Privacy policy

Who is writing

Edgewood Consulting Group advises makers of consumer packaged goods, and the retailers that sell them, on assortment, pricing, promotion, shelf strategy and category growth. We are a consultancy in sales and marketing strategy and in analytics. Our offices are at 1719 State Route 10, Suite 226, Parsippany, NJ 07054.

What follows describes the personal details we handle, the reasons we handle them, and the choices open to you. It covers this website together with the business messages, telephone calls and letters that Edgewood sends while doing its work. A written client agreement may add obligations on our side but never takes away anything set out here.

Whom we approach, and how

Our introductions go to people whose job at a manufacturer or retailer touches what we do: category management, sales, shopper insights, brand, innovation, revenue management and general management. Those introductions arrive at a work email address. Occasionally we might also ring a business number or mail a letter to the company premises.

There has to be a reason to think the work would matter to that person's responsibilities before we make an approach. Anyone who prefers silence from us gets it: say so, and the approaches end. The section headed Making us stop describes the mechanics.

What we hold

Everything we hold concerns people in their working roles. Where it exists, it may include:

• Contact details for work: name, title, the employing company, the work email, a business phone number, and where one exists, the web address for a professional networking profile.
• Company facts: industry, headcount band, locations, the categories the company competes in and the retail channels it sells through.
• Business activity visible to the public: job advertisements, press coverage, announcements, and posts made openly by the person or the company.
• Deliverability checks: before a message goes out, the address is tested so that we avoid writing to mailboxes that no longer exist.
• Correspondence and notes: what has been exchanged with the person, and our record of it, including any instruction to leave them alone.
• Visits to this site: there are no cookies here and no analytics. The hosting company keeps ordinary technical logs (requesting network address, page requested, time). The typeface is delivered by a font service, which therefore sees the visitor's network address when the font files are fetched.

Sensitive categories of information, such as health, religion, politics, exact location or bank details, are neither sought nor wanted.

Its origins

Public material supplies most of it: the websites of companies, job boards, trade press and general news, and professional networking profiles. Commercial suppliers of business contact and company data supply some, in the form of work details for people in professional roles. And some arrives from you directly, whenever you answer a message, fill out a form, or talk with one of our consultants.

Why we use it

The purposes are these:

• Deciding, ahead of any approach, whether what we offer is likely to matter to you and your company.
• Writing or speaking to you at work about our services.
• Testing that an address accepts mail before anything is sent to it.
• Answering you, and where you invite it, discussing, proposing or delivering an engagement.
• Running the suppression list so that an instruction to stop holds.
• Protecting our systems and complying with the law.

Open tracking is not used in our business messages: no pixel, no read receipt. Delivery and bounces are visible to us, and so is a reply, but not whether or when a message was read.

Making us stop

Stopping us takes one step. Answer any message from Edgewood in whatever words you choose, or say so to the caller. No unsubscribe page, no form.

The instruction is carried out promptly, and never later than 10 business days after it reaches us. Your name and the address involved then go onto a suppression list (our do-not-contact record), which every future approach is screened against regardless of where the contact details came from. A record of you that arrives later from another supplier is therefore caught as well.

Who else sees it

Selling or renting personal details is not something we do, nor is passing them to other businesses for their marketing, nor is targeted advertising.

Details are shared with suppliers working under our instructions and permitted to use them solely to serve us: the operators of our email and mailbox infrastructure, the address verification service, the business data suppliers, and the companies that host and store our systems. Disclosure also happens where a law compels it, where a public authority makes a lawful demand, or where it is needed to defend our rights or to protect someone's safety. Should the business, or part of it, change hands or be restructured, records may transfer to the acquirer or successor, who takes them subject to this policy.

Retention periods

Prospect details stay with us while they remain useful for the purposes above; stale records are removed, for instance when someone has moved on from the role we knew them in. Client engagement records remain for the life of the work and then for as long as legal, accounting and tax duties demand. Suppression entries last for as long as Edgewood approaches businesses at all, since removing one would defeat its point.

Safeguards

Only people and suppliers with a need to handle the details described here can reach them. Reasonable safeguards of an administrative and technical kind are in place, proportionate to what is at stake: business contact data, not sensitive personal data. Absolute security cannot be promised by anyone, and we do not promise it.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask three things of us: to tell you what we hold about you and its source, to put right anything inaccurate, and to erase your details. After an erasure the suppression entry remains, because without it you could be approached again.

Residents of certain states have additional statutory rights: to know what is gathered and how it is used, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, and to refuse the sale of their details, the sharing of them, or their use in targeted advertising. None of that selling, sharing or advertising happens here, so a refusal has nothing to act on, though the request itself is always welcome. Exercising a right will never change how you are treated.

Requests can be made by answering any message Edgewood has sent you, through our contact form, or by letter to the address at the foot of this page. We may first check that the request really comes from the holder of the address we wrote to, usually by replying there. Our answer will reach you inside whatever deadline the applicable law sets. An agent authorised to act for you may ask on your behalf, provided they can demonstrate that authority.

Under eighteens

Edgewood works with companies and the adults employed by them. Nothing is knowingly gathered about anyone below 18 years of age; should you think we hold such a record, let us know and it will be deleted.

Where we operate

Edgewood is a United States business, and the people it approaches work at companies active in the markets it serves. The suppliers listed above may handle details in the United States or in other countries where they run their operations; contracts oblige them to act only on our instructions when they do.

Revisions

A revision to this policy is signalled by a new effective date at the head of the page, and the text published here is always the current one. Where a revision materially narrows your rights, a note to that effect will stay on this page for a reasonable time after it takes effect.

Reaching us

Write to Edgewood Consulting Group at 1719 State Route 10, Suite 226, Parsippany, NJ 07054, answer any message we have sent you, or use our contact form. Letters take longer than replies.