Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of SupplierMafia (the "platform"). By creating an account or using the service you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the platform.

1. Who can use SupplierMafia

You must be at least 18 years old and capable of forming a binding contract under the laws of your country. By signing up you confirm that you meet these requirements and that the information you provide is accurate.

2. Your account

You are responsible for everything that happens under your account. Keep your password safe, do not share your account, and tell us as soon as possible if you suspect unauthorised access. We may suspend or close accounts that violate these Terms or that we reasonably believe are being used to harm other users.

3. The role of SupplierMafia

SupplierMafia provides the platform that connects you with private supplier organisations. We are not the supplier, the manufacturer, or a party to any commercial agreement you reach. The price, quality, packaging, lead time, payment terms, and shipping arrangements are negotiated between you and your supplier, and the resulting contract is between the two of you.

We vet supplier organisations before they join, but we do not guarantee the quality of any particular product, the accuracy of any quote, or the outcome of any order.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the platform for anything illegal, fraudulent, or harmful.
• Send abusive, threatening, or harassing messages to other users.
• Misrepresent yourself, your business, or your products.
• Attempt to bypass platform security, scrape user data, or interfere with the service.
• Upload malware, viruses, or content that infringes someone else's rights.
• Use the platform to source counterfeit goods, restricted items, or anything prohibited by law in either party's jurisdiction.

5. Off-platform contact

SupplierMafia includes off-platform contact protection. Negotiating, agreeing prices, or arranging payment outside of the platform leaves both buyer and supplier without the protection of the in-platform record. We may warn, restrict, or close accounts that repeatedly attempt to move conversations off-platform, especially when it appears designed to avoid the platform's safeguards.

6. Payments and invoices

Suppliers issue invoices through the platform; payments are settled directly between you and your supplier through the methods you both agree on. SupplierMafia is not a payment processor. We do not hold funds, and we are not a party to any payment dispute. Keep your invoice records inside the platform so that both sides have a clear history.

7. Pricing

SupplierMafia is currently free for buyers to use. We reserve the right to introduce paid features in the future; if we do, we will give existing users notice before any feature you currently rely on becomes paid.

8. Content you post

You retain ownership of the messages, images, and files you upload. You grant SupplierMafia a limited licence to host and display that content as needed to operate the platform. You are responsible for making sure you have the right to post anything you upload.

9. Suspension and termination

You can close your account at any time from Settings. We can suspend or close your account if you violate these Terms, if your activity puts other users at risk, or if we are required to do so by law. Where reasonable we will give notice and a chance to put things right first.

10. Supplier vetting limits

We screen supplier organisations before they join the platform: we check that the organisation is a real business, that the people behind it are reachable, and that the products they list aren't obviously prohibited. We do not conduct on-site factory audits, financial due diligence, or end-to-end quality inspections. The depth of due diligence appropriate for any specific order is your responsibility, particularly for orders that involve regulated goods, large sums, or long lead times.

11. Disclaimers

The platform is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that it will meet your specific business needs. Sourcing, shipping, and customs all carry inherent risk; SupplierMafia is a tool to make those interactions easier, not a guarantee of any commercial outcome.

12. Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, SupplierMafia is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive losses arising from your use of the platform, including lost profits, lost orders, supplier disputes, shipping delays, customs holds, or commercial losses. In any case, our aggregate liability to you for direct losses arising from your use of the platform is limited to the greater of (a) the fees you paid SupplierMafia in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) GBP 100. Nothing in this clause limits liability that cannot be limited by law, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence or for fraud.

13. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless SupplierMafia, its officers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to (a) your use of the platform in violation of these Terms, (b) the content you post or transmit, (c) your commercial dealings with a supplier or buyer, including disputes over price, quality, shipping, customs, or refunds, and (d) your violation of any law, regulation, or third-party right.

14. Export controls, sanctions, and prohibited goods

SupplierMafia is used to coordinate sourcing from suppliers in China and to ship product internationally. You are solely responsible for complying with all applicable export-control, sanctions, customs, and import laws in your jurisdiction and your supplier's jurisdiction. You confirm that:

• You are not located in, organised under the laws of, or ordinarily resident in any country or region subject to comprehensive trade sanctions (currently including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions of Ukraine), and you are not on any restricted-party list maintained by the UK, EU, US (OFAC SDN, BIS Entity List, etc.), or any other relevant authority.
• You will not use the platform to source, transact for, or arrange shipment of goods or services to any sanctioned country, region, or restricted party, nor for any end-use prohibited by law (including military, nuclear, chemical-weapon, or other regulated end-uses).
• You will not use the platform to source counterfeit products, items that infringe third-party intellectual-property rights, or goods restricted in either the origin or destination country.
• You will obtain any export licences, import permits, and customs clearances required for your shipments.

We may suspend or close accounts that breach these requirements, and we may report unlawful activity to the relevant authorities.

15. Intellectual property and DMCA-style takedowns

SupplierMafia and its branding (logo, name, "SupplierMafia" mark, and the platform's source code) are our property and protected by intellectual-property law. You may not copy, reverse-engineer, scrape, or build a competing service from any part of the platform.

If you believe content posted on the platform infringes your intellectual-property rights, send a takedown notice to ip@suppliermafia.com that includes: (a) identification of the work claimed to be infringed, (b) the location of the allegedly infringing material on the platform, (c) your contact details, (d) a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is unauthorised, (e) a statement under penalty of perjury that the information is accurate and that you are authorised to act, and (f) your physical or electronic signature. We will respond to valid notices by removing or disabling access to the material and notifying the user who posted it. Users who post content that is repeatedly flagged as infringing may have their accounts closed.

16. Force majeure

Neither party is liable for failure to perform obligations under these Terms when caused by events beyond reasonable control, including acts of war, terrorism, natural disasters, pandemics, government action, sanctions, internet or hosting-provider outages, port closures, or material customs disruptions.

17. EU users and Digital Services Act disclosures

SupplierMafia is operated from the United Kingdom. If you access the platform from the European Union or the European Economic Area, the following disclosures are made in accordance with the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).

Single point of contact for users and authorities (DSA Articles 11 and 12). Communications from EU member state authorities, the European Commission, the Board for Digital Services, and from recipients of the service can be sent to legal@suppliermafia.com. We accept communications in English. We will respond within a reasonable time and in any event within the periods required by the DSA.

Legal representative in the Union (DSA Article 13). Where required, our designated legal representative in the Union can be reached at legal@suppliermafia.com, who will route the request. We are below the thresholds at which the DSA imposes its most onerous obligations (we are not a "very large online platform" or "very large online search engine" within the meaning of Article 33). If you are an EU national authority and need the formal legal representative's postal address for service of legal process, email the address above and we will provide it.

Notice-and-action mechanism (DSA Article 16). If you believe content on the platform is illegal under EU or member state law, you can submit a notice to legal@suppliermafia.com. Your notice should include (a) a sufficiently substantiated explanation of why you consider the content illegal, (b) a clear indication of where the content can be found, (c) your name and email (unless the notice concerns offences covered by Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU, where you may submit anonymously), and (d) a statement that the information in the notice is accurate and complete. We will confirm receipt and tell you what action we took. We may also remove or restrict content under our acceptable-use policy without an Article 16 notice.

Statement of reasons (DSA Article 17). If we restrict or remove your content, suspend or terminate your account, suspend or terminate visibility of your content, or stop providing the service to you because of suspected illegality or incompatibility with these Terms, we will give you a clear and specific statement of reasons by email, including the facts we relied on, the legal or contractual ground, and information about how to contest the decision. We do not run an automated content moderation pipeline that takes irreversible action without human review.

Internal complaint-handling (DSA Article 20). If you disagree with a decision we have made about your content or your account, you can challenge it for free by emailing legal@suppliermafia.com within six months. We will review your complaint, including any new information you provide, and reverse the decision if it was wrong. Decisions in our internal complaint process are made by a person, not by automated means.

Out-of-court dispute settlement (DSA Article 21). If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of an internal complaint you may take the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body in the member state where you are habitually resident. A list of certified bodies is published by the European Commission. Engagement with an out-of-court body does not prevent you from going to a court.

Trusted flaggers (DSA Article 22). Notices submitted by entities awarded trusted-flagger status by a Digital Services Coordinator are processed with priority and without undue delay. If you are a trusted flagger, please identify yourself as such when you submit a notice.

Transparency reporting (DSA Article 15). Once a year we will publish a transparency report covering the number of orders received from authorities, the number of notices received under Article 16, the action taken, the number of complaints received under Article 20, and the median time to action. The first report will be published within twelve months of our DSA-trigger user threshold being reached. Until then, the relevant figures are zero or near-zero and we provide them on request.

18. Platform tax-reporting obligations

SupplierMafia does not process payments on the platform. Buyers and suppliers settle invoices directly between themselves using payment rails (bank transfer, Wise, Stripe, Alipay, etc.) that we have no visibility into. As a result, we do not have access to the consideration paid for transactions facilitated through the platform and we cannot, today, calculate the figures that would be needed to comply with the OECD Model Reporting Rules for Digital Platforms (MRDP), the EU DAC7 framework (Council Directive 2021/514), or the UK reporting rules for digital platforms (Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2021 and the Platform Operators Reporting Regulations 2023).

If our model changes such that we become a reportable platform operator under any of these regimes (for example, if we introduce on-platform payments), we will give every supplier and buyer affected at least 60 days' written notice before we begin collecting the additional information required (tax identification number, country of residence for tax, business registration number, address, and financial-account identifier). You will be able to review the information before submission. We will report only the minimum information required by the relevant tax authority.

Until then, you remain solely responsible for declaring your own income from transactions facilitated through SupplierMafia to your local tax authority. We strongly recommend keeping the invoices the platform generates for your records.

19. Accessibility and modern-slavery statement

Accessibility. We design SupplierMafia to be usable by as many people as practical, including users who rely on assistive technology. Our target conformance level is WCAG 2.2 AA on the marketing site (index, blog, contact, legal pages) and on the core authenticated flows (sign-in, sign-up, dashboard, conversations, settings, supplier portal). We do not yet meet 2.2 AA in every place. Known shortfalls include some custom focus-ring contrast, a handful of icon-only buttons that need accessible names, and a couple of modal dialogs that need improved keyboard-trap behaviour. We are actively closing these out.

If you encounter a barrier that prevents you from using the platform, email accessibility@suppliermafia.com with a description of the problem, the page or feature affected, and the assistive technology you use. We will respond within five business days with either a fix, a workaround, or an honest timeline for when the fix will land.

This statement is provided in line with the UK Equality Act 2010 and anticipates the European Accessibility Act 2025 (Directive (EU) 2019/882) where it applies to e-commerce and similar services.

Modern slavery. We have a turnover well below the £36 million annual threshold at which a formal statement is required under Section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015. Notwithstanding, we voluntarily commit to the following:

• We do not knowingly engage suppliers, contractors, or other counterparties that use forced labour, child labour, or human trafficking in any part of their operations or supply chain.
• We require sourcing-platform members (suppliers listed via SupplierMafia) to attest in their terms of use that their own factories and sub-contractors comply with applicable labour law and that they will provide on reasonable request evidence of audits where the buyer asks for it.
• Reports of suspected forced labour, child labour, or human trafficking on or off the platform can be sent to legal@suppliermafia.com. Credible reports will be investigated and, where substantiated, will result in immediate suspension of the relevant supplier and reporting to the appropriate authority.
• We will issue a formal Section 54 statement in the financial year in which our turnover first crosses the £36 million threshold.

20. UK Online Safety Act 2023 disclosures

SupplierMafia is a user-to-user service within the meaning of the UK Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA). The OSA places duties on services that allow users to encounter content generated, uploaded, or shared by other users. The platform supports private one-to-one and small-group conversations between buyers and suppliers; we do not have a public feed, a public ratings stream, or public-facing user-generated pages.

Service category. Based on our current user base and functionality we are not a Category 1, Category 2A, or Category 2B service. We are a smaller user-to-user service and our duties focus on the illegal-content duties under Part 3 Chapter 2 of the Act, the children's risk assessment, and the protection-of-women-and-girls considerations. If our user base grows past the thresholds the Secretary of State sets, we will register as a categorised service when required to do so.

Illegal-content risk assessment. We have carried out a suitable and sufficient illegal-content risk assessment as required by Section 9 OSA. The assessment is reviewed when there is a significant change to the service. A redacted summary is available on request to legal@suppliermafia.com.

Children's access. SupplierMafia is a business-to-business platform intended for adults acting on behalf of registered businesses. We do not knowingly permit access by anyone under 18. This is a content of the service, not just a contractual restriction. If we discover that an under-18 user has created an account we will close the account and erase the personal data we hold about them, subject only to the retention exceptions noted in the Privacy Policy.

Reporting illegal content. Any user who encounters content they reasonably suspect is illegal under UK law can report it by emailing legal@suppliermafia.com, by using the in-app report flow on the conversation, or by tagging the message. Reports are reviewed by a person within 24 hours during working days and we take down or restrict content that we determine is, in our judgement, illegal. If a report is itself in bad faith or repetitive vexatious, we may restrict the reporter's account.

Transparency. Even though we are not a categorised service, we voluntarily publish the same annual transparency figures described in Section 17 (DSA Article 15) above, including the number of OSA illegal-content reports we received, the number of pieces of content we took action against, and the median time-to-action.

Senior manager accountability. The founder, Jamie Wheeler, is the senior manager with overall responsibility for compliance with the OSA's duties on the service. Communications to the senior manager about OSA matters can be addressed to legal@suppliermafia.com and will be routed accordingly.

21. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If a change materially affects your rights or obligations we will notify you in-app or by email at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Continued use of the platform after the effective date means you accept the new Terms. If you do not accept the changes you should stop using the platform and close your account before the effective date.

22. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any disputes arising from these Terms or your use of the platform are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, unless mandatory consumer-protection law in your country of residence gives you the right to bring a claim somewhere else. Before starting formal proceedings you agree to first attempt to resolve the dispute by emailing hello@suppliermafia.com and giving us 30 days to respond.

23. Miscellaneous

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Cookies Policy, are the entire agreement between you and SupplierMafia regarding the platform and replace any prior agreements.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions stay in force.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of that provision in the future.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

No agency. These Terms do not create a partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship between you and SupplierMafia.

24. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email hello@suppliermafia.com. Intellectual-property concerns to ip@suppliermafia.com. Privacy questions to privacy@suppliermafia.com.