Terms of membership

Last updated: 19 September 2026

Shop Floor Club (SFC) is operated by Alex Mark, New Zealand. Contact: hello@alexmark.co.nz. These terms and the house rules below apply to membership and use of the forum. Our Privacy page explains how we handle personal information.

Membership

SFC is a free, private community for owners, business leaders and team members working in businesses selling physical products in New Zealand or Australia. The current business threshold is at least NZ$1 million in turnover over the previous 12 months, or the equivalent in another currency. It is not a prospecting community for agencies or vendors.

Every application is reviewed. Meeting the criteria does not guarantee approval. Access depends on your role and the areas you have been approved to join. Being a CEO does not by itself give access to owner-only discussions. Tell us if your role or business changes so we can review your access.

Use your real name, provide accurate information, keep your account secure and do not share your login. Membership is personal; it cannot be transferred to a colleague or replacement employee. Each person must apply separately.

There are no membership fees. Any future paid offering would require a separate, clearly explained choice; these terms do not authorise a charge.

Sharing and using content

You keep ownership of your contributions. You give SFC permission to store, display, send in relevant member notifications, moderate and back up that content as needed to operate the community within its intended audience. This is not permission for SFC or other members to sell your contributions or republish them publicly.

Only post material you are entitled to share. Do not disclose someone else’s personal information, confidential material or intellectual property without permission. Our house rules require members to respect confidentiality, but SFC is not a secure document vault and cannot guarantee that another member will not copy or disclose content. Read the upload limitations on our Privacy page before attaching files.

Advice and responsibility

Members share their own experiences and opinions. SFC does not verify every claim, endorse every recommendation or provide professional advice. Check information before acting on it and get appropriate legal, accounting, employment or other specialist advice when needed. You remain responsible for your own business decisions and for complying with the law, including competition law.

We take reasonable care in operating SFC, but cannot promise uninterrupted availability, error-free content or particular business outcomes. Nothing in these terms excludes rights or obligations that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Moderation and leaving

We may move, edit, restrict or remove content, and limit or end access where needed to enforce these terms, protect members or comply with the law. We will aim to explain decisions and consider a request for review; urgent situations may require action first. Report a concern using the flag function or email the contact above.

You can stop using SFC at any time and contact us to close your account. Our Privacy page explains how we handle account information and existing contributions afterwards. Confidentiality obligations continue after membership ends, subject to the exceptions in the house rules.

Changes and applicable law

We may update these terms as the community develops. We will draw material changes to members’ attention. Contact us if you have questions or do not wish to continue under revised terms.

These terms are governed by New Zealand law, subject to any mandatory rights or protections that apply to you elsewhere. Please contact us first about a dispute so we can try to resolve it.

House rules

SFC works when people can ask honest questions and get useful answers. Help make it a room you would want your peers and team to be part of.

  1. Be a person, not a pitch. Use your real name. Share experience, explain your context and say when you are guessing. Disagree with the idea without attacking the person. No harassment, discrimination, spam or impersonation.
  2. Keep discussions within their audience. Ask permission before quoting a member, forwarding a discussion, taking it into another room, or sharing screenshots outside SFC. Owner-only information stays in the owner area, including when you also work with team members in the club. Do not put another member’s confidential content into an external AI tool without permission. This does not prevent lawful reporting to authorities, getting confidential professional advice where legally permitted, or disclosures required by law.
  3. Protect other people’s information. Anonymise staff and customer situations. Do not upload personal records or confidential documents. Discussion uploads are access-controlled, but authorised readers can still save or share them, and temporary download links work until they expire. Use a separate service with recipient access controls for sensitive files.
  4. Keep competition independent. Competitors are welcome; coordinating competitive decisions is not. Do not exchange non-public current or future prices, discounts, margins, bids, customer-specific terms or other competitively sensitive plans. Do not agree to divide customers or territories, restrict supply, boycott a business, or coordinate pay or hiring. A percentage, range, private message or small group does not automatically make a discussion safe. If a conversation heads in that direction, stop and flag it. General lessons about processes and past experiences are more useful here than confidential commercial numbers.
  5. Disclose your interests. Say if you own, work for, invest in or receive a benefit from a business you recommend. No unsolicited sales messages, scraping member details, or using private club information to target members’ customers or staff. This is not an agreement between businesses to restrict legitimate competition or recruitment.
  6. Choose the right room and help the next person. Check the audience before posting. Use a clear title, give enough context to make the question answerable, and come back with what you tried or learned. Respect someone’s choice not to share details.
  7. Flag problems early. Use the flag button or email hello@alexmark.co.nz. Moderators may intervene, remove content or restrict membership. Do not pile on or circulate a problematic post more widely.