Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 16th September 2026

Who we are

In this Privacy Policy, references to "we" and "us" are to Serious Brands Limited trading as Serious Readers, company number 02485587, registered office 15 Faraday Road, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, HP19 8RY. We are also known as the Data Controller for Serious Readers.

Serious Readers is committed to protecting your personal information and this Privacy Policy tells you how we collect your personal data, how we store it and how we use it. We handle your personal information lawfully, fairly and openly.

We ensure that we will only use your information in line with all the applicable data protection laws, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Our contact details are at the bottom of this privacy policy.

What data we collect

In order to fulfil your order (for example – the purchase of a light), we need to know certain personal information collected at time of order. The information we hold will consist of but may not be limited to the following: Title; Name; Address; Mailing Preference flags such as ‘Do not mail’ or ‘Do not email’; Products purchased from us in the past including their cost; Telephone number if offered to us, which we use for matters relating to your order and, only if you allow marketing cookies, in a scrambled form to match your order to an advert, as explained under ‘Data Sharing with Third Parties’; email address if offered; Where we believe you heard about us from.

On requesting a brochure we will ask a number of questions which are used for the purpose of enabling us to recommend the most appropriate light to you now and in the future.

Our legal basis for processing

We use your personal information only where we have a lawful reason to do so.

We process your data under the following legal grounds:

• The processing is necessary to meet contractual obligations into which you have entered, such as the placing of an order.
• We keep records of orders and payments because tax and accounting law requires it.
• Marketing emails go only to people who have asked for them, by ticking a box at the checkout or on our website. That is your consent, and every email carries an unsubscribe link.
• Marketing by post relies on our legitimate business interest in telling customers, and people likely to become customers, about our lights. You can stop it at any time; see ‘How to manage your Marketing Preferences’.
• Setting advertising cookies while you browse, and sharing details of your order with Google, Facebook and Microsoft, relies on your consent. You give or refuse it on our cookie banner, and you can change your mind at any time from the Cookie Declaration.

You can choose not to receive marketing communications at any time.

See the section ‘How to manage your Marketing Preferences’ for more information.

Our Legitimate Business Interests

We process some of your personal information to enhance our services and deliver the best experience, known as 'Legitimate Interests'. This involves:

• Marketing by post, as described above.
• Our Refer a Friend scheme.
• Preventing fraud and keeping our systems secure.
• Analysing our own sales and enquiry records to understand and improve our business, our lights and our service.
• Taking part in the data co-operatives described under ‘Data Cooperatives’ below, which means sharing limited purchase information so that we and the other participating retailers can find people likely to be interested in postal offers. You can ask us not to share your details in this way at any time.

You have the right to object to this type of processing; for details, refer to the 'Contact Details' section.

Direct Marketing Communications

We may use your data to enable us to send you post and emails with information about our goods and services that we believe may be of interest to you. Postal marketing communications from us will typically consist of latest offers and promotions of new products. Emails will typically consist of either the latest news on eye conditions and lighting technology or the latest offers and promotions of new products.

How to manage your Marketing Preferences

You may receive emails or catalogues from us, and catalogues from other retailers in the data co-operatives described under ‘Data Cooperatives’ below. If you’d like to stop receiving these then you can do so in a number of ways: Contact us (see contact details at the bottom of the page) Go online to https://www.seriousreaders.com/mail_opt_outs/new and you can change your preferences there.

Note that once you have decided to opt-out of one or more of the three Marketing Preferences you can only opt back in by contacting us on 0800 028 1890.

If you would like to stop all unsolicited postal communications, we suggest that you register with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS). MPS is a free service funded by the direct mail industry to enable consumers to have their names and home addresses in the UK removed from lists used by the industry.

For more information or if you wish to register with the MPS please visit their website www.mpsonline.org.uk.

Your Rights

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), you have the following rights (subject to certain conditions):

• To ask us what personal data we hold about you (right of access).

• To ask us to update or correct your personal data where it is inaccurate or incomplete (right to rectification).

• To ask us to delete your personal data in certain circumstances (right to erasure).

• To ask us to restrict how we use your personal data in certain circumstances (right to restrict processing).

• To receive certain personal data in a structured, commonly used format, and to ask for it to be transferred to another organisation where technically feasible (right to data portability).

• To object to processing where we rely on legitimate interests (right to object).

Direct marketing: you have the right to object to direct marketing at any time. This includes any profiling that relates to direct marketing. If you object, we will stop using your personal data for direct marketing. We may keep a minimal record on a suppression list to make sure we respect your request in future.

Where we rely on consent for any processing, you can withdraw your consent at any time. For cookies and advertising, you do that from the Cookie Declaration. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdrew it.

If you are unhappy with how we have used your personal data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Their website is https://ico.org.uk/. Their helpline is 0303 123 1113. Their postal address is: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Profiling

We use data profiling in order to make the content of our communications to you more interesting and relevant. This means that you will only receive details of our very best offers that have been tailored with you in mind. It also allows us not to waste your time by sending offers that are unlikely to be of interest. You have the right to object to profiling that relates to direct marketing at any time. If you object, we will stop using your personal data in this way. You can also choose to stop receiving marketing from us altogether; see the section ‘How to manage your Marketing Preferences’.

If you have any questions about profiling, or wish to object, then please contact us.

Data Sharing with Third Parties

If you browse our site

We advertise on Google, Facebook, Microsoft and OpenAI. If you allow marketing cookies on our cookie banner, they set cookies on your device and can see which pages you looked at and what you put in your basket. We use that to show you our adverts on their sites and to measure whether those adverts worked. If you do not allow marketing cookies, no advertising cookies are set and none of their advertising tags run.

If you place an order with us

If you allowed marketing cookies, then when you place an order we let Google, Facebook, Microsoft and OpenAI know, with your details scrambled, so that they can tell which advert led to the sale and help us decide who sees our adverts. If you did not allow marketing cookies, none of them is told anything about your order. You can change your choice at any time from the Cookie Declaration.

For more information on how these third parties handle your data, please review Google's Privacy Policy, Facebook's Privacy Policy, Microsoft's Privacy Statement and OpenAI's Privacy Policy.

Some of these providers process data outside the UK, including in the United States. Where this happens, it is done in accordance with UK data protection law and with appropriate safeguards in place, such as the UK-US Data Bridge, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.

Data Cooperatives

To find new customers for our business, we are a member of three co-operatives of UK retailers that pool and share transactional information. The co-operatives are Choreograph (formerly Conexance), Sagacity, and Epsilon Abacus (registered as Epsilon International UK Ltd), a company that manages the Abacus Alliance on behalf of UK retailers and charities.

The participating retailers are active in the clothing, collectables, food & wine, gardening, gadgets & entertainment, health & beauty, household goods, home interiors, and travel categories. They share information on what their customers buy. Choreograph (formerly Conexance), Sagacity, and Epsilon Abacus analyse the pooled information to help the retailers understand consumers’ wider buying patterns. From this information, retailers can tailor their communications, sending people suitable offers that should be of interest to them, based on what they like to buy.

As part of our membership of these co-operatives, we share your name and address and limited details of what you bought. If you would rather we did not, tell us and we will stop; see ‘How to manage your Marketing Preferences’.

We may also use these co-operatives to help us find new customers for Serious Readers. Where this applies, we may receive prospect details that are limited to name, title and postal address for the purpose of postal direct marketing.

Please note that Choreograph (formerly Conexance), Sagacity, and Epsilon Abacus may transfer data outside the UK. Where this happens, it will be done in accordance with UK data protection law and with appropriate safeguards in place.

To view privacy policies of the three data co-operatives, click the following links: Epsilon Abacus, Choreograph (formerly Conexance), Sagacity.

Who we share your personal data with

Your information may be shared with organisations that help us provide our services and run our business. Some process personal information on our behalf, while others process it under their own responsibilities under data protection law. The main ones, and why we share information with them, are listed below, and we use other suppliers from time to time for the same purposes. Where required, we put appropriate contracts and data protection safeguards in place.

If you browse our site

• Shopify, who run our online shop and hold your account and order details.

• Freshchat, who run the live chat on our website. If you use the chat, they hold what you type into it.

• Elfsight, who display customer reviews on our website.

• Google, Facebook, Microsoft and OpenAI, who, with your consent, help us measure which of our adverts led to a sale and choose who sees our adverts. What each of them receives, while you browse and if you order, is set out under ‘Data Sharing with Third Parties’ above.

• Microsoft Clarity, who, with your consent, help us understand how our website is used.

If you place an order with us

• Credit card companies / PayPal, who process your payments for your orders.

• Designated courier companies, who will deliver your order to you.

• A mailing company, so that we can send you postal mailings, where your name and address only will be provided to them.

• Feefo and Trustpilot, who collect and publish customer reviews. We give them your name, email address and order details so that they can invite you to review what you bought.

• Epsilon Abacus, Sagacity, and Choreograph (formerly Conexance), the data co-operatives described under ‘Data Cooperatives’ above.

If you ask for our emails

• dotdigital, who send our emails for us and hold the contact details of everyone who has asked to hear from us.

Amazon and eBay. We also sell through Amazon and eBay. If you buy from us there, Amazon or eBay hold your details under their own privacy policies and decide for themselves what they do with them, and they pass us what we need to fulfil your order. To see how they handle your data, please read Amazon’s Privacy Notice and eBay’s User Privacy Notice.

Several of these suppliers set cookies in order to work. Which ones we use, and how you choose what you are happy with, is explained in our Cookie Policy.

How long we keep your data for

We keep your personal information for as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy, taking account of any legal, contractual, complaint-handling or record-keeping requirements. In particular:

• Order and payment records are kept for at least six years from the end of the financial year they relate to, as tax and accounting law requires, and for longer where we reasonably need them, for example to look after your light.

• Your contact details are kept while we have a reason to contact you, including to tell you about our lights by post. If you ask us to stop, we keep a minimal suppression record, described under ‘Your Rights’, so that we do not write to you again.

• Your email address is kept for as long as you want to hear from us. One click stops the emails at any time.

• Details you give us for one specific thing are kept only for as long as that thing needs.

Card payments

We do not store full payment card details. Payments are handled securely by our payment providers.

Klarna

In order to offer you Klarna's payment methods, we, in the checkout (if you elect to pay by Klarna) will pass your personal data in the form of contact and order details to Klarna, in order for Klarna to assess whether you qualify for their payment methods and to tailor those payment methods for you. Your personal data transferred is processed in line with Klarna's own privacy notice, which can be found here - https://www.klarna.com/uk/privacy/.

Notification of Changes

Whenever our privacy policy is updated, the date of the most recent revision will be prominently displayed at the top of this page. For substantial updates, we will proactively inform affected customers through direct communication channels such as postal mail, email, or other appropriate methods. Minor updates may occur periodically, in which case we will simply update the policy and adjust the effective date accordingly. Amendments to the privacy policy made after July 2024 will be listed at the bottom of the page.

Contact Details

You can contact us in a number of ways: Call our Customer Services team on 0800 028 1890. Email the Data Controller at datacontroller@seriousbrands.co.uk. Write to us at: Data Controller. Serious Readers 15 Faraday Road Aylesbury Bucks HP19 8RY Great Britain

Amendments

Updated 16/09/2026

Rewrote what we share with Google, Facebook, Microsoft and OpenAI, and made clear that none of it happens unless you allow marketing cookies.

Clarified our legal grounds, how long we keep records, and what we share with the data co-operatives.

Removed ScoreApp, Cloudflare and VWO from the list of suppliers, and the light check, survey and prize draw wording, as none of them are running.

General tidying of the supplier introduction, transfer safeguards, card payment and Klarna wording, and corrected our company number.

Updated 03/09/2026

Added a line saying how long we keep the details of people who have asked for our emails: for as long as they want to hear from us.

Updated 01/09/2026

Added a section explaining our light check: what it asks, which answers stay on your own device and never reach us, what we do keep, and that it is not a medical opinion.

Made clear that the light check is not anonymous in the way a survey is, because it exists to send you a report about you.

Explained that if you do not ask for our emails we keep nothing from the light check, and that if you do, we keep your answers for as long as you want to hear from us.

Widened what we say about Cloudflare, who now also run the service that receives light check answers and the check that tells us a real person is filling in a form.

Corrected the link to our Cookie Policy, which pointed at a page that no longer exists.

Updated 25/08/2026

Added Shopify, dotdigital, Feefo, Trustpilot and ScoreApp to the list of third parties we share data with.

Explained that we also sell through Amazon and eBay, and that they handle your data under their own privacy policies.

Made clear that the list of suppliers names the main ones rather than every one.

Added Freshchat, Elfsight, Microsoft Clarity and VWO, so that this policy names the same suppliers as our Cookie Policy, and linked the two together.

Added Cloudflare, who host the database behind our surveys and prize draws, to the same list. That database is restricted to the European Union.

Added a section explaining how surveys and prize draws work, including that survey answers are anonymous and that the marketing box on a prize draw entry form is optional and separate from the draw.

Clarified how long we keep data given for one specific purpose, such as entering a prize draw.

Updated 07/07/2026

Added OpenAI and Microsoft to the list of third parties we share data with for advertising and analytics purposes.

Added information about international data transfers by our advertising and analytics providers.

Clarified your right to object to profiling for direct marketing.

Updated references from GDPR to UK GDPR.

Updated 04/02/2026

Conexance now trading as Choreograph.

Clarified our use of data co-operatives, including the nature of prospect data received for direct marketing.

Updated wording on international transfers to reflect UK safeguards (where applicable).

Updated “Your Rights” section, including how to object to direct marketing and how to complain to the ICO.

Removed Mention-Me from our list of third-party suppliers (no longer used).