.com.

• Data Subject Rights

  If you live in California, Colorado, Oregon, Delaware, or certain other states that have adopted generally applicable privacy laws, you may have certain rights regarding Personal Data that you can exercise via our webform, by emailing us at privacy@sweetwater.com, or by calling us at (800) 222-4700.

  • Right to Know. You may have the right to request information about the categories of Personal Data we have collected about you, the categories of sources from which we collected the Personal Data, the purposes for collecting, selling, or sharing the Personal Data, and to whom we have disclosed your Personal Data and why. You may also request the specific pieces of Personal Data we have collected about you. Oregon and Minnesota residents may also request a specific list of third parties to whom we disclose your Personal Data.
  • Right to Delete. You may have the right to request that we delete Personal Data that we have collected from you.
  • Right to Correct. You may have the right to request that we correct inaccurate Personal Data that we maintain about you.
  • Right to Opt Out of Sale, Sharing, and Targeted Advertising. You may have the right to opt out of selling, sharing, and targeted advertising (as such terms are defined under applicable laws). We do not knowingly sell data about minors under 16. You can exercise the Right to Opt Out of Sale, Sharing, and Targeted Advertising by completing our webform.

  To the extent required by law, we will honor opt-out preference signals sent in a format commonly used and recognized by businesses, such as an HTTP header field or JavaScript object. We will process opt-out preference signals at the browser level.

  We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

  Nevada residents: Individuals may contact us by e-mail at privacy@sweetwater.com or by phone at (800) 222-4700 to inquire about your right to opt out of the sale of your Personal Data.

  Processing Requests: To process requests, we may need information to locate you in our records or verify your identity depending on the request.

  • For Requests to Opt-Out of Sale, Sharing, and Targeted Advertising: We collect your last name, email, and phone number to locate you in our records.
  • For Requests to Know, Delete, and Correct: We collect information necessary to verify your identity, including last name, email, and phone number.

  Authorized Agents: Authorized agents may exercise rights on your behalf by submitting a request using the same methods as consumers (via our webform, e-mailing privacy@sweetwater.com or calling (800) 222-4700).

  • If you designate an authorized agent to submit a Request to Know, Delete, or Correct, we may reach out to you directly to verify your own identity or to confirm that you provided the authorized agent permission to submit the request.
  • If you designate an authorized agent to submit a Request to Opt Out of Sale, Sharing, and Targeted Advertising, we may seek additional information directly from the authorized agent to process the request.

  Appeal: If we deny your rights request, you may have the right to appeal. To submit an appeal, contact us at privacy@sweetwater.com. We will inform you in writing our response to your appeal.

• Additional Data Processing Disclosures

  In addition to the disclosures above, this section provides supplemental information about how we process Personal Data.

  Disclosure of Personal Data

  Below please find a chart detailing the categories of Personal Data we collected and with whom it was sold, shared, or disclosed for a business purpose in the past 12 months.

Sensitive Personal Data: We only use and disclose Sensitive Personal Data for the following purposes: (i) performing services or providing goods reasonably expected by an average consumer; (ii) detecting security incidents; (iii) resisting malicious, deceptive, or illegal actions; (iv) ensuring the physical safety of individuals; (v) for short-term, transient use, including non-personalized advertising; (vi) performing or providing internal business services; (vii) verifying or maintaining the quality or safety of a service or device; or (viii) for purposes that do not infer characteristics about you.

California Shine the Light: California's “Shine the Light” law (Civil Code Section § 1798.83) permits California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to privacy@sweetwater.com.

Sweetwater cares about its loyal customers. We may provide a loyalty program with certain rewards or offers only available to members of our loyalty program. We also conduct a monthly giveaway on Sweetwater.com, a separate monthly giveaway on Gear Exchange, and other programs from time to time (collectively, the “Programs and Giveaways”). Our Programs and Giveaways may be considered a “financial incentive” under California law or “bona fide loyalty program” under Colorado law. When you participate in our Programs and Giveaways, we collect personal information from you, including, at minimum, your name and e-mail address, and often your phone number, along with other personal information that will be disclosed at the time of collection. We do not collect any sensitive information as part of our Programs and Giveaways. We may share the personal information we collect with service providers who help us administer the Programs and Giveaways and with our marketing partners, which may constitute a “sale” or “sharing” for targeted advertising in some states. For more information about how we collect and use personal information, and the rights you may have with respect to your information, please review our privacy notice. We use and disclose your personal information to administer our Programs and Giveaways, to communicate with you about the Programs and Giveaways, for marketing, for internal business purposes, and to provide you with the benefits of those programs. Please consult the applicable rules for the Program and Giveaways in which you participate for more information.

The value of your Personal Information corresponds to the value you can receive from participation in the financial incentive. For most financial incentives, that amount is equal to the value of the benefit offered (such as the value of a loyalty offer or value of an offered reduction in a purchase price). For sweepstakes and giveaways, the value is equal to the cost of the prize divided by the total number of participants. For all Programs and Giveaways, we calculate the value of your Personal Information based on our costs to provide the applicable Program and Giveaway. By participating in our Programs and Giveaways, you agree that the benefits are reasonably related to the value of the Personal Information. You may enroll in Programs and Giveaways by taking the steps described at the time the offer is presented. You may opt-out by submitting a request through our webform and by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in the footer of emails related to the Program and Giveaway.