Terms of useThe terms that are settled, and the ones that are not yet.
This page describes what the site actually does. Any term that has not yet been approved appears here as an open constraint rather than as a policy in force.
What the site offers
The encyclopedia and the directory are provided for reference and for finding suppliers. Reading them is free. Nothing on this site is a guarantee of the quality, origin, legality or price of any material, and a record in the directory is not an endorsement of the supplier that holds it.
The trade documentation the encyclopedia describes is an explanation of what the instruments say. It is not legal advice, and it does not establish that a particular shipment is compliant. The exporter and the importer hold that judgement, in their own jurisdictions.
What a wholesale request does and does not create
A request states a requirement. It is not an order, it is not an offer, and it does not create a contract with any supplier. The platform routes the request to suppliers who have been approved to receive it and who have a commercial entitlement to do so. Whether a supplier accepts, on what terms, and at what price is between the buyer and that supplier.
Your details are released to a supplier only after you approve that supplier by name for that request, and only for the fields and the channel you approved. You can withdraw that approval, and an introduction that has already been sent cannot be recalled.
Do not submit information to a request that you are not entitled to share, and do not submit another person’s details as your own.
The terms that are not yet settled
The legal operating entity, the governing law and the jurisdiction, the invoicing entity and the tax treatment, the membership renewal and cancellation terms, the retention periods for request records, and the commercial terms and price for a supplier introduction have all been recorded as decisions that require approval before they can be published. They are stated as open here rather than published as settled.
Checkout is disabled. A membership is activated by a confirmed payment and by nothing else — not by reaching a payment page, not by a success message, and not by a browser request.
The recorded decisions on billing, tax, renewal, retention and introduction terms, and the release policy that governs an introduction.