Cookie Policy

What cookies are

Cookies are small text files that a website stores on your device when you visit. They let the site remember things between page loads — your language, your shopping cart, whether you are signed in. Without cookies, every page would treat you as a brand-new visitor.

We also use a few related technologies — local storage and pixel tags — that work the same way for the same reasons. Throughout this policy we use the word *cookies* as shorthand for all of them.

How we use them

We sort the cookies on this site into four groups, in order of how strictly we treat them:

• Essential — needed for the site to work. They keep you signed in, hold your cart, protect against CSRF attacks, and remember your locale and currency choice. These cannot be turned off because the site stops functioning without them.
• Functional — remember preferences such as light/dark theme, recently viewed products, and dismissed banners. They make the experience more pleasant but the site still works without them.
• Analytics — count visits and measure which pages are useful, in aggregate. We only use privacy-preserving analytics; no behavioural profiles are built.
• Marketing — used for re-targeting and conversion measurement on a small number of advertising networks. These are off by default and only activated if you explicitly consent.

Managing your preferences

When you first visit the site we show a consent banner with equal-prominence Accept and Reject buttons, plus a Customise option for fine-grained control. You can revisit those choices at any time by clicking Manage cookies in the footer.

You can also clear cookies via your browser settings — in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge the option is in the privacy or history section. Clearing essential cookies will sign you out and empty your cart.

Third-party providers

A small number of cookies are set by services we rely on:

• Stripe — payment fraud prevention on the checkout page only.
• Cloudflare — bot mitigation and DDoS protection across the whole site.
• Plausible — privacy-preserving analytics; no personal data and no cross-site tracking.

We do not embed advertising trackers, social-media share buttons that load third-party JavaScript, or fingerprinting scripts of any kind.

How long cookies last

Session cookies vanish when you close the browser tab. Persistent cookies expire on a fixed schedule — most within 30 days, a few preference cookies (theme, locale, currency) within 12 months. Authentication tokens expire after 7 days of inactivity and require a fresh sign-in.

We never extend the lifetime of a cookie silently — if a cookie is set for 30 days it will be re-issued on your next visit only if you are still using the relevant feature.

Questions about cookies

For questions about this policy or to exercise your right to access or delete cookie data, see the privacy policy or write to our data protection team via the contact page.