Terms of Service

1. What Ballyhoo is

Ballyhoo is a marketplace that connects product brands (“Brands”) with independent live sellers (“Hosts”) who sell products on their own live shows, today on Whatnot. Brands list products at a live price and a live wholesale price. Hosts pick products, get free samples, and sell them to their buyers. Brands ship each sale directly to the buyer. Ballyhoo records the sales, creates the orders in the Brand's store, collects wholesale from Hosts, and pays Brands.

Ballyhoo is not the seller of any product and is not a party to the sale between a Host and a buyer. Ballyhoo is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Whatnot, Shopify or Stripe.

2. Accounts and eligibility

• You must be at least 18, located in the United States, and using Ballyhoo for your business. If you sign up for a company, you confirm you're authorized to bind it to these Terms.
• Give us accurate information and keep it up to date. One account per person or business unless we agree otherwise.
• You sign in with codes sent to your email. Keep that inbox secure; you're responsible for activity on your account.
• We let new Brands and Hosts in from a waitlist and may review Brands before their products go live. We may decline or remove any account at our discretion.

3. How a sale works

1. Listing. The Brand lists a product with a retail price, a live price (what buyers are expected to pay on a live show), a live wholesale price (what the Host pays the Brand), and optionally a price floor.
2. Approval and samples. Hosts apply. The Brand approves the Hosts it wants and sends each one a free sample.
3. The sale. The Host sells the product on their own live show, under their own seller account, and reports each sale in Ballyhoo with the Whatnot order number, the price the buyer paid, and the buyer's shipping address.
4. The order. Ballyhoo creates a wholesale order in the Brand's connected store with the buyer's shipping address. The Brand ships it to the buyer.
5. Settlement. After an order is delivered, Ballyhoo charges the Host the live wholesale price (usually on a weekly statement) and pays the Brand that amount minus Ballyhoo's platform fee.

4. Fees

Brands pay a platform fee on each sale: 8% of the price the buyer actually paid (or the rate shown in your account), counted no lower than the Brand's price floor and no higher than its retail price. The fee is deducted from the Brand's payout.

Hosts pay no Ballyhoo fee. Hosts pay the live wholesale price for each item they sell.

Fees charged by Whatnot, payment processors and other third parties are each party's own responsibility. We may change our fees with at least 30 days' notice; changes don't apply to orders created before they take effect.

5. Payments, charges and payouts

Payments on Ballyhoo are processed by Stripe. We don't store full card numbers.

Host payment authorization

By saving a card, you authorize Ballyhoo Live, Inc. to charge it, without asking you each time, for the live wholesale price of the sales you report, including: weekly statements for delivered orders; immediate charges for a sale that would take you over your spending limit; and any statement you choose to settle early. If a charge fails, we may retry it, pause your account, and hold new orders until it's paid; any unpaid amount remains a debt you owe us. You can update or remove your card in your profile, but removing it doesn't cancel amounts already owed.

Spending limits

Each Host has a spending limit for unpaid sales. We set and may change limits based on payment history and risk.

Brand payouts

Payment processing services for Brands on Ballyhoo are provided by Stripe and are subject to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which includes the Stripe Terms of Service (together, the “Stripe Services Agreement”). By connecting payouts, you agree to the Stripe Services Agreement, as Stripe may modify it from time to time. As a condition of Ballyhoo enabling payments through Stripe, you agree to provide Ballyhoo accurate and complete information about you and your business, and you authorize Ballyhoo to share it and transaction information related to your use of Stripe's services.

We pay Brands for delivered orders once the Host has paid, normally weekly. If a Host doesn't pay for a delivered order, we may choose to pay the Brand ourselves and collect from the Host.

Refunds, reversals and chargebacks

If an order is cancelled before shipping, we refund the Host anything already charged for it. If an order is refunded after the Brand was paid, we may reverse the Brand's payout for that order or deduct it from future payouts. Don't dispute a valid charge with your bank; contact us instead. If a charge is disputed, we may pause your account and recover the amount and any dispute fees.

6. Brand responsibilities

• Accurate listings. Product names, photos, descriptions, prices and approved claims must be accurate. Your retail price can't be higher than the price in your own store.
• Legal products. You own or are authorized to sell your products, and they (and their labels, ingredients and claims) comply with all applicable laws, including FDA, FTC, CPSC and state rules. You're solely responsible for any claims you approve for Hosts to make.
• Price commitments. Once Hosts are approved for a product, you can lower its live wholesale price or price floor but not raise them, and you can't switch an active campaign to a different product.
• Samples. Samples you send are free to the Host and don't need to be returned.
• Shipping. Ship each order on the Host's Whatnot shipping label, which Ballyhoo gives you with the order, within 2 business days of the sale and preferably the next business day. Don't use a label of your own: the selling platform only counts the order as shipped when its label is scanned. Late shipments can cost the Host refunds and penalties.
• Product problems. You're responsible for defects, damage in transit, wrong items, returns you agree to accept, and recalls. Tell us promptly about any recall or safety issue.
• Insurance. Keep commercially reasonable product liability insurance for the products you list.
• Buyer information. Use buyer names and addresses only to fulfill that order. Don't add buyers to marketing lists or contact them for any other purpose, and delete the information when you no longer need it to fulfill or support the order.
• Store connection. By connecting your Shopify store you authorize Ballyhoo to read your products and create, fulfill, mark paid and cancel Ballyhoo orders in it.

7. Host responsibilities

• Independent business. You're an independent seller, not an employee, agent or partner of Ballyhoo or any Brand. You're responsible for your own taxes.
• Platform rules. You sell under your own Whatnot (or other platform) account and must follow that platform's terms and policies, including its rules on shipping times and selling items that ship from a third party. It's your responsibility to make sure your account may sell this way.
• Honest selling. Describe products accurately and make only the claims the Brand has approved. Never say a product treats, cures or prevents a disease.
• Disclosure. You receive free samples and earn from sales, which is a material connection to the Brand. Disclose it clearly on your shows as the FTC requires (for example, “the brand sent me this for free”).
• Report every sale accurately. Report each real sale promptly with its true order number, the price the buyer paid, and the buyer's correct shipping address. Don't report sales that didn't happen, sales to yourself or people acting for you, or a lower price than the buyer paid.
• Labels. Upload the Whatnot shipping label for each sale as soon as you have it. The Brand can't ship without it, and your platform's shipping deadline still applies to you.
• Stay within your limit. Don't list more units than your available spending limit allows.
• Pay what you owe for every sale you report, as described in “Payments.”
• Buyer information. Share buyer details only through Ballyhoo, only to fulfill the order, and as your platform's terms allow.
• Problems. If an order isn't delivered or arrives wrong, report it in Ballyhoo. We pause billing for that order while we look into it.

8. Prohibited products and conduct

Don't list or sell on Ballyhoo:

• Anything illegal, counterfeit, stolen, recalled or infringing anyone's rights;
• Drugs, prescription products, CBD or hemp products, tobacco, nicotine or vape products, alcohol, weapons, or adult products;
• Products a host's selling platform prohibits;
• Supplements or other products marketed with disease, cure or treatment claims.

And don't:

• Create fake sales, fake orders or fake accounts, or manipulate prices, fees or limits;
• Take samples with no intent to sell, or resell samples;
• Go around Ballyhoo to avoid fees on a relationship you made through Ballyhoo, for 12 months after you met here;
• Misuse other users' or buyers' personal information;
• Interfere with, scrape, reverse engineer, or attack the service.

9. Reviews, holds and suspensions

To protect Brands, Hosts and buyers, we may review sales before sending them to a Brand; hold, cancel or refund orders; delay payouts for orders with an open problem; change spending limits; and pause, suspend or close accounts that break these Terms, create risk, or have unpaid balances. We'll usually tell you why, unless the law or a security concern prevents it.

10. Disputes between users

Brands and Hosts are responsible for their own dealings with each other and with buyers. If something goes wrong, report it in Ballyhoo. We may help resolve it and may decide how a held order is settled, but we aren't obligated to resolve disputes between users.

11. Your content

You keep ownership of what you upload (product photos, descriptions, your handle and profile). You give Ballyhoo Live, Inc. a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, copy and display it to run and promote Ballyhoo, including showing Brands to Hosts and Hosts to Brands. If you send us feedback, we can use it without obligation to you.

12. Third-party services

Ballyhoo works with services we don't control, including Whatnot, Shopify, Stripe and shipping carriers. Their terms apply to your use of them, and we aren't responsible for their actions, outages or changes.

13. Disclaimers and limits of liability

Ballyhoo is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We don't guarantee any level of sales, that any Host will sell a product, or that the service will be uninterrupted. Estimates we show, such as Whatnot fees and Host take-home, are estimates.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Ballyhoo Live, Inc. won't be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or lost profits or revenue, and our total liability for any claim relating to Ballyhoo is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim or $100.

14. Indemnity

You'll defend and indemnify Ballyhoo Live, Inc. and its team against third-party claims arising from your breach of these Terms or the law, and, for Brands, from your products (including injury, labeling, claims and recalls), and, for Hosts, from your shows and your sales.

15. Ending your account

You can stop using Ballyhoo at any time by emailing us. We can end or suspend your access under section 9. Amounts owed, licenses needed to finish open orders, and the sections on payments, buyer information, disclaimers, indemnity and disputes survive.

16. Disputes with Ballyhoo

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing a claim, contact us at legal@ballyhoolive.com and give us 30 days to try to resolve it.

Any dispute we can't resolve will be decided by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules, except that either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court or seek an injunction to protect intellectual property. You and Ballyhoo Live, Inc. each waive the right to a jury trial and to take part in a class or representative action. You can opt out of arbitration by emailing us within 30 days of first accepting these Terms.

17. Changes and general terms

We may update these Terms. For material changes we'll give at least 30 days' notice by email or in the app; continuing to use Ballyhoo after that means you accept them. These Terms and our Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and Ballyhoo Live, Inc. about Ballyhoo. If part of them is unenforceable, the rest still applies. You can't transfer your account without our consent; we may assign these Terms in a merger or sale. Not enforcing a term isn't a waiver.

Ballyhoo Live, Inc., a Delaware corporation · legal@ballyhoolive.com