1. Overview & contact information
The International Housewares Association (hereinafter “IHA” or “we”) is a trade association committed to maximizing the success of the home products industry by bringing together all industry constituencies. IHA provides a world-class home products marketplace; facilitates global commerce and the buyer-seller interface; increases consumer awareness and interest in home products; gathers and disseminates essential marketplace intelligence; and educates and supports key constituencies to improve their success.

You can contact us at:

6400 Shafer Court, Suite 650
Rosemont, IL 60018
Phone: 847-292-4200
Fax: 847-292-4211

This Privacy Policy sets forth how we collect, process and protect personal data in our possession and control, including without limitation, personal data of individuals within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA).

In general, IHA
Collects, uses and stores the minimum amount of personal data that is necessary for one or more legitimate business purposes and to comply with legal obligations.
Limits who has access to the personal data in our possession to only those who need it for a legitimate business purpose.
Protects personal data through physical and technical security measures tailored to the sensitivity of the personal data we hold.
Communicates with our employees, suppliers, business partners and other industry constituents about how we intend to use personal data in our day-to-day operations.
Takes reasonable steps to ensure our personal data is accurate and up-to-date.
Integrates privacy in the design of our activities and projects that involve the use of personal data.
For residents of the EU or the EEA, we are the controller of the processing of your data and our processes relating to your personal data are governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). If you have any questions or inquiries, contact us at [email protected].

2. Types of Information Collected
IHA recognizes any data related to an identifiable individual or which identifies an individual as “personal data” subject to this Privacy Policy. Depending on how you interact with IHA, we collect and use different types of personal data. Identifiers that we may collect from you include your name, username, e-mail address, mailing address, telephone number, and payment information (if products or services are purchased from IHA). There is other information that we collect automatically when you visit our site through the use of cookies or similar technologies such as your IP address, browser type, access times. See our Cookies Policy on our website for more information.

3. Why we process your personal data
We use your personal data depending on the type of relationship that you have with us (e.g. if you are one of our members, an attendee at our events or a member of the general public visiting our website).

We use your information in the following ways:
Personal data collected through our app is processed for purposes of facilitating communications with you;
Personal data collected through our membership accounts on our website are used for purposes of managing the applicable member’s membership account and providing membership–related services;
Personal data collected from registration to our events is processed for purposes of providing services at the event;
Personal data may be processed for purposes of marketing activities to promote IHA membership, services and activities. Personal data may be used to send communications to IHA members and others who interact with IHA and may be collected from such recipients about their use of marketing communications.
Personal data collected through cookies placed on our website may be processed to support the operation of our website and to analyze the traffic patterns to our site. See our Cookies Policy on our website for more information.

4. Our policy towards children
Our services are not directed to children.
We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. We may incidentally process personal data of children, for instance where participants to our events travel with family. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with personal data without their consent, please contact us. If we become aware that a child has registered for one of our events or services and has provided us with personal data without the consent of their parent or guardian, we will delete such information from our files.

5. Disclosures to Third Parties
At times, IHA engages third-party contractors, service providers, and other vendors to help us accomplish our business objectives. There are other circumstances where we are required by law to disclose personal data to third parties such as public bodies or judicial authorities.

We engage with our agents, representatives, contractors, service providers or other third parties to enhance our user experience and operations, such as to process credit card transactions, to service an organization’s participation in an event, to manage event registration or housing requirements and to conduct marketing.

We require third parties that transmit personal data to treat such data consistent with this Privacy Policy. A contract to protect personal data is executed with any vendor who will process personal data in the EU/EEA prior to disclosing such personal data.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, IHA may disclose personal data when it has a good-faith belief that such disclosures is necessary to: (a) comply with law; (b) protect and/or defend IHA’s rights or property (including without limitation intellectual property); (c) enforce IHA’s policies or terms of use; or (d) protect the interests of other users.

In addition to the above, IHA may be compelled to provide personal data to governmental authorities. Such compelled disclosures include a court order, subpoena, or to cooperate with a law enforcement investigation. IHA reserves the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we believe in good faith to be unlawful.

6. Your European Privacy Rights
IHA is committed to processing personal data of users in the EU or EEA lawfully and to facilitating the exercise of such rights grants granted by GDPR. You may contact us at [email protected] to discuss your privacy concerns.

Legal basis for data collection and use: IHA only collects and uses personal data of EU or EEA residents when there is a fair and legal basis and/or when you have consented to our collection or use of such personal data. Information you provide to us is collected and used in the performance of the contract for the products and/or services you are requesting from IHA, and for IHA’s legitimate interest in providing membership services, event-related services to all attendees and to increase awareness of IHA and its offerings. In addition, we may obtain your consent to collect information automatically or to use information you have provided to us for a particular purpose, such as e-mail marketing.

Privacy rights under the European regulation:
Transparency and the right to information: We provide notice to all our members, website users and other third parties who interact with us about how we use personal data in our day-to-day activities at the time of collecting personal data, or as soon thereafter as possible. We also publish this Privacy Policy for greater transparency.
Right to access, rectification, restriction of processing, erasure, and data portability: If you are based in the EU or EEA, we provide you with access to your own personal data upon request. In addition, for EU or EEA residents, when requested in writing by you, we will rectify any errors in your personal data when it is incorrect or inaccurate, and we will ensure the right to erasure, portability and to restriction of processing when these rights are not incompatible with other legal obligations.
Right to object and withdraw consent at any time: For all marketing materials, you can opt-out anytime, and free of charge. The right to object for other processing activities will be balanced to ensure that it is not incompatible with local regulations or our legitimate interests.

These requests should be submitted as follows:
Opt-out of marketing communications: You can exercise your right to object and opt-out anytime by following the opt-out instructions in our commercial e-mails or contacting us at [email protected]. You will continue to receive emails relevant to course event registrations or purchases (e.g. registration confirmations or purchase receipts), information necessary to your continued membership in the IHA (e.g. dues notices) or information relevant to exhibiting in a current or future event. If you believe that SPAM has been sent from us, please contact us at [email protected] so that we can investigate and rectify the situation.
To exercise the rest of your rights: You should send a communication in writing to [email protected]. In order to fulfill this request, we may require you provide us information to validate your identity and specify your request. We will attend to your request in a timely manner within 30 days after receiving your request. If for any reason we need to extend this period of time, we will contact you.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority of your habitual residence, place of work or place of the alleged infringement.

7. International Transfers of Personal Data
If you are located outside the United States and you interact with our website or provide us personal data, then your personal data is transferred to the United States whenever you interact with us. The US has not sought, nor obtained adequacy status from the European Union. The EU-US Privacy Shield framework obtained an adequacy decision. The level of protection of your personal data is not deemed equivalent to the one in the EU, unless the receiving organization is self-certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield.

Article 49 of the GDPR permits IHA to transfer your personal data on the basis of the following derogations:
Explicit consent for newsletter subscribers and certain processing in relation to organizing events;
Necessity to enter and for the performance of a contract for registration information to participate to our events; for processing personal data of our members to maintain their relationship with our organization, provide them services including when they log in to their member accounts; and also for processing personal data for online and offline courses.
As for safeguards to your personal data, we directly apply the GDPR provisions to your personal data.

8. Data Security
IHA is committed to the security, confidentiality and integrity of your personal data. We take commercially reasonable precautions to keep all information obtained from our online visitors secure against unauthorized access and use and we periodically review our security measures.

IHA’s website contains links to other sites. While IHA strives to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, IHA is not responsible for the privacy practices employed by other sites.

IHA MAKES NO CLAIMS, PROMISES OR GUARANTEES ABOUT THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS OR ADEQUACY OF THE CONTENTS OF ITS SITE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS LIABILITY FOR ERRORS AND OMISSIONS IN THE CONTENTS OF THIS SITE. NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, IMPLIED, EXPRESSED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT, TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND FREEDOM FROM COMPUTER VIRUS, IS GIVEN WITH RESPECT TO THE CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE OR ITS HYPERLINKS TO OTHER INTERNET RESOURCES. REFERENCE IN THIS WEBSITE TO ANY SPECIFIC COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS, PROCESSES OR SERVICES, OR THE USE OF ANY TRADE, FIRM OR CORPORATION NAME IS FOR THE INFORMATION AND CONVENIENCE OF THE PUBLIC AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE ENDORSEMENT OR RECOMMENDATION BY IHA.

9. Retention Periods
IHA applies the storage limitation principle in order to retain personal data in our records only for the length of time required to fulfill the purpose for which the data was collected.

We only keep personal data in our records as long as they are necessary for the purposes they have been processed. The retention period depends on the context in which we process data and on specific circumstances such as regulations requiring retaining information for a certain period of time. These circumstances may include local laws, the reasonably anticipated future business needs for the data, the benefit to the user to have the data available, legal requirements to hold the data, or similar circumstances.

10. Changes to this Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. We will duly inform you of any changes.

IHA may occasionally update this Privacy Policy and other statements referenced by it. You will be notified of these changes through placement of a prominent notice on IHA’s website. The date stamp you see below will indicate the last date it was revised.

Last Updated: May 6, 2019