Privacy Policy

01Controller

• Company: HERCULES LABO Co., Ltd.
• Representative: Kota Kudo
• Address: 2-31-7 Kuboyama-cho, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo, Japan
• Data protection manager: Kota Kudo
• Contact: info@herculeslabo.com / 042-610-3170 (10:00–19:00 (JST), closed on Wednesdays)
• Sites we run: this site (herculeslabo.com, specimens and specimen art) and insect.herculeslabo.com (live Hercules beetles).
  This policy covers this site.
  How personal information is handled on our other site is set out in that site’s privacy policy.

02Information We Collect

We may collect the following.

• Details you provide: name, address, phone, email, inquiry and negotiation content, order details, and — for international orders — your destination country and importer details.
• Your age declaration: the confirmation you give on our contact form that you are 18 or over, or that you have your guardian’s consent.
  Whether that confirmation was given is kept in the notification email as a record.
• Payment data: card payment transaction records, the remitter name on bank transfers, PayPal transaction records, and records of payment in person.
  Card payments are processed by an external payment provider (Shopify Payments / its underlying Stripe).
  Where you pay by PayPal, the payment is processed by PayPal.
  Card numbers are handled by the payment provider; we do not store card numbers or other payment credentials on our servers.
• Transaction records: order history, billing and payment records, and — for international orders — the estimated-landed-cost quotation and consent log.
• Details you submit with a customer review: your rating, headline, review text, the name shown on the site, your email address, and the work the review is about.
• Access data: cookies, browsing history, IP address, device and browser data, and analytics data (Google Analytics 4).

03Purposes

• Selling and shipping goods, billing and payment, and after-sales service.
• Responding to inquiries, negotiations and quotations (including “Inquire” pieces).
• Confirming that you are 18 or over, or that you have your guardian’s consent, and keeping a record of that confirmation (so that we do not enter into a high-value transaction with a minor).
• Customs handling for international shipments, and managing the landed-cost quotation and your consent.
• Issuing and managing Certificates of Authenticity (buyer identity is not published).
• Receiving customer reviews, checking their content, and publishing them on this site.
• Sending emails about new works and events to those who have opted in (you may unsubscribe at any time).
• Site improvement, analytics, and fraud prevention.
• Legal compliance.

04Third Parties

Except as required by law, we do not provide personal information to third parties without your prior consent.

05Processors

To the extent necessary to achieve the purposes above, we may provide personal information to processors such as the following. We supervise them appropriately.

• E-commerce platform and payments: Shopify (Shopify Payments / Stripe), PayPal
• Hosting: Vercel
• Shipping: Japan Post (Yu-Pack), and for international orders, freight forwarders, customs brokers and fine-art carriers
• Email delivery and inquiry handling: Resend (Resend, Inc. / underlying Amazon Web Services)
  Messaging via our official LINE account: LY Corporation
• Analytics: Google (Google Analytics 4)

06Cross-Border Transfers

Some of the processors above are located outside Japan, so your personal information may be handled on overseas servers. Principal destinations include:

• Google LLC (United States) — analytics (Google Analytics 4). Access data including IP addresses is processed on servers in the United States.
• Shopify Inc. (Canada) / Stripe, Inc. (United States) / Vercel Inc. (United States) / Resend, Inc. (United States) — e-commerce, payment, email-delivery and hosting infrastructure.

These may fall under Article 28 of the APPI (provision to third parties in foreign countries) even for a domestically oriented site. We transfer personal information only to recipients that maintain protection measures equivalent to what the APPI requires (an equivalent-protection framework). The destination countries and processors are as listed above.

07Cookies & Analytics

• This site uses cookies and Google Analytics 4 to analyze how the site is used (events collected include page views, product views, add-to-cart, checkout start, purchase, and inquiry submission).
• You may disable cookies in your browser settings, though some features may then be unavailable.
• For visitors from the EU/EEA and the UK we display a cookie-consent banner (Google Consent Mode v2) and do not set analytics cookies until consent is given. There is no banner obligation under current Japanese law for domestic visitors, but we state our use here for transparency.

08Your Rights

You may request disclosure, correction, addition, deletion, suspension of use, or suspension of third-party provision of your retained personal data. Please contact us at info@herculeslabo.com. We will verify your identity and respond in accordance with law.

Complaints: complaints and consultations about our handling of personal information are accepted at the contact below.
HERCULES LABO Co., Ltd. — Personal Information Desk — info@herculeslabo.com
(This does not prevent you from applying to the Personal Information Protection Commission or another competent authority.)

09Security

To prevent leakage, loss or damage of personal information and to otherwise manage it safely, we apply access controls, encryption in transit (SSL/TLS), and two-factor authentication on administrative accounts.

10Minors

Minors should use the service with the consent of a parent or other legal guardian. Purchases of high-value works in particular presume such consent.

11Changes

We may revise this policy in response to changes in law or in our services. Material changes will be announced on this site.

Effective date: 22 July 2026 / Last revised: 23 August 2026