Keune Haircosmetics

Keune Haircosmetics is an international hair care brand. Jan Keune founded the company in 1922 in Amsterdam, developing the first perm lotion. His son George is now 96, but still comes to the headquarters in Soest four days a week. This is where Keune has its warehouse, but also its factory and laboratory.

"Everything happens here," says Pauline van Enschot, Global Head of Digital. "We develop everything in-house. The formulas, the production, all in one place."

This is also home to the Keune Academy, where hairdressers are trained to get the most out of the products. The hairdresser is central to everything Keune does. "You won't find us in drugstores or department stores," says Pauline. "That's one of the key ways we distinguish ourselves as professional hair care. Keune will always stay loyal to the hairdresser or hairstylist. Everything we do has to be in their interest too."

90 countries, no blueprint

Keune is available in more than 90 countries. In the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany, among others, Keune has its own offices. There, they handle everything themselves — from marketing to distribution. In other countries, they work with licence holders who have exclusive rights for a region. And in yet other countries, distributors purchase the products and sell them locally.

Each of these setups comes with different agreements. "We want to be uniform," Pauline explains. "Whether you go to the Dutch site or the French or Swedish one — it should feel the same. But at the same time, in some countries we have a different product portfolio, different launch moments, different people who are allowed to make changes."

From salon to webshop — but not without the hairdresser

In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, many hairdressers had to close their salons. Keune decided to start selling directly to consumers for the first time. In 2020, the first webshop went live in the Netherlands. But with one guiding principle: the hairdresser had to benefit from it too. What could have been a source of tension — online sales competing with the salon — was turned into a shared interest.

The solution: a kickback system. When consumers buy a product online, they can indicate their regular salon at checkout. "That's how our B2C channel was born," says Pauline. "When people bought our products, they could say: this is my hairdresser. And that hairdresser receives a share of the revenue."

"We invest in online marketing, in our brand awareness, to grow our brand. But the hairdresser will always benefit. When we make our brand bigger, the hairdresser has to gain from that too."

Headless as the answer

The brief to Ask Phill in 2021: build a webshop on Shopify that works in dozens of languages, with local teams managing their own content and a kickback system that automatically links salons to orders.

"Shopify was still very much in development in 2021," says Martijn Wijsmuller, co-founder of Ask Phill. "Back then, only one language was possible. And beyond that, Keune also wanted to give specific employees access to specific languages. So that someone in the Netherlands can only edit Dutch content. That's not possible in Shopify."

Ask Phill proposed a solution: headless. Shopify does what it's good at — the checkout, inventory management, payments — while a separate CMS handles the complexity of the content.

For Keune, this turned out to be the way to translate their complex situation into a working platform. "At the time, that was a new solution," says Pauline.

And the kickback system? That was built as a separate database, connected to Shopify, that automatically links the right salon to the customer with every order.

The redesign

In 2025, Keune decided it was time for a refreshed website, coinciding with the launch of a completely renewed care line — the largest part of their range. New formulas, new packaging, new product photography. Everything had to go live at once.

"That entire line was being relaunched. Everything out, then all the products back in. And that happened simultaneously with the new website."

This brought a logistical puzzle. The old products needed to keep selling as long as possible, but as soon as the new line was in the warehouse, the switch had to happen fast.

"And then the question came up: is headless still the best option? Shopify has developed significantly over the past few years. Where the platform could only handle one language in 2021, it now supports dozens. Wouldn't switching to native Shopify make more sense?" says Pauline. "Could we move to Shopify's CMS? But we almost immediately ran into limitations that were decisive for us. The system with separate content permissions for different countries remains crucial. Headless stayed."

Meanwhile, the redesign was used to make improvements under the hood. Anatoli Hlopetchi, the lead developer from Ask Phill on this project, ensured that deployments that previously sometimes took 45 minutes or crashed were reduced to stable 10 to 20 minutes.

In September, everything went live. New design, new care line, improved technology.

"We went live that Monday. I was holding my breath," says Pauline. "I've never had such a smooth launch. And we received so many responses from people who thought the new design looked really beautiful."

The next phase

It doesn't stop here. Just as Keune continues to evolve as an organisation, the webshop is constantly being developed further. "They keep coming up with ideas," says Anatoli. "The backlog is always full. That makes Keune a really enjoyable brand to work with. Partly because of their requests, I've been able to specialise extensively as a Shopify developer."

A cart drawer. A new menu bar. Discount pop-ups. Automatically added free items. At the top of the list is something bigger: expanding the kickback system into a full loyalty programme. Currently, salons benefit when their customers order online. Soon, those salons will also be able to reward their own customers — earning points that can be redeemed both online and in the salon.

"We've wanted this for years," says Pauline. "But there was no room for it. In three years, we've rolled out nine countries, done a redesign. Now there's space to build."

Want a next level Shopify experience for your brand? Work with us.