This Privacy Statement (the “Statement”) explains how Benchmade Knife Co., Inc. (“Benchmade,” “us,” “our,” or “we”) collects, stores, uses, and discloses personal information, including when you visit Benchmade’s websites, purchase products online or in our store, engage with us on social media, apply for a job with us, or attend our events. This Statement addresses specific disclosure requirements from various privacy laws and also serves as our ‘notice at collection.’
Please read this Statement to understand how we process your information and how to exercise your rights. If you have any questions about this Statement or our privacy practices, please contact us at privacy@benchmade.com.
To focus on our mission and vision, we engage service providers and third parties to provide us with information technology, professional services, and other assistance in a variety of business functions, from marketing and operations to recruiting and sales. To learn more, please review When We Disclose Personal Information and Cookies and Similar Technologies.
Contents
Personal Information We Process
How We Use Personal Information
When We Disclose Personal Information
Your Privacy Rights and Control of Your Information
Cookies and Similar Technology
Children’s Information
How We Protect and Store Your Information
Links to Third-Party Services
Updates to the Privacy Statement
How to Contact Us
Personal Information We Process
Benchmade collects information about you in a number of ways. First, we collect information directly from you, such as when you:
- Purchase our products,
- Send us an email or contact us through the website,
- Create an online account,
- Register your knife,
- Share content with us, such as product reviews or photos,
- Sign up for promotional email or opt-in to receive text (or SMS) messages,
- Participate in our sweepstakes, contests, or promotions,
- Become a dealer for our products,
- Send us your resume, or
- Engage with us on social media platforms or in-person, at events or in our stores.
Next, from time to time, we collect information about you from others, such as our dealers, public sources, or from data brokers. Finally, we collect information automatically from you using Cookies and Similar Technologies when you visit our websites and engage with our emails.
We may create data about you, such as inferences about your interests, hobbies, or the knives that may suit you best.
This personal information we collect and process includes:
- Identifiers, such as your full name, account name, alias, username, home address, business address, shipping address, billing address, unique personal identifier, unique online identifier, IP address, email address, phone number, driver’s license number, or other similar identifiers.
- Account information, including your name and favorite knives.
- Demographic information, such as your general market area, zip code, age range, or information about your gender or occupation.
- Professional, educational, and employment-related information, such as your current employer, occupation, and academic qualifications.
- Commercial information, including data about your knife purchases, including date of purchase, store name and city, your purpose for purchasing the knife, and similar information. If you are a dealer, we may collect other commercial information about your business and our interactions.
- Geolocation information, such as your precise and general geolocation. For example, when you use the Find a Dealer feature on our website, you may provide your precise or general geolocation depending on your settings and the information you provide.
- Financial account information, such as the payment card information you provide to complete a purchase; if you shop online, such information is handled by our e-commerce and payment processors.
- Your preferences, interests, and affiliations, such as those we infer based on your activity on our website or those you share, such as when you attend our events, send us a message, or favorite a knife on our website.
- Content, such as the text or photos you share when you post reviews of our knives or your experiences with us.
- Communications, such as the content of the email, direct message, or text message you send to us.
- Audio, video, images, or similar information, including voicemail recordings you leave us, photos you share with us on social media platforms, and video we capture at our events or in our facilities.
- Device data, including information about the device you use to access our website, such as the hardware model, operating system version, and device identifiers.
- Internet and electronic network activity, such as search queries on our website or the information we automatically collect about your interactions on our website or with our emails using Cookies and Similar Technologies. Such information may include:
- Wireless network and connection information, including your IP address,
- Date and time of your visit to our website and duration of your visit,
- Your interactions with our website, such as the pages you viewed, the features you engaged with, your clickstreams, and the knives you added to your digital shopping bag,
- The website from which you linked to our website and the website you navigated to next,
- Your input into any search box on our website or Chat Bot on our websites,
- The general location from which you access the website, and
- Other similar information about your use of our websites or engagement with our emails.
Personal information we collect may be considered ‘sensitive’ under certain privacy and data protection laws. For example, when you make a purchase, we process your payment card information. When you engage with us online or submit a review, you may choose to share information that reveals your race, health conditions, union membership, or religious or philosophical beliefs. Benchmade uses such information to complete your transaction, provide our digital services, or for other legitimate purposes.
Benchmade may process de-identified personal information. Data in this state cannot be used to infer information about, or otherwise be linked to, a particular individual. In those instances, and unless allowed under applicable law, we will maintain such information in a de-identified state and will not try to re-identify the individual.
We use automated tools, including generative AI chatbots, to help answer your questions and support your requests. Your messages may be processed by third-party AI providers to generate responses. We retain conversation data in accordance with the “How We Protect and Store Your Information” section of this policy to improve our customer support services.
Email communications we send may contain personally identifiable information (PII); by choosing to share or forward such emails, you acknowledge and assume all associated risks, and we advise against doing so to protect your privacy.
How We Use Personal Information
We use your information for a variety of purposes, depending on our interactions, including to market and sell our products, operate our websites, and to conduct our business. We’ve provided the chart below to describe the specific categories of personal information we commonly use.
| Use | Personal Information Types Used |
| Provide, protect, and improve our websites. For example, we use personal information we collect to:· Provide certain website functionality, such as keeping you signed in or remembering what’s in your digital shopping bag.· Detect performance issues, bugs, or broken links.· Respond to your searches or queries you perform on our website; or· Customize the digital content you see. For example, if you use the Knife Finder feature on our website, we use information you provide to make product recommendations and display content on our website we think you’ll value. | – Identifiers- Account Information- Demographic information- Geolocation information- Your preferences, interests, and affiliations- Content- Communications- Device Data- Internet and electronic network activity |
| Fulfill your online order, complete an in-person transaction, or provide support. We process your information to complete transactions, which includes customizing the products you order, preventing and detecting fraud, and providing you support when you need it, including when we service your knife. | – Identifiers- Account Information- Demographic information- Commercial information- Financial account information- Communications- Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information- Internet and electronic network activity |
| Administer sweepstakes, contests, or other promotions. We may use your information, for example, to share information with you about the promotion, determine your eligibility, and share outcomes as necessary, such as when we contact winners. | – Identifiers- Account information- Demographic information- Commercial information- Content- Communications |
| Send promotional emails and text messages. We keep you in the know on our new arrivals, discounts, and more by sending you promotional communications via email or text (SMS) messages. Some content may be personalized based on information we process from prior interactions. For example, we may send you a text message or email to remind you of the knives you added to your digital shopping bag on our website. In addition, you agree to our Messaging Terms of Service and Messaging Privacy Policy. | – Identifiers- Account Information- Demographic information- Commercial information- Your preferences, interests, and affiliations- Communications- Internet and electronic network activity |
| Market and advertise our products, including through the use of online advertising and social media platforms. For example, we analyze our digital interactions to develop marketing ideas, measure the effectiveness of our ad campaigns, and understand who buys our products. We may display a review or photo you shared on our website to help others learn about our products. | – Identifiers- Demographic information- Commercial information- Your preferences, interests, and affiliations- Communications- Audio, video, and images- Device Data- Internet and electronic network activity |
| Listen and respond. For example, we may engage with you through email, over the phone, or through digital messaging features where we interact. We may analyze our messages to understand common questions or product needs so that we can improve. | – Identifiers- Demographic information- Commercial information- Your preferences, interests, and affiliations- Content- Communications- Audio, video, and images- Device Data- Internet and electronic network activity |
| Notify you about important information related to your account, your orders, or our products. For example, we may send you an email to provide you an update on your order or service request. | – Identifiers- Commercial information- Communications- Audio, video, and images |
| Develop new or improved products and content, including by conducting research, surveys, and interviews, and by analyzing personal information. For example, we may gather feedback about our products through surveys which may lead to new releases. | – Identifiers- Account information- Demographic information- Commercial information- Your preferences, interests, and affiliations- Content- Communications- Audio, video, and images- Device data- Internet and electronic network activity |
| Consider you for employment. If you want to join our team, we’ll use your information to determine if you qualified for positions within our organization. | – Identifiers- Professional, educational, and employment-related information- Your preferences, interests, and affiliations- Communications- Internet and electronic network activity |
| Protect our rights and property, as well as those of our guests, customers, dealers, and partners; detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, theft, or violations of the law, our terms, or our policies. For example, we may use security cameras in our facilities to collect video which we use for various purposes, including to respond to incidents. | We will use all categories of personal information, as necessary, for these purposes. |
| Comply with laws and regulations or meet other requirements or obligations. For example, we may process your information to remember your contact preferences, cookie choices, and honor our warranty. |
In carrying out these purposes, we combine information we collect from different contexts and sources to provide you a more seamless and personalized experience, to make informed business decisions, and for other legitimate business purposes. For example, we may use information we gathered about your interactions on our website, such as the knives you favorited or added to your digital shopping bag, to inform the content of a message we send you via email or text (SMS) message.
As described above, depending on our interactions, some of the information we collect may qualify as “sensitive” under certain privacy laws, such as payment card information. From time to time, we may process sensitive categories of data incidentally or if you choose to share it. For example, if you apply for a job or sign-up for our events, we may learn about your disability status to provide accommodations.