Estako Affiliate Program Terms

Version 2026-08-v1 · Last revised 12 August 2026

These terms apply to the Estako Affiliate Program, run by KUME INC (trading as Estako Yarns). How we handle your personal data is set out separately in the Creator Privacy Notice.

1. Definitions

"We", "us", "Estako" means KUME INC, operating estakoyarns.com. "You" means the accepted creator. "Program" means the Estako Creator Program. "Your link" means the referral link we issue to you (estakoyarns.com/?ref=your-slug). "Your tier" means the commission and payout tier assigned to your account; it sets your commission rate for new and returning customers, your store credit multiplier, and whether cash payouts are available to you.

2. Enrollment

You can join two ways: apply through our public application form, or accept an invite we send you. Either way, we may accept or decline anyone at our discretion, and we may ask about the channels where you plan to share your link. Once you are approved, we create your creator account, issue your link, and send you your private dashboard link.

2a. One account; no vested rights

One creator account per person. A commission that is still Pending is a conditional program benefit rather than earned wages or property: while it is Pending it has no cash value, and nothing in the Program confers a vested right to its continued availability or to any particular rate or reward. Once a commission has cleared the holding period and every earning condition in these terms has been met, it becomes a payable balance and we treat it as an amount we owe you under Section 4.

3. Commissions

  • Your commission rate is the rate of the tier you are enrolled in, applied to the order subtotal (after discounts, before shipping and taxes), with one rate for a customer's first Estako order and a separate rate when they come back. Your current rates are shown on your dashboard, and we will tell you before they change.
  • Attribution is last-click with a 30-day window.

  • Excluded from commission: shipping and taxes. Commission is calculated on the order subtotal as our store reports it. Orders placed through your own customer account are tracked like any other referral, but they never earn a commission (self-referral).

  • Orders that are, in our reasonable opinion, placed for resale, wholesale or other commercial purposes (rather than personal making) do not earn commission, and any such commission may be reversed.

  • Tracking has technical limits: if a purchase cannot be attributed to your link (ad blockers, cleared storage, private browsing, direct word-of-mouth without the link), no commission accrues. We backfill missed webhook events daily, but untracked visits cannot be reconstructed.
  • Cancelled, refunded or charged-back orders are reversed proportionally. If a commission was already paid and the order is later refunded, the amount is deducted from your future balance.

4. Payouts

  • Commissions start as Pending and become payable after a holding period that runs from the order date and covers our 30 day return window plus delivery time. The holding period in force at the time of your order is the one that applies (45 days as we write this), your dashboard shows the date each pending commission unlocks, and we will tell you before the period changes. Refunds within that window reduce the pending amount. If a commission has had any refund applied against it, we review it by hand before releasing it; it is not released automatically at the end of the window. That review takes at most 30 days from the end of the holding period. If we need longer for a documented reason such as a chargeback or a fraud or refund investigation, we may extend it once by up to a further 30 days, and we will email you the reason, the amount affected and the new decision date. At the end of the review we pay, adjust, or tell you in writing that we dispute it. If part of the commission is not in dispute, we release that part rather than holding all of it.
  • The 45 days are not only about the return window. Commissions stay pending through that period to account for returns, cancellations, chargebacks, fraud checks and ordinary processing delays. A return window runs from delivery rather than from the order, so the two do not line up neatly: on an order delivered a week after it is placed, the 30 days end on day 37 and the remaining time is processing buffer, not extra holding.
  • If a valid refund arrives after a commission has already been paid out, the overpayment may be offset against your future balance, and we will tell you when we do this and why. If you think an offset is wrong, reply to that email and we will look at it again before taking anything further.
  • There is no payment schedule and no automatic payment run. You ask for a payout from your dashboard, and we send it. You can ask once your payable balance is at or above the minimum in force for your tier, which your dashboard shows.
  • Your choice: (a) Estako store credit at your tier's multiplier, or (b) cash at 1x, where your tier allows cash payouts. Not every tier includes a cash option; your dashboard shows whether yours does. For cash you choose the destination on your dashboard: bank transfer or Payoneer. Bank transfer reaches any country, so we do not offer PayPal as a self-service choice.
  • Before we pay you anything we need one tax form on file: W-9 (US persons) or W-8BEN (non-US persons). You do not need it to join, and you do not need it to earn: your balance builds up either way. We ask for it when you request your first payout, and payouts stay closed until it is on file, or if it expires.
  • Store credit is not a discount. It is a way of paying you what you have already earned, so it is non-cash compensation and may be taxable or reportable at its fair market value, the same as cash. US persons may receive a Form 1099-NEC for affiliate commission, or a Form 1099-MISC for pattern royalty, where the law requires it. We are not your tax adviser and this is not tax advice.
  • We may hold or reverse payouts while we investigate suspected fraud or Program violations.
  • Store credit payouts are issued as Estako store credit on your customer account: usable on estakoyarns.com, not transferable and not redeemable for cash.
  • Inactive balances: if your account goes quiet we will try to reach you at the address we hold for you before anything happens to your balance. We do not write an unpaid balance back to ourselves, and asking us to close your account does not cancel money we owe you. Where unclaimed property law applies to a balance we cannot pay you, we follow that law.

4a. Not a reseller

The Program does not make you a vendor, reseller or distributor of Estako products, and grants no resale rights. You may not sell Estako products on marketplaces (eBay, Etsy, Amazon or similar) as part of this Program. If you run a shop and want to stock Estako, that is our separate wholesale program (estakoyarns.com/pages/wholesale).

5. Where you may share your link

  • Your own website, blog, email list, and your own social accounts (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Ravelry, Facebook, X and similar).
  • NOT allowed: posting your link in Estako-owned spaces (our social posts and comments, our Ravelry group, our YouTube comments, our Pinterest pins) or in spaces that prohibit it.

6. Advertising rules

  • You may not bid on "Estako", "Estako Yarns", "estakoyarns.com" or close variations/misspellings in any paid search or social ad platform, alone or combined with other words (e.g. "Estako coupon").
  • You may not use our trademarks in ad titles, copy, display names, display URLs, or in any domain or subdomain you control.
  • No cookie stuffing, forced clicks, pop-unders, link cloaking that hides the referring source, or redirects that fake the click origin.
  • Browser extensions, cashback or coupon tools that inject or swap referral attribution are not an allowed channel.
  • Email promotion must comply with applicable law (including CAN-SPAM) and must not appear to be sent by Estako.
  • No spam of any kind: unsolicited bulk email, off-topic or against-the-rules posts in forums, groups, subreddits or Ravelry, blog-comment link drops, or DM blasts to strangers. Communities have rules; breaking them with your link is grounds for removal.

7. Disclosure (required)

  • If a post, video, story or page contains your link, or talks about a product you received from us, label it Ad or #Ad. Put it where a person sees it before they read the post, not buried at the end of a caption or hidden behind a bio link.
  • Please do not rely on #gifted, #gift, #aff, #affiliate, #collab, #spon or #sponsored. UK guidance treats those as too vague, so they do not count as a disclosure even though people use them widely. A platform's own paid-partnership label is fine in addition to #Ad; on its own it is only enough where it genuinely makes the advertising obvious.
  • If you leave a product review for something you received free or were paid to promote, say so in the review itself, plainly, in your own words.
  • This is required by law, not just good practice. In the US, the FTC's rule at 16 CFR Part 465 covers endorsements and testimonials. In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Part 4, Chapter 1, including the applicable provisions of Schedule 20, covers content that reaches a UK audience. Both expect a disclosure a normal viewer would actually notice, not one that is technically present but easy to miss.
  • This is not only your responsibility. We will tell you what a good disclosure looks like before you start, we check posts that carry your link, and if a disclosure is missing or unclear we will ask you to fix it or take the post down. If that keeps happening we may pause your account. We do this because the law puts the duty on us as the brand as well as on you, not to police you.

7a. Your data

What we collect to run the Program, why we collect it, who else sees it, how long we keep it and what rights you have are all set out in the Creator Privacy Notice, which we give you before you apply and keep published. That notice is information rather than something you agree to, and it is the document to read on this subject.

Two things belong here in the contract rather than there. First, we never ask for, and you should never send us, sensitive personal data such as health, religion or ethnicity. Second, the Program is not open to anyone under 18.

When you ask us to delete your data we delete or de-identify what is no longer needed. We may keep limited transaction, tax, contractual, fraud-prevention and legal-claims records where keeping them is still necessary, under the access restrictions and retention periods in the Creator Privacy Notice. Asking to be deleted does not cancel money we owe you. When we complete a deletion request we tell you what was deleted and what was retained, separately.

7b. Sharing your content

If you publicly post about Estako as part of the Program, you allow us to reshare that public content on our own channels with credit to you. We will not use your content in paid ads without asking you first. You always keep ownership of your content.

Affiliate compensation is paid for referral and marketing services. The limited content licence above is ancillary to those services, is royalty-free, and no portion of your compensation is consideration for that licence. If we ever want rights beyond it, for example perpetual paid-advertising rights to a specific piece of your work, we will ask you separately and agree a separate fee.

8. Content standards

Your channels may not contain unlawful, hateful, harassing, discriminatory or sexually explicit material, malware, or content that infringes others' rights, and may not imitate Estako or imply you are Estako.

9. Reversals and cooperation

We may reverse commissions for cancellations, duplicates, returns, disputes or rule violations. If we ask about suspicious traffic or orders, we expect a timely, honest answer; inability to substantiate traffic sources may lead to reversal, a 0% rate, or suspension.

If we pause your account, three separate things happen and they are not the same. Orders placed through your link while the pause is in force do not create a commission; a short pause may still be picked up by our routine order re-check, but a longer one will not be, so treat a paused period as earning nothing. Commissions already on your balance stop unlocking for as long as the pause lasts, then resume on the normal schedule: those are delayed, not lost. And no payout can be requested or sent while the pause is in force. We will not leave an account paused for longer than the reason requires.

10. Termination

Either side may end participation at any time with written notice (email is fine). Violations may end it immediately. Earned, non-reversed balances at or above the payout minimum then in force are paid out in the usual way. A balance below that minimum when participation ends is not forfeited: we will agree a way to get it to you, and where we cannot, we handle it under the applicable unclaimed property law rather than keeping it.

11. Changes

We may correct or clarify these terms, and we will announce anything material to the email on your creator record. Where a change materially affects your rights under this contract, for example your right to payment, the payout conditions, the commission rates, the licence you grant us or your liability, we will ask you to accept the new version and we will record that acceptance; until you do, the version you accepted continues to apply to you.

Updating the Creator Privacy Notice is a different thing and does not work this way. That notice is information, not a contract: if we begin processing your data in a genuinely new way we will show you the updated notice before that processing starts, and record that you have read it. That is not a new agreement and it does not change these terms.

12. Relationship

You enter this Agreement in connection with your trade, business, craft or professional activity, and not primarily for personal or household purposes.

You are an independent party, not our employee, agent or partner. You are responsible for your own taxes except where withholding is legally required.