Privacy policy

This English translation is provided for convenience only. The German version is legally binding.

Last updated: 10 October 2026

1. Controller

The controller within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

Ligna Arts OHG
Juraweg 14
47506 Neukirchen-Vluyn
Germany
Phone: +49 2845 3799956
Email: kontakt@ligna-arts.de
Website: www.ugears.de

2. Data protection officer

Konstantin Gorbatsch
Ligna Arts OHG, Juraweg 14, 47506 Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany
Phone: +49 2845 3799908
Email: k.gorbatsch@ligna-arts.de

3. General information on data processing

We process personal data insofar as this is necessary to provide the website, to process orders, on the basis of your consent or to protect our legitimate interests.

Legal bases. Where we obtain your consent, the legal basis is Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. Where processing is necessary for the performance of a contract or for pre-contractual measures, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR applies. We process data to comply with legal obligations under Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR and to protect legitimate interests under Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.

Storage period. We delete personal data as soon as the purpose of storage no longer applies, unless statutory retention obligations prevent this. We keep invoices and accounting records for up to ten years due to commercial and tax law obligations (Section 147 AO, Section 257 HGB).

4. Hosting and shop system

Our online shop runs on the Shopify platform. The provider is Shopify International Limited, c/o Intertrust Ireland, 2nd Floor, 1–2 Victoria Buildings, Haddington Road, Dublin 4, D04 XN32, Ireland (“Shopify”). Shopify provides the technical infrastructure of the shop: website hosting, cart and checkout, customer accounts, contact form and the storage of order and customer data. We have concluded a data processing agreement with Shopify (Art. 28 GDPR). Shopify may also transfer data to Shopify Inc. in Canada and to service providers in the USA (see section 15).

Server log files. Each time you visit our website, information is recorded automatically: browser type and version, operating system, IP address, date and time of access and the previously visited page. This data is necessary to deliver the website and keep it secure. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest lies in the secure and stable operation of the shop.

5. Cookies and cookie banner

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies. We use technically necessary cookies (e.g. for the cart, language setting, login and checkout) on the basis of Section 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG and Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR.

We use all other cookies and similar technologies (analytics, marketing) only with your consent (Section 25(1) TDDDG, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you give via our cookie banner. You can withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by opening the cookie settings again and changing your selection. You can also delete or block cookies in your browser; in that case, not all functions of the website may be available.

6. Order processing and payment service providers

To process your order, we process the data entered at checkout (name, delivery and billing address, email address, phone number, ordered items, payment method). The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. Depending on the payment method you choose, we pass the data required for payment to the following payment service providers:

  • Credit card: We process card payments via Shopify Payments. The payment service provider is Stripe Technology Europe, Limited, 1 Wilton Park, Wilton Place, Dublin 2, D02 FX04, Ireland. Your card details are transmitted directly to the payment service provider; we do not receive them.
  • PayPal: PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., 22–24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449 Luxembourg.
  • Klarna: Klarna Bank AB (publ), Sveavägen 46, 111 34 Stockholm, Sweden. Klarna may transmit data to credit agencies to check your identity and creditworthiness; details can be found in Klarna's privacy notice.
  • Prepayment by bank transfer: no data is passed to a payment service provider.
  • DHL cash on delivery: DHL collects the amount on delivery (see section 7).

We keep invoice and accounting data for up to ten years due to statutory obligations (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR in conjunction with Section 147 AO, Section 257 HGB).

7. Shipping

For shipping, we pass your name and delivery address and – where you have consented or it is necessary for delivery – your email address and phone number to the shipping company: DHL Paket GmbH, Sträßchensweg 10, 53113 Bonn, or Deutsche Post AG, Charles-de-Gaulle-Str. 20, 53113 Bonn, Germany. DHL uses the email address to announce the delivery. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR; for passing on your email address and phone number where not necessary for delivery, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR.

8. Customer account

You can create a customer account. In doing so, we process your email address and the data you store in the account (name, delivery and billing address, phone number). In your account you can see your previous orders and use saved addresses. The data is stored with Shopify (see section 4). The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. You can have your account deleted at any time; an email to kontakt@ligna-arts.de is sufficient.

9. Contact form and email

If you write to us via the contact form or by email, we process the data you provide – name, email address, phone number (optional) and your message – to handle your enquiry. Messages from the form are transmitted to us via Shopify. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, and for contract-related enquiries Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. We delete the data once your enquiry has been fully dealt with and no statutory retention obligations apply.

hCaptcha. To protect our forms against spam and automated access, we use hCaptcha, a service of Intuition Machines, Inc., 1065 SW 8th St #704, Miami, FL 33130, USA. In particular, your IP address, browser and device information and your usage behaviour on the page are transmitted to hCaptcha. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest lies in protecting our website against misuse. Intuition Machines is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

10. Newsletter

Sign-up. You can subscribe to our newsletter via a form on our website. We process your email address and the time of sign-up. After signing up, you receive an email in which you confirm your subscription (double opt-in). The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can withdraw at any time via the unsubscribe link in every newsletter.

Existing customers. If you buy from us, we may use your email address without a separate sign-up to advertise our own similar products (Section 7(3) UWG, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object to this use at any time without incurring any costs other than the transmission costs at basic rates – via the unsubscribe link or by email to kontakt@ligna-arts.de.

Sending. We send our newsletters with Shopify Messaging, a service of our shop system Shopify (see section 4); the sign-up form is provided with Shopify Forms. Shopify stores your email address and analyses whether and when you open newsletters and click links. We have a data processing agreement with Shopify (Art. 28 GDPR).

Storage period. We store your data until you unsubscribe. After you unsubscribe, we keep your email address on a block list so that you no longer receive newsletters, together with proof of your earlier consent (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

11. Product reviews

For product reviews we use the Shopify app Judge.me, provider: Judge.me Ltd, c/o Buckworths, 1-3 Worship Street, London EC2A 2AB, United Kingdom. Judge.me processes the data on our behalf; we have concluded a data processing agreement with Judge.me (Art. 28 GDPR).

Review request. After an order, we transmit your name, your email address and details of the order (products purchased, order and shipping date) to Judge.me. Some time after shipping, we ask you by email to review the products you purchased. The legal basis is Section 7(3) UWG in conjunction with Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest lies in receiving feedback on our products and making it available to other customers. You can object to the review request at any time without incurring any costs other than the transmission costs at basic rates – via the unsubscribe link in the email or by email to kontakt@ligna-arts.de.

Publication. If you submit a review, we additionally process the review text, the star rating and any photos or videos you upload. Your name in abbreviated form (or a pseudonym of your choice) and your review are published on our website. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you give by submitting the review and which you can withdraw at any time; your review will then be deleted.

Judge.me stores the data with Amazon Web Services and Heroku, also in the USA (see section 15).

12. Analytics and advertising

We use the following services only if you have given your consent via our cookie banner (Section 25(1) TDDDG, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR).

Google Analytics 4. We use Google Analytics 4, a web analytics service of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (“Google”). Google Analytics records how you use our website (e.g. pages viewed, time spent, device, approximate location, purchase events) and sets cookies for this purpose. Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses.

Google Ads and YouTube. We use Google Ads conversion tracking and remarketing (provider: Google) to measure the success of our ads in Google Search, Google Shopping and on YouTube and to show you ads for our products on other websites.

Google Merchant Center. We transmit our product data (titles, prices, images, availability) to Google Merchant Center so that our products appear in Google Shopping. No personal data of visitors is transmitted in the process.

Meta Pixel. We use the Meta Pixel of Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, Merrion Road, Dublin 4, D04 X2K5, Ireland, to measure the effectiveness of our ads on Facebook and Instagram and to show you ads for our products there. We are jointly responsible with Meta for collecting and transmitting the data when you visit our website (Art. 26 GDPR).

OpenAI Ads (ads in ChatGPT). We run ads in ChatGPT and use the pixel and Conversions API of OpenAI Ireland Ltd., 1st Floor, The Liffey Trust Centre, 117–126 Sheriff Street Upper, Dublin 1, D01 YC43, Ireland (“OpenAI”). This lets us measure whether a visit from an ad in ChatGPT leads to actions in our shop, such as viewing products, adding to the cart or placing an order including the order value. For this, the pixel sets cookies – an ad click identifier (stored for up to 30 days) and a random browser identifier (up to 12 months) – and transmits your IP address, device and browser information and the event data to OpenAI. Contact data such as your email address or phone number is only transmitted in encrypted (hashed) form. We also send the same events via our server (Conversions API), likewise only with your consent. OpenAI processes the data as an independent controller, including to deliver and measure ads and to improve its own services. The technical integration is provided by the Shopify app Orichi ChatGPT Ads (see section 13). For more information, see OpenAI's privacy policy: openai.com/policies/privacy-policy.

These services may transfer data to the USA (see section 15).

13. Other service providers

We use further service providers that process data on our behalf (Art. 28 GDPR):

  • Billbee (order and invoice management): Billbee GmbH, Arolser Str. 10, 34477 Twistetal, Germany.
  • Aftersell (post-purchase offers): Rokt Inc., New York, USA; EU representative: Lionheart Squared (Europe) Ltd., 2 Pembroke House, Upper Pembroke Street 28–32, Dublin, D02 EK84, Ireland.
  • Mirakl Connect (marketplace connection): Mirakl SAS, 12 rue de Lübeck, 75116 Paris, France.
  • Databox (shop performance reporting): Databox Inc., 6 Liberty Square, PMB #471, Boston, MA 02109, USA.
  • Order Printer Pro (invoices and packing slips): Shop Circle Holdings Ltd, One Kingdom Street, Paddington Central, London W2 6BD, United Kingdom.
  • BSS B2B Solution (trade prices and B2B customer accounts): BSS Commerce, Viwaseen Tower, 48 To Huu Str., Trung Van Ward, Nam Tu Liem Dist., Hanoi, Vietnam.
  • Orichi ChatGPT Ads (integration of the OpenAI pixel and Conversions API, see section 12): OrichiCommerce, Hanoi, Vietnam.

14. Social media and YouTube videos

Our website links to our profiles on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. These are simple links; data is only transmitted when you click the link and visit the platform.

YouTube videos. On our product pages we show videos by the manufacturer UGEARS that are hosted on YouTube. The provider is Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. At first you only see a preview image loaded via our shop system; no connection to YouTube is established at that point. Only when you click on the preview image is the video loaded from YouTube. In particular, your IP address, browser and device information and the page visited are transmitted to YouTube, and YouTube may store cookies or similar technologies on your device. If you are logged in to your Google account, YouTube may associate the view with your account. The legal basis is your consent (Section 25(1) TDDDG, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you give by clicking on the preview image. Google may also process data in the USA (see section 15). For more information, see Google's privacy policy: policies.google.com/privacy.

15. Transfers to third countries

Some of the service providers named above (in particular Shopify, Google, Meta, OpenAI, hCaptcha, Rokt, Databox and Judge.me) also process data in the USA or may access it from there. On 10 July 2023, the EU Commission adopted an adequacy decision for the USA (EU-US Data Privacy Framework). Where a provider is certified under this framework, the transfer is based on Art. 45 GDPR. Otherwise, we base the transfer on the EU Commission's standard contractual clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR) agreed with the respective provider. For the United Kingdom (Order Printer Pro, Judge.me), there is an adequacy decision of the EU Commission. For the service providers in Vietnam (BSS Commerce, Orichi), we base the transfer on the standard contractual clauses.

16. Your rights

You have the following rights with regard to your personal data:

  • right of access (Art. 15 GDPR),
  • right to rectification (Art. 16 GDPR),
  • right to erasure (Art. 17 GDPR),
  • right to restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR),
  • right to data portability (Art. 20 GDPR),
  • right to withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7(3) GDPR); the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal remains unaffected.

Right to object (Art. 21 GDPR). Where we process your data on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), you may object to this processing at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation. We will then no longer process the data unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, or the processing serves the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. You may object to the processing of your data for direct marketing purposes at any time without giving reasons.

To exercise your rights, an email to kontakt@ligna-arts.de is sufficient.

Right to lodge a complaint. You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR). The authority responsible for us is the State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of North Rhine-Westphalia (LDI NRW), Postfach 20 04 44, 40102 Düsseldorf, Germany.