Coats is comprised of several different legal entities located around the world, details of which can be found in our Annual Report. This Notice is issued on behalf of Coats and its group of companies, so when we mention “Coats, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Notice, we are referring to the relevant company in the Coats group that is responsible for processing your data.

If you have any questions about this Notice, including any requests to exercise your rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the contract details set out below:

Data Protection Officer
Coats Group PLC, 4th Floor, 14 Aldermanbury Square, London EC2V 7HS.
Email: privacy@coats.com

We use different methods to collect personal data including through:

• Direct interactions: you may give us personal data in your direct interactions with us. Such personal data may include Identity and Contact Data, Financial Data, Business Data, Transaction Data, Profile and Usage Data, Technical Data and/or Marketing and Communications Data, which you give us from time to time (i) submitting any of the forms on our websites; (ii) through any of the Sites which we offer or which we have agreed with you to use, (iii) by corresponding with us by email or post, (iv) by speaking to us in person or over the telephone, or (v) whilst visiting our offices or manufacturing units.
• Websites, platforms, portals, applications, and marketing: we may collect Profile and Usage Data, Technical Data and/or Marketing and Communications Data, when you use any of our Sites or when you review the communications or marketing materials we send you.
• Third-party sources: we may receive Identity and Contact Data and/or Financial Data about you from third parties, when you provide your personal data to a third party for the purpose of sharing it with us, for example, recruitment agencies and consultants may provide your personal data with use for recruitment activities.
• Publicly available sources: we may collect Identity and Contact Data and Financial Data from publicly availably sources, including from: i) public registers (e.g. Companies House in the United Kingdom); and ii) other public sources including any services accessible on the internet which you are using for professional networking purposes (e.g. LinkedIn).

Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• to communicate and respond to your requests and/or enquiries to Coats;
• to engage in transactions with our customers, suppliers and business partners and to process orders for Coats’ products and services;
• to analyse, develop, improve, optimise the use and deliver functionality on our Sites, and for their technical and functional management;
• to manage the security and operation of our Sites and networks and systems; and
• to comply with applicable laws and regulations and to operate our business.

We may use personal data for the following commercial purposes:

• to administer subscriptions to Coats’ publications and newsletters;
• to market our products and services or related products and services, and to tailor our marketing and sales activities to your or your company’s interests; and
• to provide select business-to-business services to Coats’ customers using publicly available information about companies, which may include personal data.

We may collect and process different kinds of personal data about you, which we have grouped together as follows:

• Identity and Contact Data: includes your name, title, gender, address, telephone number, employment history, education or professional background, job title and function.
• Financial Data: includes your bank account and other data necessary for processing payments and fraud prevention, and other related billing information.
• Business Data: includes information provided in the course of a contractual relationship between you or your organisation and Coats, or otherwise voluntarily provided by you or your organisation.
• Transaction Data: includes details about payments to and from you and other details of the products and services you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data: includes IP address, login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our websites, platforms, portals and applications.
• Profile and Usage Data: includes passwords to Coats’ Sites and information about how you use our Sites, including the products and services you viewed or search for, information sheets downloaded, length of visit and interaction information.
• Marketing and Communications Data: includes your preference in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

For personal data collected about you in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), the UK and other relevant jurisdictions, our basis for processing is the following:

• We rely on our legitimate interest in processing identity and contact data and related information about you in order to communicate with you, share information about our products and to respond to your requests.
• In order to engage in transactions with customers, suppliers and business partners, and to process purchases of our products and services, we need to process information about you as necessary to enter into or perform a contract with you.
• We process personal data for marketing and sales activities (including events) based on your consent where so indicated on our Sites at the time your personal data was collected, or further to our legitimate interest to keep you updated on developments around our products and services, which may be of interest to you.
• We rely on our legitimate interest to analyse, develop, improve and optimize our Sites, facilities, products and services, and to maintain the security of our Sites, networks and systems.
• In order to comply with applicable laws and regulations, such as to comply with a legitimate legal process, or to process an opt-out request.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data.

To the extent you are asked to click or check "I accept", "I agree" or similar buttons or checkboxes in relation to this Notice, doing so will be considered as providing your consent to process your personal data, only in the countries where such consent is required by law. In all other countries, such action will be considered as a mere acknowledgement and the legal basis of the processing of your personal data will not be your consent but any other applicable legal basis.

As a global business, your personal data will be shared throughout Coats’ group of companies, and with third parties as set out below.

We may share personal data with the following third parties for a business purpose:

• Third-party service providers (for example, merchant service providers, order fulfilment, analytics, event/campaign management, website management, information technology and infrastructure provision, data hosting, customer service, e-mail delivery, auditing, and other similar service providers) in order for those service providers to perform business functions on behalf of Coats.
• Relevant third parties in the event of a reorganisation, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of Coats’ business, assets or shares.
• If we are required to do so by law or legal process, or when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical harm or financial loss, or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual fraudulent or illegal activity such as financial crime.

We may share personal data with the following third parties for a commercial purpose:

• Coats authorised distributors, resellers and sales agents.
• Event / conference / webinar partners, co-hosts and sponsors.

When third parties are given access to personal data, we will implement appropriate contractual, technical and organizational measures to ensure that such information is processed only to the extent that such processing is necessary, consistent with this Privacy Notice, and in accordance with applicable law.

When we share your personal data within Coats, this may involve transferring your personal data outside the EEA and the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA and/or the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring appropriate safeguards are implemented, such as:

• Only transferring your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission (in the case of transfers out of the EEA) or the UK Government (in the case of transfers out of the UK).
• Where we use certain service providers, adopting specific contracts approved by the European Commission (in the case of transfers out of the EEA) and/or the UK Government (in the case of transfers out of the UK), in both cases which give personal data the same protection it has within the EEA and/or UK as applicable.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We have procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Although we take appropriate and proportionate steps to manage the risks posed, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure, therefore we cannot guarantee the security of your personal data transmitted to our online services.

Our websites may contain links to other sites which are controlled by third parties, for example the ‘Investor’ page links to the website of our strategic communications partner. We also use social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube and third party platforms to host events, training and seminars. You should review these other sites’ privacy policies. We do not accept any responsibility for the information you provide those sites or their collection and use of your personal data.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.

If you want to learn more about the retention periods we apply to your personal data, please contact us by email to: privacy@coats.com.

We use cookies on our websites. This Privacy Notice should be read alongside our Cookies Notice.

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Details of your rights are set out below:

• Access: this right entitles you to know whether we hold personal data about you and, if we do, to obtain information on and a copy of that personal data.
• Accuracy: this right entitles you to have your personal data be corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Objecting: this right entitles you to request that Coats no longer processes your personal data.
• Erasure: this right entitles you to request the erasure of your personal data, including where such personal data would no longer be necessary to achieve the purposes.
• Porting: this right entitles you to receive a copy (in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format) of personal data that you have provided to Coats, or request Coats to transmit such personal data to another data controller.
• Complain: if you believe that your data protection rights may have been breached, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the applicable supervisory authority, or to seek a remedy through the courts.

You may, at any time, exercise any of the above rights, by contacting: privacy@coats.com. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

Your request should contain a detailed, accurate description of the personal data you want access to. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

If you have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal data, you have the right to fully or partly withdraw your consent. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose(s) to which you originally consented unless there is another legal ground for the processing. Withdrawing your consent does not affect the lawfulness of the processing your personal based on consent before its withdrawal.

To opt-out of receiving our marketing communications please follow the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or contact: privacy@coats.com.

This cookie notice provides information about the types of cookies Coats uses and why we use them. To learn about the personal data we process in connection with coats.com and our other websites, and your data protection rights, please read our Privacy Notice.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a piece of text which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree (or your browser agrees automatically if you have set it up in that way), your browser adds that text in a small file.

A cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets website operators know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

Which cookies do we use?

This is a list of the main cookies set by the Coats website, and what each is used for:

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics sets a cookie in order to evaluate our use of our website and compile reports on user activity.

Google stores the information collected by the cookie on servers in the United States. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.

We use Facebook Pixels to help us to reach our existing audience on Facebook and supply them with relevant content.

You can opt out of Facebook Pixel cookies by visiting the Adverts tab in your Facebook profile settings. The information we share with Facebook will only be used in accordance with Facebook’s data use policy www.facebook.com/about/privacy.

Other cookies which are used on this website are used for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network; or where such storage or access is strictly necessary for the provision of an information society service requested by the subscriber or user.

Examples of cookies which are neccessary for the provisioning and security of the service

How to control and delete cookies

We know that people have concerns about cookies, but we believe that the benefits that you gain from their proper use is worthwhile.

Browsers

You can delete the files that contain cookies – those files are stored as part of your internet browser. If you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by coats.com, or indeed any other website, or if you wish to receive notification of cookie placement requests or decline cookies completely, you can do this through your browser settings. The Help function within your browser should tell you how. Please be aware that declining or denying cookies may prevent you from being able to use the website to its highest capability.

Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer as well as more general information about cookies. For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile device you will need to refer to your manual.

Applications

Cookies work differently on mobile applications as they are coded into the applications itself and will use a unique identifier created by your mobile device. You can turn off or reset this advertising identifier through your mobile device's privacy settings.