Terms of Use

Yarko brand and operated by GiM Services, a company registered in Ghana ("Yarko," "we," "us," or "our"). These Terms of Use (the "Terms") form a binding agreement between you ("you," and as applicable "Buyer" or "Seller") and GiM Services governing your access to and use of the Yarko website, platform, and related services (together, the "Service").

Yarko is our trading name for the wider virtual trade-services business GiM Services operates; References to "Yarko" in these Terms mean the Service, and references to "we," "us," or "our" mean GiM Services, regardless of which brand name appears on a given page, invoice, or communication.

You accept these Terms by checking the acceptance box presented at account registration or at submission of a Seller application, and in any event by creating an account, submitting a sourcing request, applying as a Seller, or otherwise using the Service. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use Yarko.

We record the version of these Terms you accepted and the date and time of acceptance. That record is our evidence of the agreement between us, and you agree it is admissible in any proceeding.

Our Privacy Notice is incorporated into these Terms by reference. Where these Terms and the Privacy Notice conflict on a matter of personal-data handling, the Privacy Notice controls. Where we provide plan-specific, order-specific, or programme-specific terms (for example, terms attached to a pilot programme or a negotiated enterprise arrangement), those terms control over these Terms for that engagement only, to the extent of the conflict.

Explanatory content published elsewhere on this website, including the Trust page and any FAQ, is provided for clarity and does not vary these Terms.

These Terms are drafted and executed in English. We may provide translations for convenience. If there is any inconsistency between the English version and a translation, the English version controls.

You must provide accurate, current, and complete information when creating an account or submitting an application, and must keep that information up to date. We may refuse, suspend, or close an account that contains information we reasonably believe to be false, misleading, or impersonating another business.

You are responsible for keeping your login credentials confidential and for all activity occurring under your account. Notify us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without authorisation.

An account is for the use of one Buyer business and the individuals it authorises. You may permit your own employees or contractors to use your account, and you remain responsible for their compliance with these Terms. You may not share access with, resell access to, or operate the account for the benefit of an unaffiliated business.

We may refuse to open, or may suspend or terminate, any account for spam, fraud, abuse, scraping, reselling contact data obtained through the Service, circumventing the platform to avoid fees, sanctions or legal exposure, or any conduct that harms Buyers, Sellers, or the Service.

Submitting a Sourcing Request is not a charge. Buyers pay a one-time fee when they request an Introduction to one shortlisted Seller. The current fee is USD $49.99 per Introduction, charged at checkout. A Shortlist may include up to three (3) Sellers; each Introduction is a separate checkout. Contact details for a shortlisted Seller are released only after both the Buyer and the Seller consent to an Introduction, as described in Section 9.

We do not guarantee that any Sourcing Request will produce a Shortlist of any particular size, that any shortlisted Seller will consent to an Introduction, that any Introduction will result in a quotation or an order, or that any commercial terms will be available to you. Where a category, specification, quantity, or destination makes a useful match unlikely, we will tell you rather than pad a Shortlist.

The fee is not a subscription, does not renew, and is not a monthly bundle of requests.

Each Introduction is billed once, in advance, at checkout. You authorise us, through our payment processor, to charge your payment method for that Introduction at the price shown at checkout, together with any applicable taxes. There is no recurring charge and no billing cycle. We do not keep a card on file for automatic future charges.

Prices are stated exclusive of taxes. You are responsible for any sales tax, value-added tax, goods and services tax, withholding tax, or similar charge imposed on the fees by any authority, other than taxes on our income. Where we are required to collect such a tax, it will be added at checkout.

If checkout does not complete, that Introduction is not requested and ops will not release contact for it. You may start checkout again. We do not retry a failed one-time payment automatically.

We may change the per-request fee. The price shown at checkout is the price for that request. A later change does not affect a request you have already paid for.

There is no subscription to cancel. You may stop using the Service at any time. A completed payment applies only to the Introduction you checked out. It is not stored as credit toward a later Sourcing Request.

The fee for an Introduction is non-refundable once checkout succeeds, except where required by applicable law. If we fail to process a paid Introduction because of our own error or a failure of the Service, we will, at our discretion, refund that fee. This is a goodwill remedy and not an entitlement beyond what applicable law requires.

We may offer discounts or promotional pricing on stated terms. A promotion applies only to the checkout it is attached to. It does not start a subscription or a trial that converts into a recurring charge.

Sellers may apply to be included in the Yarko pool. Acceptance is at our discretion. At launch there is no platform fee for Sellers, and accepted Sellers remain in the pool at no cost. We may introduce or change Seller fees in the future on at least sixty (60) days’ notice; a Seller that does not accept a new fee may withdraw from the pool before it takes effect.

By applying and by remaining in the pool, a Seller represents and warrants on a continuing basis that:

the information in its application, listing, and Seller Content is accurate and not misleading;

it is a lawfully registered business in good standing, and it has the legal right to manufacture and export the goods or categories of goods it lists;

it holds the licences, permits, and certifications it claims, and any certification it declares is current and genuine;

it is not subject to sanctions, and is not owned or controlled by a sanctioned person or entity; and

its manufacturing operations comply with applicable law in its jurisdiction, including labour, environmental, and product-safety law.

A Seller must notify us promptly if any information it has given us stops being accurate — including a lapsed certification, a change of legal entity or ownership, a change in export authorisation, or a material change in the categories it can supply. Continued listing on the basis of information a Seller knows to be out of date is a breach of these Terms.

We may remove a Seller from the pool, pause its listing, unpublish its Video Content, or withdraw its Vetted badge at any time, including where information proves inaccurate, where reports under Section 15 raise concerns, or where continued listing would create legal or reputational risk. Where practicable we will tell the Seller why, and, where the issue is capable of being fixed, give it an opportunity to respond first.

Only Sellers holding a current Vetted badge are eligible for a published video, and eligibility does not create an entitlement: all Video Content is subject to a separate content review before publication, and we may decline to publish, or later unpublish, any video at our discretion.

Submitting Video Content requires a separate, specific consent to public publication, captured at the point of submission and distinct from any consent to contact-sharing under Section 9. Consent to an Introduction is not consent to publication, and consent to publication is not consent to an Introduction.

By submitting Video Content, the Seller represents and warrants that:

it owns the footage or has all rights necessary to grant the licence in Section 11.3;

it has obtained written permission from every identifiable individual appearing or audible in the footage — including employees and workers — for that person’s image and voice to be published publicly and indefinitely worldwide, including on a public YouTube channel;

the footage contains no third-party music, branding, artwork, product, or other material that the Seller is not licensed to use in a publicly published commercial video;

filming did not breach any confidentiality obligation the Seller owes a customer, and no customer’s confidential product, packaging, or branding appears without that customer’s permission; and

the factual claims made in the footage and in the structured data it submits — including capacity, minimum order quantity, lead time, and certifications — are accurate.

The Seller retains ownership of its Video Content. The Seller grants GiM Services a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable licence to host, reproduce, edit, excerpt, subtitle, translate, add branding to, publicly perform, publicly display, and distribute the Video Content and derivative videos produced from it, for the purposes of operating, promoting, and marketing, including on third-party platforms.

This licence lasts for as long as the video remains published and for a reasonable period afterwards to allow for removal from caches, indexes, and copies distributed by third parties.

We produce the published video from the Seller’s submission, applying a standard format, branded intro and outro, a persistent watermark, a lower-third overlay, and an on-screen data card. Editorial decisions about the published video, including what is excluded under Section 11.6, are ours.

Published videos are hosted publicly on a Yarko media channels and embedded on this website. The Seller acknowledges that:

a public video can be found, viewed, downloaded, copied, and re-shared by anyone, anywhere, including by parties outside our control;

we cannot guarantee complete removal from the internet once published, because third parties may have made copies; and

we may earn advertising or platform revenue from the channel on which the video is published, and the Seller is not entitled to a share of it. This revenue will be used to better improve yarko’s services

Published videos do not display a Seller’s own website address, telephone number, email address, or direct messaging handles, whether spoken, on screen, in the thumbnail, or in the video description, in order to preserve the consent-gated Introduction process in Section 9. A Seller may not circumvent this by embedding such details in its logo, signage, or supplied artwork.

A Seller may withdraw its consent to publication at any time by contacting us. On withdrawal we will unpublish the video from this website and remove it from our YouTube channel within a reasonable period, ordinarily not more than ten (10) business days, subject to the limits in Section 11.5. We may also unpublish a video at any time, including where a Seller leaves the pool, loses its Vetted badge, or where a representation in Section 11.2 proves to be untrue.

Videos are produced with English subtitles translated from the Seller’s spoken remarks. Translation is provided for convenience and may not be exact. On-screen data — capacity, minimum order quantity, lead time, and certifications — is drawn from the structured fields the Seller submits, not from translated audio. Buyers should treat all figures shown in a video as indicative and confirm them directly with the Seller before relying on them.

All negotiation, contracting, sampling, pricing, payment, quality control, inspection, packaging, labelling, shipping, insurance, customs clearance, warranty, and dispute resolution relating to any order is solely between the Buyer and the Seller. Yarko is not a party to that transaction and has no obligation to intervene in, mediate, or resolve it.

Each Buyer and Seller represents that its use of Yarko, and any resulting transaction, will comply with all applicable laws, including export controls, import regulations, customs law, product-safety and labelling requirements, and trade sanctions in its own jurisdiction and in any jurisdiction relevant to the transaction. You are solely responsible for determining whether a proposed transaction is lawful.

We may screen users against sanctions and watchlists, may ask for additional information where a transaction raises compliance concerns, and may refuse, delay, or terminate access where we consider there is a risk of a breach of sanctions or export-control law. We are not obliged to explain a decision taken on this basis were doing so would itself create legal risk.

You represent that you will not, in connection with the Service, offer, give, request, or accept any bribe, kickback, or improper payment, and that you will comply with applicable anti-bribery and anti-money-laundering law. You may not use the Service to launder proceeds of crime or to disguise the origin, ownership, or destination of funds or goods.

A Buyer is responsible for ensuring that goods it sources are lawful to import and sell in its market, meet applicable safety and labelling standards, and do not infringe third-party intellectual property. A Seller is responsible for ensuring it may lawfully manufacture and export what it offers. We do not review products for regulatory compliance, safety, or infringement.

GiM Services and its licensors own all right, title, and interest in the Yarko platform, including its software, design, look and feel, trademarks, branded video template, and the compiled Shortlist methodology, excluding User Content.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to access and use Yarko for your own sourcing purposes. You may not copy, modify, reverse-engineer, decompile, or create derivative works of the platform, or remove any proprietary notice or watermark.

You retain ownership of User Content you submit. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, and use that content as necessary to operate and improve the Service — for example, to prepare and share a Shortlist. Video Content is additionally governed by Section 11.

If you send us suggestions or feedback about the Service, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you.

If you believe material on Yarko infringes your intellectual property, contact us through the channels in Section 26 with: a description of the right you hold, the material and where it appears, your contact details, and a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised. We will review the complaint and may remove or disable access to the material, and may pass the complaint to the user who submitted it. We may decline or reinstate material where we receive a substantiated counter-statement.

On termination your right to access the Service ends. Fees already paid are handled under Section 6.7. We handle retention and deletion of your information as described in the Privacy Notice. Introductions already made are unaffected, you and the other party continue to deal with each other directly and at your own risk.

Sections 10 (Non-Circumvention), 11.2, 11.3 and 11.5 (to the extent a video remains published or copied), 13 (Confidentiality), 16 (Intellectual Property), 18 (Disclaimer), 19 (Limitation of Liability), 20 (Indemnification), 22 (Governing Law and Dispute Resolution), and 25 (Miscellaneous) survive termination, together with any other provision that by its nature should survive.

Before starting arbitration, the parties will try in good faith to resolve the dispute informally for thirty (30) days after written notice describing the dispute and the relief sought. This does not prevent either party from seeking urgent interim relief.

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or relating to them or to the use of Yarko, are governed by the laws of the Republic of Ghana, informed where relevant by generally recognised principles of international trade law and commercial practice, including the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and, to the extent applicable to an underlying sale of goods between a Buyer and a Seller, the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

Any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms, including their formation, interpretation, breach, or termination, will be referred to and finally resolved by arbitration seated in Accra, Ghana, administered by the Ghana Arbitration Centre, in accordance with that centre’s rules in force when the arbitration is commenced, which rules are deemed incorporated by reference.

Disputes will be resolved on an individual basis only. Neither party may bring a claim as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, or representative proceeding.

Any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service must be brought within one (1) year after the claim arose, or it is permanently barred, except where applicable law does not permit such a limitation.

These Terms, together with our Privacy Notice and any plan-specific or order-specific terms we provide, constitute the entire agreement between you and GiM Services regarding Yarko, and supersede any prior agreements or representations on the subject.

You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganisation, or sale of assets.

If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or severed if it cannot be, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including natural disasters, epidemics, acts of government, war, labour disruption, failure of a third-party provider, or disruption to shipping, customs, internet, or banking systems.

Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms is not a waiver of our right to do so later.

You and GiM Services are independent contracting parties. Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, fiduciary, or employment relationship.

These Terms do not confer rights on any person who is not a party to them, and a person who is not a party may not enforce any of their provisions.

We may identify that a Seller is in the Yarko pool as part of operating the Service. We will not use a Buyer’s name or logo in marketing material without its consent.

Headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.