The Akwa Guide · Knowledge Base
Catalogue licence tiers
Akwa's Catalogue is a curated marketplace of founder-curated designs. Each listing is licensable in different tiers depending on what you intend to do with it.
Personal use
The base tier. You buy a personal licence and use the design to commission your own garment from your atelier or tailor.
- One-time purchase, currently €19.99 default per listing
- Includes the full Tailor Brief PDF and the Cultural Design Breakdown PDF
- Permits one personal commission
- Does not permit resale, commercial production, or rebranding
- Does not transfer to others (the buyer is the licence holder)
Most buyers want this tier. It is the cleanest path from "I saw this design" to "I have it built".
Commercial non-exclusive
For brands, ateliers, and small production houses that want to produce a design at limited scale.
- Higher pricing than personal (varies per listing's tier)
- Permits production for resale
- Non-exclusive: Akwa may grant the same commercial licence to other buyers in parallel
- Per-listing scope and unit limits set at purchase
Standard exclusive (1.6x commercial)
You hold the only active commercial licence on the design for the exclusivity period. Other buyers see the listing as "personal-use only" while your exclusive is active.
- Standard exclusivity duration set per garment tier
- Pricing roughly 1.6x the commercial non-exclusive base
- Auto-revert to non-exclusive when the period ends, unless you renew
Extended exclusive (2.2x commercial)
Longest exclusivity term, deepest IP commitment. Best for brand capsules where you want category-of-one positioning for an extended window.
- Extended exclusivity duration set per garment tier
- Pricing roughly 2.2x the commercial non-exclusive base
- Auto-revert to non-exclusive when the period ends, unless you renew
Akwa Atelier production
A separate tier above all licence tiers. Akwa's house atelier produces the garment directly, finished and shipped. Listings flagged "waitlist open" in the catalogue offer this. See Akwa Atelier production for details.
How licence tiers appear at checkout
On any catalogue listing detail page, you'll see a Step 2 selector with the available tiers. The tier governs the licence text included with your delivered PDFs and the legal terms of your purchase.
iOS purchases are limited to the personal-use tier in V1. Commercial and exclusive purchases require web checkout. (This is to comply with Apple's IAP rules; see our payments page for context.)
What you receive at each tier
All licence tiers include:
- The Tailor Brief PDF (construction document)
- The Cultural Design Breakdown PDF (wearer-facing dossier)
- The editorial render image
Higher tiers add legal scope (production rights, exclusivity), not extra deliverables.
Refund eligibility
Catalogue licences are refundable for material defects (corrupt PDF, render delivered without your specified colourway, technical failure). They are not refundable for aesthetic preference disagreements after delivery. See the refund policy for full eligibility.