Who we are

Fern & Soul is the trading name of Retro River Pty Ltd (ABN 93 140 139 055), a remedial massage studio at Unit 2, 39 King George Street, Innaloo WA 6018, Australia. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Retro River Pty Ltd trading as Fern & Soul.

Because we provide a health service, we are covered by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles — the small-business exemption does not apply to health providers, and we don’t rely on it. Health information is treated as sensitive information under the Act, and we handle it accordingly.

The information we collect

Most of what we hold, you give us directly, through:

• The contact form — your name, email address, phone number (optional) and message.
• Our pre-opening email list — an email address, if you gave us one before the studio opened. We closed that sign-up on 28 July 2026 and no longer collect addresses this way, but we still hold the ones already given until you ask us to remove them.
• The health intake form— completed before your first treatment: your name, date of birth, gender, contact details, occupation, emergency contact, relevant health history (conditions, medications, allergies, surgeries), treatment preferences and your signature. For clients under 18, a parent or guardian’s name and consent as well.
• Gift voucher purchases— your name, the recipient’s name and email address, an optional recipient mobile number, your gift message and the voucher amount.
• Bookings — appointments are made through Fresha, a third-party booking platform. Information you enter there is also handled under Fresha’s privacy policy.

Your health information

The health intake form exists so your therapist can judge whether massage is safe for you, plan your treatment, and keep the treatment records they are professionally required to keep. You consent to this collection when you complete the form.

• Who sees it. Your treating therapist. Nobody else sees your health details unless you ask us to share them, or the law requires it.
• Health fund claims. If you claim through HICAPS we pass on only what your fund needs — your name, the date and the service. Never your health history.
• How long we keep it. At least seven years after your last visit, the record-keeping standard for massage therapy in Australia. For clients under 18, until they turn 25.

How we use your information

• To provide safe, appropriate massage treatment and keep accurate treatment records.
• To respond to your enquiries and manage your appointments.
• To process gift voucher purchases and deliver the voucher to your recipient.
• To share occasional studio news — only if you have opted in.
• To understand how our website is used, so we can improve it.

We never sell your information, and we never share it for marketing.

How your information is held

Form submissions are delivered to and held in our business email (bookings@fernandsoul.com.au), which serves as the record. New client health forms are also held in a secure database, locked to studio staff, so your therapist can bring your form up at reception without searching a mailbox — your signature stays only on the emailed copy. Gift voucher details are held within our payment records with Stripe, and mirrored to a voucher register in our Google Workspace so studio staff can check a voucher at the counter. Card payments are processed entirely by Stripe — your full card number never reaches us.

One exception, and it is deliberately a narrow one. When you tell us how you heard about us on the new client form, that single answer is kept in a separate list so we can see which of our listings and adverts are worth continuing. Your name, your contact details and everything you told us about your health are never added to it, so no answer on that list can be traced back to you.

Service providers

Like most small businesses, we rely on a small number of established providers to run our website and services:

• Stripe — payment processing for gift vouchers.
• Resend — delivery of form submissions and voucher emails.
• Supabase — secure storage of new client forms, for look-up at the studio.
• Google — business email (Google Workspace), website analytics and advertising measurement.
• Vercel — website hosting.
• Fresha — appointment bookings.

Some of these providers store data on servers outside Australia, including in the United States. We take reasonable steps to ensure any overseas handling of your information is consistent with the Australian Privacy Principles.

Marketing

We only send marketing email if you have opted in — on our pre-opening email list or the intake form. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can opt out at any time by emailing bookings@fernandsoul.com.au.

Cookies and analytics

We use Google Analytics (via Google Tag Manager) to understand how visitors use the site, and Google Ads conversion measurement when someone arrives from one of our ads. These tools use cookies and similar identifiers. They tell us about pages and visits — not who you are. You can block or clear cookies in your browser settings without affecting your use of the site.

If you buy a gift voucher, we also record how you found us — whether you arrived from one of our adverts, a search, a social post or a link on another site — and keep it with that voucher’s payment record, so we can see which of them are worth continuing. It is the route you took, not you: we store the name of the website that sent you and the page you landed on, never the full web address you came from, and nothing about you is added to it.

Information collected automatically

Like any website, ours records some technical detail about each visit: the internet (IP) address your device is connecting from, the page you asked for, the website that sent you to us, and whether you arrived by clicking one of our ads. We use this only to keep the site secure and to check that our advertising is being clicked by people looking for a massage rather than by other businesses. It is not used to build a profile of you, it is never linked to your booking or your health records, it is never sold, and it is deleted after 30 days.

Access and correction

You can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, at any time — email bookings@fernandsoul.com.au and we will help. If something is wrong, we will fix it.

Data breaches

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) as required by the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

Complaints

If you have a concern about how we have handled your information, please contact us first at bookings@fernandsoul.com.au or (08) 6285 0378 — we take privacy seriously and will respond promptly. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the OAIC at oaic.gov.au.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this page and revise the date at the top. Questions are always welcome — get in touch any time.