Privacy Policy

PaperCrane is a wholesale clothing marketplace for businesses, operated by PAPERCRANE LLC, a Michigan limited liability company. This policy covers papercranewholesale.com and the PaperCrane iOS app, and it applies whether you buy, sell, apply to sell, or just browse. It describes what we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

Most of what we have, you gave us. When you create an account you choose a username and give us your email address and your date of birth, and you can add a display name, a bio, profile photos, and your US state. Your date of birth is required: it is how we keep under-13s off the platform and how we know whether an account needs a parent or guardian. If you are 13 to 17, we also collect the name and email address of the parent or guardian you name, so we can ask them to approve the account. If you apply to sell, you tell us about your business: its name, a contact email, website and social links, and what you sell. When you save shipping addresses or place an order, we collect the names, street addresses, and phone numbers involved — carriers require a phone number on a shipping label. Photos and video you upload — of the lots you list, and the stories you post — are collected, and video carries whatever sound was recorded with it. Messages, offers, and reviews are collected because you wrote them here. If you submit a resale or tax-exemption certificate, or upload evidence for an order dispute, we keep those documents in private storage where only our team can review them.

Transactions create records of their own: what was ordered, the amounts paid, payouts, Crane Credit, and ledger entries. When you save a card or set up payouts, the card number is entered directly with our payment processor, Stripe, and never touches PaperCrane’s servers. We store only the card’s brand and last four digits, so you can recognize it, along with Stripe’s account identifiers.

Some information is collected automatically. As you use the site or the app we record usage events: pages and listings viewed, searches (including the search terms), app opens, cart activity, and purchases. When you are signed in, these events are recorded under your account, not an anonymous id; when you are signed out, they are recorded under a first-party cookie id. Each event is recorded together with your IP address, a device identifier, and your browser or app version. We also record whether email we send you is delivered, opened, and clicked, and, if you enable notifications, the push token your device registers.

We use this information to run the marketplace: signing you in, showing your storefront and listings, processing orders and payouts, buying shipping labels, and delivering messages and notifications. Usage events feed analytics and ranking — what to show in your feed, and the aggregate view and click counts sellers see for their own storefronts. IP addresses, device identifiers, and browser fingerprints are used for security and fraud prevention: enforcing account limits, detecting duplicate accounts, and keeping banned people from re-registering. We send transactional email (verification, orders, messages), activity digests if they are enabled in your settings, and marketing email, which you can stop at any time as described in section 7. Reports and uploaded images are reviewed, and images are automatically screened, to keep prohibited content off the platform.

With other users, we share what a transaction requires. A seller you order from sees the shipping name, address, and (when provided) phone number for that order — what a shipping label requires — plus aggregate reliability signals such as completed-order counts and account age. Sellers never see your email address, your browsing, or your purchase history with other sellers, and the storefront analytics we show them are aggregate counts only, never who you are. Reviews you write are public, and messages go to the person you sent them to.

We use service providers to run the platform: hosting and our database, payment processing, shipping and label purchase, email delivery, photo and video moderation, and push notification delivery. Each receives only the information its job requires. The postage provider and the carrier that delivers a package receive what is printed on the label — both parties’ names, addresses, and phone numbers. Our email provider receives the address and content of the email we send you. The moderation service fetches each uploaded photo and video to screen it, without being told whose it is.

We disclose information when the law requires it, such as in response to a valid subpoena or court order, or when it is necessary to protect PaperCrane, our users, or others.

We do not sell your data. We run no third-party ad trackers and no cross-site tracking, and we sell analytics to no one.

Everything we set is first-party. On the web, a session cookie keeps you signed in, and signed-out visitors get an anonymous visitor id cookie, used to count unique visitors, that expires after one year. When you are signed in, your activity is linked to your account rather than to an anonymous id. The iOS app stores your sign-in session and a persistent device identifier. Our emails include an open-and-click beacon so we can tell whether they are delivered and read: when you open one of our emails or click a link in it, we record the time, the IP address, and the device type that did so.

Order, payment, payout, and Crane Credit records are kept indefinitely. They are financial records, and they are your counterparty’s receipt as much as yours. Messages and reviews are kept because a conversation is the other person’s record too. Usage and security data — events with IP addresses and device identifiers, and email tracking records — has no fixed deletion schedule today; we keep it while it remains useful for analytics and fraud prevention rather than deleting it on a set calendar.

You can close your account from Settings on the web or in the app. Closure is immediate and irreversible; if you have orders in flight or an unsettled balance, those must resolve first. Closing your account removes your profile: your email address, username (which is released for others to register), display name, bio, photos, saved shipping addresses, device information, and push token are removed, sign-in is permanently disabled, and anything you still had for sale comes down.

Closing your account does not erase everything. Order records — including the name and delivery address on each order — are kept as financial records, along with payouts, Crane Credit, and ledger entries. Messages and reviews you wrote remain, shown as coming from “Deleted account”. Fraud-prevention records, including usage events with IP addresses and device identifiers, are kept so that closing an account cannot be used to erase the trail.

You can update your profile and addresses in Settings, and export your listings at any time. You can turn optional email off in Settings, and every marketing email — drop alerts, saved-search matches, the weekly digest, and announcements — carries a one-click unsubscribe link that works without signing in. Unsubscribing does not affect order, payment, or security email. You can close your account as described in section 6. If you have a question about your information, write to us at the address in section 10 and a human will answer.

PaperCrane is a wholesale marketplace for business use. Our Terms require you to be 18 or older, or at least 13 with a parent or legal guardian who is responsible for the account, and payment and payout accounts must always be held by an adult. PaperCrane is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. We ask for a date of birth at sign-up and refuse the account if it is under 13. If an account belongs to someone aged 13 to 17, we ask for a parent or guardian’s email address and hold the account until they approve it; until then it can look around but cannot buy, sell, or message. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, contact us and we will close it.

This policy is versioned and dated. When it changes, the version and effective date at the top change with it, so you can always tell whether it has changed since you last read it. The current version is always at this page.

PaperCrane is operated by PAPERCRANE LLC. Write to us at support@papercranewholesale.com or via the contact page and a human will answer.