Privacy policy

Who we are

The Shaping Company is a brand and go-to-market strategy company for challenger brands. In this policy, “we” and “us” means The Shaping Company, registered in India.

We decide how and why your personal information is used, which makes us the “controller” under UK and EU data protection law. For anything in this policy, email hello@shapingcompany.com.

The short version

• We collect what you give us — your name, email, brand and links — to reply, book calls and do the work.
• Our website has no analytics, advertising trackers or cookies of its own.
• We never sell your information, and we don’t use it for targeted advertising.
• We use trusted service providers (email, scheduling, payments, creative tools) to run our business. They only use your information to provide their service to us.
• You can ask to see, correct or delete your information at any time.

What we collect, and why

It depends on how you deal with us:

• Visiting our website: our host keeps short-lived server logs (IP address, browser type, pages requested) to keep the site running and secure. Our host also uses your approximate country, worked out from your IP address, to show the pricing for your region. Your browser remembers that region; it stays on your device.
• Sending us a form: your name, work email, brand name, one link, the country your business is registered in, your time zone and anything you choose to tell us. We use it to reply, prepare for a call and price in your currency.
• Booking a call: your name, email, the time you choose and any notes, handled through our scheduling tool (Cal ID) and video calls on Zoom.
• Becoming a client: contact and billing details, your agreement and invoices, and the materials you share with us — logos, product photos, copy, brand files and access to your accounts, which we ask for by role invite rather than password wherever the platform allows.
• Business outreach: if we contact you about our services, we use business contact details — name, job title, work email, company and public profile links — from professional databases such as Apollo.io and from public sources such as your company website or LinkedIn.
• Market research: when we study a market, Orbit, our in-house AI audience intelligence tool, analyses publicly available posts, reviews and comments. We look at patterns across many people, not at individuals, and we delete the raw data when the project ends.
• Emailing or messaging us: the content of the conversation and your contact details.

Our legal reasons (UK and EU)

• To take steps you ask for before a contract, and to perform our contract with you — replying to enquiries, booking calls, delivering work, invoicing.
• Our legitimate interests — running and securing the website, keeping business records, improving our service, and telling businesses about services relevant to them. We weigh these against your rights, and you can object at any time.
• Legal obligations — keeping tax and accounting records.
• Your consent, where the law requires it — you can withdraw it at any time.

Who we share it with

We share personal information only with providers that help us run our business, under contracts that limit what they can do with it, and with professional advisers or authorities where the law requires. Our main providers:

• Website hosting and forms: Netlify.
• Email, files and calls: Google Workspace; video calls on Zoom.
• Scheduling: Cal ID.
• Client communication and requests: Slack (or your Microsoft Teams), Notion and Tally.
• Payments and accounting: Stripe (we never see or store full card numbers) and Zoho Books.
• Social scheduling and reporting: Metricool.
• Password storage for client account access: Bitwarden.
• Creative and AI tools used to make your work: Adobe, Figma, Canva, Higgsfield, Anthropic (Claude), ElevenLabs, Epidemic Sound, Envato and Framer.
• Prospecting data: Apollo.io.
• Freelance designers and editors working on your projects, under confidentiality terms.

AI tools and your materials

We use AI tools to create your work. We upload only what a job needs, use business accounts, and choose settings that stop confidential client material being used to train public AI models where the provider allows it. People in AI images are fictional and never presented as real customers or staff. More in our AI policy.

Where your information goes

Our providers store and process data in several countries, including the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and India. When personal information leaves the UK or EU, we rely on adequacy decisions or the standard contractual clauses (and the UK addendum) that our providers offer. Wherever it goes, it stays protected by this policy.

How long we keep it

• Enquiries and call bookings that don’t lead to work: up to 12 months, then deleted.
• Client records, agreements and invoices: for as long as tax and company law requires where we are registered — usually six to eight years.
• Project files: for the length of your plan and up to 12 months after, so you can ask for anything you’ve lost. Then deleted, unless you ask us to keep them.
• Outreach contacts: until you ask us to stop, or after 12 months without a reply. If you opt out, we keep only your email on a do-not-contact list so we never contact you again.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct anything that’s wrong or incomplete;
• delete your information;
• restrict or object to how we use it — including an absolute right to stop marketing;
• give your information to you, or another company, in a common format;
• withdraw consent you’ve given, at any time.

Where you live matters

• UK and EU: you can complain to your data protection authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk). We’d appreciate the chance to fix it first.
• Canada: you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca). We only send commercial emails where Canadian anti-spam law (CASL) allows, and every one includes an unsubscribe link.
• United States: we don’t sell or “share” personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. Residents of states with privacy laws, such as California, can use the rights above; we won’t treat you differently for doing so.
• India: you can contact our Grievance Officer, Ashish Sharma (Founder), at hello@shapingcompany.com, and escalate to the Data Protection Board of India if you’re not satisfied. You may also nominate someone to use your rights on your behalf.

Marketing and outreach

We send occasional, relevant emails to businesses about our services. Every message includes our postal address and a one-click way to opt out, and we act on opt-outs straight away. We don’t send cold emails where the law requires prior consent — for example, to businesses in Canada or Germany — unless you’ve given it.

Cookies and browser storage

Our website doesn’t use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. It stores one setting in your browser — the pricing currency you chose — and that setting never leaves your device. To make booking a call quick, our pages load the Cal ID booking tool in the background shortly after you arrive, so your browser contacts Cal ID’s servers even if you don’t book. When you open the calendar, it may use its own cookies to work; Cal ID’s own privacy policy applies. When you type an email address into one of our forms, we check that its domain (the part after the @) can receive email, using Cloudflare’s public DNS service. Only the domain is sent, never your full address.

Security

We use two-factor authentication, a password manager, encrypted connections and role-based access to client accounts, and we give freelancers access only to what a job needs. No system is perfectly secure; if something goes wrong that puts your information at risk, we’ll tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Children

Our services are for businesses. We don’t knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we use your information, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects you significantly, we’ll tell you directly.

Contact us

Email hello@shapingcompany.com. We reply within 30 days — usually much sooner.