Helm › Helm University › Track 1 › Lesson 1.1
Lesson 1.1Who can open a shop, and what you agree to
Three rules decide whether you can sell here at all, and one of them is absolute.
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This lesson prepares you to: Say whether you are eligible to sell on Helm, and name what you accept when you apply.
Adults only, and it is enforced in code
You must be an adult account to sell on Helm. A kid or teen account that tries to apply is refused outright with a single message: Sellers must be adult accounts. This is not a setting a parent can switch on, and it is not a review decision somebody makes case by case. It is the first thing the application checks, before it looks at anything else you typed.
That is worth understanding rather than resenting. A seller on Helm is running a business with real money, real tax and real liability attached to it. Minors can do almost everything else here, including going live and earning, but they cannot take on a merchant's obligations.
One shop per account
You can hold exactly one shop. Applying when you already have one is refused with You already have a shop, and applying again while an earlier application is still being read is refused with Your application is under review. There is no queue to jump and no advantage to submitting twice.
If you run several brands, they live as one shop with one catalogue today. Helm has no multi-storefront model, and pretending otherwise by opening a second account is the kind of thing that gets both of them closed.
You accept the Shop policies, and the version is recorded
The application will not be created at all unless you tick the box accepting Helm's Shop policies. That covers prohibited items, buyer and seller protection, and the shipping commitment you are making.
The part most people miss is that Helm records which version you accepted, stamped onto your application at the moment you submit. The current version is 2026-07. When the policies change materially the version is bumped, and sellers are asked to accept the new one rather than being quietly held to terms they never read.
What Helm does not check when you apply
Being straight about the gaps is more useful than implying a gauntlet. The application does not verify your business registration, your tax status, your identity or your address. It collects what you tell it and puts it in front of a person. The real checks come later, at Stripe and at verification, and those two are where an application to sell becomes a shop that can actually take money.
What you are asked for
Only one field is genuinely required: your business name, between 2 and 120 characters. Everything else is optional, and the form takes a category, a business type, a rough monthly revenue, a description up to 2,000 characters, a contact email, where you ship from, and your website.
Fill in the optional fields anyway. A human reads this, and an application that says nothing except a business name gives them nothing to approve.