Gabe’s Stores: ready for VCDPA compliance with Ketch

Founded in 1961 in Morgantown, West Virginia, Gabe’s is a leading off-price retailer offering top brands and more for less. Since opening more than 60 years ago, Gabe’s has focused on being the destination for the very best deals on everything you need. Today, more than 170 Gabe’s and Old Time Pottery store locations are found across 20 states, with the support of six distribution centers serving the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Southeast.

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“Ketch implementation was easy and quick. Today we’re set up not only for VCDPA compliance, but for future data privacy challenges. As data privacy regulations change, Ketch gives us a flexible platform for scaling our reach.”

Tim Rounds, Senior Director, Legal, Gabe’s

Challenge: Achieving compliance with Virginia data privacy law in time for the enforcement deadline

When the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) was signed into law in March 2021 with an enforcement date of January 1, 2023, Gabe’s knew they needed a solution for compliance. 

The VCDPA applies to companies that conduct business in Virginia and/or produce or deliver commercial products or services that are intentionally targeted to Virginia residents. With many of their customers residing in Virginia, Gabe’s needed to prioritize VCPDA compliance as a top priority in their privacy program. 

Gabe’s turned to Ketch data privacy management software to provide an easy solution for VCDPA compliance. 

Solution: Easy, fast VCDPA compliance with Ketch consent and preference management 

With regulatory compliance being the immediate priority, Gabe’s and Ketch began with deploying Ketch consent management.

Ketch consent management provides Gabe’s with a centralized interface for policy creation and privacy notice customization. Using the Ketch template for VCDPA compliance, Gabe’s quickly deployed jurisdictionally-aware privacy notices for Virginia residents. The Ketch policy center includes templates for every major data privacy law, with flexibility to customize according to specific business requirements.

“Our marketing team was concerned about privacy notices being disruptive to the Gabe’s brand and customer loyalty experience,” says Tim. “Ketch gives them the ability to completely customize the look and feel of every notice, completely aligning to our strategic customer journey.” 

Using Ketch tag orchestration, Gabe’s connected their web visitors’ data collection preferences directly to the tags firing on their websites. With direct connections to Google Analytics, Facebook, and Google Tag Manager, Gabe’s is able to respect people’s data collection preferences, a key aspect of the Virginia privacy regulations. 

Ketch also deployed DSR automation. Using Ketch drag-and-drop workflows, Gabe’s architected an automated DSR processes. This ensures that consumer delete, access, and opt-out requests are fulfilled in a timely manner, with limited manual intervention and delays. They leverage the Ketch integration library, a marketplace of custom-built API connectors to popular apps, to ensure customer requests are fulfilled across all internal and external data systems. 

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Results: VCPDA compliance secured, with sockets for growth in place

When Gabe’s engaged Ketch, they were concerned about Virginia’s data privacy law. Today, that concern is eliminated. Gabe’s is VCDPA compliant. Privacy notices are live and supporting the brand experience, and the automated DSR fulfillment eliminates manual tasks from the team’s workload. 

Perhaps most exciting, implementing Ketch has set Gabe up for success across multiple initiatives:

• Regulatory changes: The Ketch platform supports an unlimited number of data privacy regulations and laws. Leveraging Ketch policy templates and customizations, Gabe’s is ready to comply with any law in the future as their business scales and grows to more locations. 
• DSR volume increases: As subject rights requests go up, Gabe’s will realize compounded savings in manual effort by having an automated, end-to-end workflow for fulfillment. 
• Marketing and advertising campaigns: With website tag orchestration in place, the Gabe’s marketing team has the structure required to deploy advertising campaigns that respect customer privacy choices and opt-in/opt-out preferences.

“Ketch has been a great partner and met our data privacy goals,” says Tim. “I can rest easy knowing that our data privacy software is ready to scale as new privacy regulations are enacted throughout the US.”