10 Examples of Ecommerce Brands Using Headless Shopify in 2026

A headless Shopify store keeps Shopify as the commerce engine (products, cart, checkout, orders) and replaces the theme with a custom storefront that talks to Shopify through the Storefront API. In October 2026, brands such as Suitsupply, Nothing, SKIMS, Mejuri, Strathberry and e.l.f. Cosmetics run their storefronts this way, most of them on Shopify's own stack: Hydrogen and Oxygen.

We first published this list in 2023. When we re-checked it on October 29, 2026, only one of the original ten stores still ran a headless storefront. Eight now run on a Shopify theme, and one store is closed behind a password page. So this version explains what happened to the old examples and why stores move back to themes, lists ten brands we verified on their live sites, shows how to check any store yourself, and adds what we learned building a headless store ourselves.

A note before the list: the ten stores below are not our projects. The headless store we built, OPTISOFA, is described separately in the section "From our practice" below.

What happened to the 2023 examples

Headless was the hot topic of 2022–2023, and many lists (ours included) featured the same brands. Here is where those stores are today:

All ten domains still run on Shopify. What changed is the layer customers see. Shopify's own case studies about Kotn and Bols still describe their headless builds, so these were real custom storefronts, not mislabeled themes.

Why 8 of the 2023 brands went back to a Shopify theme

We looked for public explanations from each brand: statements, press coverage, engineering posts, Shopify case studies and interviews. For most of them we found none, and we don't guess. Here is what is on the record as of October 29, 2026:

So the brands themselves mostly haven't said why. What we can describe is why stores in general move from a custom front end back to a theme. We mark which points are documented by Shopify and which come from our own projects.

Themes caught up with many reasons to go headless (documented). Online Store 2.0, launched in 2021, lets merchants add sections to most pages and, in Shopify's words, "personalize many more aspects of a store without relying on a developer" (Shopify: Online Store 2.0). Horizon themes, launched in 2025, add nested theme blocks and AI-generated blocks in the theme editor (Shopify Summer '25 Edition). Much of what brands used to build a custom front end for, such as flexible page layouts and custom content on product pages, is now possible in a theme.

Apps plug into themes without code (documented). Theme app extensions let merchants add reviews, ratings, upsells and similar features through app blocks in the theme editor, and Shopify notes that "merchants won't need to manually edit their theme code" (Shopify: theme app extensions). On a custom storefront, each of those apps has to be integrated through its API or SDK, or replaced.

A custom front end is a product you keep paying for (documented and our experience). Shopify releases a new API version every three months, and each stable version is supported for at least 12 months (Shopify: API versioning), so a headless store needs regular upgrades. In our projects, the larger cost is the team: someone has to own the front end, the hosting, the CMS and every integration after launch. When that team shrinks, a theme becomes the safer choice.

Merchandisers want to work without developers (our experience). In a headless store, many content changes go through a developer and a deployment unless the CMS is set up very well. Marketing teams that launch campaigns often feel this first. The Allbirds regional sites above are a public example of the same reasoning.

Checkout is no longer a reason to go custom (our experience). Checkout runs on Shopify in both setups, and it is customized the same way, with Checkout Extensibility, whether the storefront is a theme or Hydrogen. Shopify has retired the older checkout customizations; for example, the additional scripts section in checkout settings has been view-only since August 28, 2025 (Shopify Help Center). More in our Checkout Extensibility guide.

Speed alone rarely justifies headless (our experience). Speed was the headline argument for headless in 2023. A headless storefront is fast only if caching, images and scripts are done right, and a lean theme with few apps can pass Core Web Vitals too. In our view, speed alone rarely justifies the extra cost of a custom front end; see our Shopify speed optimization work.

None of this makes headless wrong. The ten stores below show it still pays off for some brands. It does show that a headless storefront is a decision brands revisit, not a one-way upgrade.

How we checked each store

You can check any Shopify store in a few minutes with your browser's developer tools (Network tab, first document request) or curl -I:

• Hydrogen on Oxygen: the response has the header powered-by: Shopify, Oxygen, Hydrogen, and the page source contains React Router (formerly Remix) data instead of a Shopify theme.
• Shopify theme (Liquid): the page source contains a Shopify.theme object with the theme name, and the server-timing header includes a theme entry.
• Other headless setups: no theme object, but Shopify still appears behind the scenes, for example cart and account links pointing to a myshopify.com domain, while the page is built with another framework (Next.js, Nuxt and so on).

We fetched each homepage on October 29, 2026 from Poland. Large brands sometimes serve different storefronts per market, so a check from another country can give a different result.

10 headless Shopify examples in 2026

"Stack we observed" means what is visible from outside: response headers and the scripts and image domains a page loads. A brand may use more tools than we list.

1. Suitsupply

Suitsupply is a Dutch menswear brand selling suits and made-to-measure tailoring in many countries. Its storefront runs on Hydrogen and Oxygen, and loads assets from Sanity. When we visited from Poland, the site served a Polish-language store, which shows the kind of market-by-market experience headless is often chosen for: one Shopify back end, a storefront adapted to each country.

2. Nothing

Nothing, the London-based consumer electronics company, runs a Hydrogen storefront on Oxygen with Sanity as its content source. For a tech brand whose product launches are design-heavy, this setup lets the team build launch pages that look like product marketing sites while the cart and checkout stay on Shopify.

3. SKIMS

SKIMS, the apparel brand co-founded by Kim Kardashian, runs on Hydrogen and Oxygen. Its storefront loads content from Sanity, search from Algolia and cross-border pricing scripts from Global-e. It shows a typical headless pattern at scale: Shopify for commerce, specialist services for content, search and international selling, and a custom front end that combines them.

4. Mejuri

Mejuri, the Canadian fine jewelry brand, runs on Hydrogen and Oxygen with Sanity for content. Jewelry sells on detail: close-up imagery, styling and editorial content sit next to the products, and a headless CMS gives the content team its own editor for that.

5. Strathberry

Strathberry, a Scottish luxury handbag brand, runs its storefront on Hydrogen and Oxygen. It is a good example for smaller luxury brands: headless is not reserved for companies the size of SKIMS, but it does need a team that can maintain the front end.

6. e.l.f. Cosmetics

e.l.f. Cosmetics runs on Hydrogen and Oxygen, and its pages load content from Builder.io, a visual editor that lets marketers assemble pages without developers. The homepage declares 15 regional versions in its hreflang tags (including Poland), all in English, which is the kind of international SEO setup that has to be built and tested in a headless store.

7. Tecovas

Tecovas, the Texas boot and western wear brand, uses Hydrogen and Oxygen with Sanity for content and Algolia for search. A catalog of boots in many sizes, widths and leathers needs fast filtering, which is one reason brands add a dedicated search service to a headless storefront.

8. Caraway

Caraway sells non-stick ceramic cookware. Its response header reads powered-by: Shopify, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Hydrogen + Pack Digital: the storefront is built with Pack, a platform that adds a visual editor and page builder on top of Hydrogen. It is an example of the middle ground between a fully custom build and a theme.

9. Boll & Branch

Boll & Branch, the organic bedding brand, runs on Hydrogen and Oxygen with Sanity. Home textiles are a considered purchase with a lot of explanation around materials and care, so content and products sit side by side on most pages.

10. Recess

Recess is the only store from our 2023 list that is still headless. It doesn't use Hydrogen: the front end is built with Nuxt (Vue), hosted on Netlify, with content from Sanity, and the cart and customer accounts connect to the brand's Shopify store. It is a reminder that "headless Shopify" doesn't have to mean Hydrogen; any framework can use Shopify's APIs.

What we learned from OPTISOFA's headless store

In 2023 we built a headless Shopify store for OPTISOFA, a Polish furniture brand with more than 30 years on the market. Paweł Dymek, the author of this article, was the full-stack team leader on the project.

• Starting point: the store ran on WooCommerce. The client wanted a fast, easy-to-use store that matched its new brand communication and showed the products accurately.
• Decision: after extended discussions with the client, we moved the store to Shopify Advanced with a headless architecture, chosen for performance and user experience.
• Design: a custom storefront; our team designed dozens of unique views from scratch and reviewed them with the client as the project went on.
• 3D and AR configurator: we implemented a 3D configurator built by Mimeeq, which prepared the furniture models, textures and color variants. Customers can place furniture in their own room with AR, and because each variant has its own ID, materials and textures change on the same model.

Mateusz Kasprzak, OPTISOFA's e-commerce manager, summed up the reason for the project: "As we grew, it became clear that we needed not just a sales platform, but a modern, multi-functional service." The full story is in the OPTISOFA case study, and more furniture examples are in 7 brilliant furniture configurators.

OPTISOFA today. In the spirit of the rest of this article: when we checked on October 29, 2026, optisofa.com ran on a custom Shopify theme (Liquid), not on the headless storefront we built in 2023. So OPTISOFA went back to a theme too, and here we can say why, because we were part of the decision:

• Operational speed mattered more than raw speed. On a theme, the team can change the store faster, install apps and test new solutions without a developer building each one into a custom front end.
• The performance gain didn't pay for that. The headless setup was somewhat faster, but not by enough to outweigh how much slower day-to-day changes were.
• A redesign was due anyway. When the store needed a new design, the client used the moment to simplify operations. Everything they wanted to launch could be built on Liquid, including the 3D configurators: the store kept its Mimeeq integration and moved its modular sofa configurator to The Planner Studio. No feature required staying headless. We designed and built the new store in 2025, launched in 2026.

For us, this is the most useful lesson in the article: headless was a reasonable choice for OPTISOFA in 2023, and a theme was the better choice for the same brand a few years later. The right architecture depends on how the team works, not only on how fast the pages load.

When headless makes sense, and when it doesn't

The examples above have something in common: large catalogs, many markets or content-heavy brands, and teams that can maintain a custom front end. That is where headless usually pays off:

• the product experience goes beyond what a theme handles well (configurators, bundle builders, rich editorial content next to products),
• the brand sells in many markets or runs several brands on separate storefronts,
• the content team works in a headless CMS and wants one front end for content and commerce,
• there is a budget and a team for development after launch, including Shopify's quarterly API upgrades.

It usually doesn't pay off when the catalog and pages are standard, the current theme already passes Core Web Vitals, the launch date is a few weeks away, or nobody will own the storefront after launch. In that case, a well-built theme is faster to launch and cheaper to run.

We cover this in more depth elsewhere, so we won't repeat it here:

• When does a headless Shopify storefront actually make sense?: the decision framework and total cost of ownership.
• Shopify Hydrogen and Oxygen: what you need to know: what Hydrogen 2026-10 changed, Oxygen plans and limits, and what going headless doesn't change.
• Headless Shopify: advantages and disadvantages: our podcast episode (recorded in Polish) in which Maciek Czerniak and Kamil Frejlich discuss real examples.
• Headless CMS SEO: what to build and test so a headless store doesn't lose search traffic.

Headless Shopify development at wecanfly

wecanfly is a Shopify Premier Partner with 400+ Shopify projects since 2016. We build headless Shopify storefronts on Hydrogen and other frameworks, custom Shopify apps and integrations, and we migrate stores from WooCommerce and other platforms, as we did for OPTISOFA. We also tell clients when a theme is the better choice: for most stores it is. If you're weighing headless against a theme, send us your project brief and we'll give you an honest recommendation.