Seller’s Policy

ÀWA Marketplace is a marketplace where you can sell your carefully crafted goods directly to buyers around the world. We want to make sure that you and your buyers have a positive experience on ÀWA Marketplace. Please read on to find out more about your rights, as well as what is expected of you, as a Seller.

This policy is a part of our Terms of Use. By opening a shop on ÀWA Marketplace, you’re agreeing to this policy and our Terms & Conditions

Selling Basics
a. What can & cannot be sold on ÀWA Marketplace
b. Managing your shop
c. Seller Standards
d. Selling Fees
Being a Member of the AWA Marketplace Community
a. Creating and Uploading Content
b. Privacy and Protecting Personal Information
c. Communication Standards
1. 1. Messages
  2. Communicating Cancellations
Feedback, Disputes, and Your Success
a. Reviews
b. ÀWA Marketplace’s Case System
c. Your Seller Account and ÀWA Marketplace’s Terms

1. Selling Basics

Keeping in mind these basic requirements will set you up for success on ÀWA Marketplace.

A. What can & cannot be sold on ÀWA Marketplace

ÀWA Marketplace is a unique marketplace where Buyers come here to purchase plant-based, non-toxic, personal care, beauty, and wellness items that they might not find anywhere else. Every selling entity on ÀWA Marketplace must be at minimum 51% Black-owned.

According to ÀWA Marketplace’s non-toxic product standards, non-toxic items do not contain these ingredients:

Aluminum
Diethanolamine (DEA), Monoethanolamine (MEA), and Triethanolamine (TEA)
DMDM Hydantoin & Urea (Imidazolindinyl & Diazolidinyl urea)
Mineral Oil
Parabens (Methyl, Butyl, Ethyl, Propyl)
Polyethylene glycol (PEG)
Phthalates
Propylene Glycol (PG) & Butylene Glycol
Siloxanes
Sodium Lauryl Sulfates (SIS) & Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) & Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate
Synthetic Fragrances (Parfum)
Triclosan & Triclocarban
Formaldehyde & Formaldehyde releasers
- Bronopol & quaternium-15
Coal Tar
Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid (EDTA)
BHA & BHT
Hydroquinone
Methylisothiazolinone and Methylchloroisothiazolinone
Toluene
Lead
Otinoxate
Octinoxate
Homosalate
Talc
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) (Teflon)
PFAs & PFCs
Oxybenzonol
Oxybenzone
OM Cinnamate
Benzalkonium Chloride
Resorcinol
Carbon Black
Silicones
Petroleum jelly
PVP/VA copolymer
Synthetic colors and dyes
Diethanolamine
Dimethicone
Isopropyl Alcohol
Retinyl palmitate
Selenium sulfide
Titanium Dioxide*
- *Micronized form only

Ingredients used to create your products may not contain any ingredients in the aforementioned list.

If you sell on ÀWA Marketplace, you agree that:

Your items’ ingredients meet ÀWA Marketplace’s non-toxic product standards
You are using your own photographs or video content –not stock photos, artistic renderings, or photos used by other sellers or sites.
If prompted, you are able to provide in descriptive detail every person involved in the making of an item in your shop
If prompted, you are able to provide a copy of your Business License

We encourage you to be transparent about how items are made and where materials come from. You can disclose whether your items have social and environmental attributes, such as sustainable.

Even if your items otherwise meet our marketplace criteria, prohibited items, services, and items that violate our intellectual property policies are not allowed to be sold on ÀWA Marketplace. All listings must offer an item for sale (which includes digitally delivered items and can also include reserved listings). You may not create an ÀWA Marketplace listing for the purpose of sharing a referral code, posting a want ad, or similar activity that does not offer a physical or digital item for sale.

Keep in mind that members may report listings that appear to violate our policies for ÀWA Marketplace’s review. ÀWA Marketplace may remove any listings that violate our policies. Note that listing fees are non-refundable. ÀWA Marketplace may also suspend or terminate your account for any violations. If applicable, you’ll still be responsible for paying any outstanding fees on your ÀWA Marketplace statement.

If you are raising money on behalf of a charity, you must obtain that charity’s consent and notify buyers that you are raising money for a specific charity on your shop page or product listing.

B. Managing your ÀWA Marketplace Shop

Your shop represents you and your business to the ÀWA Marketplace community. It’s important that you, your items and your shop are honestly and accurately represented.

By selling on ÀWA Marketplace, you agree that you will:

Provide honest, accurate information in your About section
Honor your Shop Policies
Ensure your shop content, such as any text, photos or videos used to represent yourself, your shop or your listings, abide by ÀWA Marketplace’s policies, including our Anti-Discrimination policy.
Accurately represent your items in product descriptions, ingredients, and photos. If found that your ingredients or product descriptions are inaccurate, you are liable for any legal action taken by buyers and ÀWA Marketplace.
Respect the intellectual property of others. If you feel someone has violated your intellectual property rights, you can report it to ÀWA Marketplace at contact@awarawa.com.
Not engage in fee avoidance.
Not create duplicate shops or take any other action (such as manipulating clicks, carts, or sales) for the purpose of manipulating search or circumventing ÀWA Marketplace’s policies.
Not coordinate pricing with other sellers.

C. Seller Standards

By listing a product for sale on ÀWA Marketplace you understand and agree that you are responsible for complying with all applicable laws and regulations for the products you list for sale, including any required labels and warnings. ÀWA Marketplace assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, labeling, or content of your listings.

Meeting Service Level Standards

As a seller, you must provide great customer service and maintain trust with your buyers. ÀWA Marketplace may reach out to you if your shop fails to meet ÀWA Marketplace’s Seller Service Level Standards.

By selling on ÀWA Marketplace, you agree to:

Honor your shipping and processing times. Sellers are obligated to ship an item or otherwise complete a transaction with a buyer in a prompt manner unless there is an exceptional circumstance. Please be aware that legal requirements for shipping times vary by country.
Respond to Messages in a timely manner.
Honor the commitments you make in your shop policies.
Resolve disagreements or disputes directly with the buyer. In the unlikely event that you can’t reach a resolution, ÀWA Marketplace may be able to help. Please contact us at contact@awarawa.com for further information.
If you are unable to complete an order, you must notify the buyer and cancel the order.

D. Selling Fees

Sellers may be charged for using some of ÀWA Marketplace’s services. There are fees associated with listing, selling, advertising, and certain other ÀWA Marketplace services and features.

2. Being a Member of the ÀWA Marketplace Community

At ÀWA Marketplace, everyone is expected to treat fellow members of the ÀWA Marketplace community with respect. As a seller, you have additional responsibilities to safeguard personal information and communicate promptly with buyers in order to provide a great customer experience.

A. Creating and Uploading Content

As a member of ÀWA Marketplace, you have the opportunity to create and upload a variety of content, like listings, Messages, text, photos, and videos. In order to keep our community safe and respectful, you agree that you will not upload content that is:

Abusive, threatening, defamatory, harassing, or otherwise in violation of our Anti-Discrimination Policy;
Graphic, obscene, or vulgar;
In violation of someone else’s privacy or intellectual property rights; or
False, deceptive, or misleading.

B. Privacy and Protecting Personal Information

You are responsible for protecting members’ personal information you receive or process, and you must comply with all relevant legal requirements. This includes applicable data protection and privacy laws that govern the ways in which you can use ÀWA Marketplace user information. These laws may require that you post and comply with your own privacy policy, which must be accessible to ÀWA Marketplace users with whom you interact. Your privacy policy must be compatible with this policy and ÀWA Marketplace’s Terms & Conditions.

In particular, when you sell using our Services (subject to this Policy, you may receive and determine what to do with certain personal information, such as when communicating with users and entering into transactions with buyers. This means you process personal information (for example, buyer name, email address, and shipping address) and, to the extent you do so, under EU law, you are an independent controller of data relating to other users that you may have obtained through the Services. For more information on the General Data Protection Regulation, see more resources at https://gdpr-info.eu. As a data controller (that is someone who decides what personal data is collected and the purpose you’ll use the data for) to the extent that you process user personal information outside of the Services, you may be required under applicable data protection and privacy laws to honor requests received from such users for data access, portability, correction, deletion, and objections to processing. Also, if you disclose personal information without the buyer’s proper consent, you are responsible for that unauthorized disclosure. This includes, for example, disclosures you make or unintentional data breaches. For example, you may receive a buyer’s email address or other information as a result of entering into a transaction with that buyer. This information may only be used for ÀWA Marketplace-related communications or for ÀWA Marketplace-facilitated transactions. You may not use this information for unsolicited commercial messages or unauthorized transactions. Without the buyer’s consent, and subject to other applicable ÀWA Marketplace policies and laws, you may not add any ÀWA Marketplace member to your email or physical mailing list, use that buyer’s identity for marketing, or obtain or retain any payment information. Please bear in mind that you’re responsible for knowing the standard of consent required in any given instance. If ÀWA Marketplace and you are found to be joint data controllers of personal information, and if ÀWA Marketplace is sued, fined, or otherwise incurs expenses because of something that you did in your capacity as a joint data controller of buyer personal information, you agree to indemnify ÀWA Marketplace for the expenses it occurs in connection with your processing of buyer personal information.

C. Communication Standards

Messages

With ÀWA Marketplace Messages, you have the ability to communicate directly with your buyers or other ÀWA Marketplace members. Messages are a great way for buyers to ask you questions about an item or an order.

Messages may not be used for the following activities:

Sending unsolicited advertising or promotions, requests for donations, or spam;
Harassing or abusing another member or violating our Anti-Discrimination Policy;
Contacting someone after they have explicitly asked you not to; or
Interfering with a transaction or the business of another member.
Exchanging personal contact, financial or other information for the purposes of evading the checkout process on ÀWA Marketplace, including phone number, address, email, social media handles, external URLs, instructions for money transfer, etc.

Interference occurs when a member intentionally interferes with another member’s shop in order to drive away their business. Interference is strictly prohibited on ÀWA Marketplace. Examples of interference include:

Contacting another member via ÀWA Marketplace Messages to warn them away from a particular member, shop, or item;
Posting in public areas to demonstrate or discuss a dispute with another member;
Purchasing from a seller for the sole purpose of leaving a negative review;
Maliciously clicking on a competitor’s Promoted Listings ads in order to drain that member’s advertising budget, also known as “click fraud.”
Creating or using an independent buyer account to maliciously upvote another shop’s negative reviews in order to position those reviews more prominently.

Any use of ÀWA Marketplace Messages to harass other members is strictly prohibited. Similarly, Messages may not be used to support or glorify hatred or otherwise violate our Anti-Discrimination Policy. If you receive a Message that violates this policy, please let us know right away.

2. Communicating Cancellations

If you are unable to complete a transaction, you must notify the buyer via ÀWA Marketplace Messages and cancel the transaction. If the buyer already submitted payment, you must issue a full refund. You are encouraged to keep proof of any refunds in the event a dispute arises. All cancellations are

Please be aware that in addition to this policy, each country has its own laws surrounding shipping, cancellations, returns, and exchanges. Please familiarize yourself with the laws of your own country and those of your buyers’ countries.

3. Feedback, Disputes and Your Success

A. Reviews

Reviews are a great way for you to build a reputation on ÀWA Marketplace. Buyers can leave a personal review, including a one to five-star rating and a photograph of their purchase, within 100 days after their item’s estimated delivery date. If an estimated delivery date is not available, the window to leave a review opens after the order and shipping time have elapsed. Buyers can edit their review, including the photograph, any number of times during that 100-day period.

On the rare occasion you receive an unfavorable review, you can reach out to the buyer or, if the review is less than 3 stars, leave a response.

Reviews and your response to reviews may not:

Contain graphic, mature, or obscene language or imagery;
Contain hateful or derogatory language or imagery, or any content that is subject to our Anti-Discrimination Policy
Contain prohibited medical drug claims;
Contain advertising or spam;
Be about things outside the seller’s control, such as a shipping carrier, ÀWA Marketplace or a third party;
Contain threats or harassment;
Falsely inflate a shop’s review score; or
Undermine the integrity of the Reviews system.

B. ÀWA Marketplace’s Case System

The Case system is how order disputes are resolved at ÀWA Marketplace. We ask buyers to contact sellers directly and attempt to resolve any outstanding issues before opening a case on ÀWA Marketplace. For this reason, it is important that you fill out your shop policies and regularly respond to Messages from your buyers. However, sometimes a case may be necessary, and ÀWA Marketplace will work with you and the buyer to resolve it as quickly as possible.

Buyers may file a case for a non-delivery or a not-as-described item (for more information on how we define these terms, click here). You must respond to any open cases within three days or the time frame noted by ÀWA Marketplace in the case. ÀWA Marketplace may request your assistance in resolving a case opened against your shop. ÀWA Marketplace reserves the right to escalate a case early for circumstances such as seller inactivity, harassment, refusal of service, case manipulation, and undermining the integrity of the case system.

By using ÀWA Marketplace’s case system, you understand that ÀWA Marketplace may use your personal information for the purpose of resolving disputes with other members. For more information on cases and when an order might qualify for a case, please see our Refunds and Returns article. If ÀWA Marketplace determines that an item is not as described, you will be required to refund the order, including original shipping and return shipping.

C. Your Seller Account and ÀWA Marketplace’s Terms

In order to keep ÀWA Marketplace safe and improve our Services, we may take actions that limit the visibility of your shop or listings, or that impact your payment account. In the event a shop sees unusual order activity, or we otherwise believe that your actions or shop may result in buyer disputes, chargebacks, increased risk of fraud, counterfeiting, or other claims, ÀWA Marketplace may take actions such as limiting the visibility of your account, or placing restrictions or reserves on your payments account, in accordance with our Terms of Service, including this Policy. When appropriate and permitted by law, ÀWA Marketplace will communicate information to the affected seller about the issue.

In addition, we may limit the visibility of listings or ads in the interest of keeping ÀWA Marketplace safe, and improving our Services. For example, listings or ads may have decreased visibility because they include terms that represent a prohibited item or based on third party policies. These listings or ads may also be restricted from appearing in one or more features of the ÀWA Marketplace Services. While these listings or ads may have limited visibility, they are still discoverable in search.

If ÀWA Marketplace has reason to believe you, Your Content, or your use of the Services violates our Terms, including this Seller Policy, we may deactivate Your Content or suspend or terminate your account (and any accounts ÀWA Marketplace determines is related to your account) and your access to the Services. Generally, ÀWA Marketplace will notify you that Your Content or account has been suspended or terminated, unless you’ve repeatedly violated our Terms or we have legal or regulatory reasons preventing us from notifying you.

Last updated: October 31, 2022

Sellers Policy