Who We Are
With the vision of building a company focused exclusively on hairdressers as business partners, Hans Erich Dotter founded Goldwell in 1920. Today, a part of Kao Salon Division along with KMS California, Goldwell offers a full portfolio of products including color, care, perm, styling and smoothing. The mission of Kao Salon Division is to enrich the lives of stylists, salon owners and their clients through partnership, salon business growth and their salon exclusive portfolio of advanced services, innovative products and inspiring education.

First Person
President and General Manager Trevor Attenborough of Kao USA’s Salon Division shares his thoughts on how Goldwell differs in the industry.

Unique Offerings
What sets Goldwell apart is that it’s completely hairdresser-centric. It uses a master shade palette, so regardless of whether you’re using the permanent Topchic, the demi-permanent Colorance, or our non-ammonia color line Nectaya, products are matched on level and tone so you can move from one line to another and know exactly what the end-result will be. Also, our depot system is the only canister system that allows for clean dispensing and exact measuring, as well as showcases the stylist as a professional master colorist in front of their client. Everything is meant to elevate the value/perception of the color service performed by colorists.

Color Zoom Competition
Color Zoom, our annual competition held at Global Zoom, is a celebration of creativity and inspiration for the entire industry, show-casing originality and fresh thinking in color. Every year, Goldwell Global Masters and former winners of the Color Zoom challenge create the next year’s collection. It inspires stylists to push the limits of their creativity at the competition and beyond.

Advanced Education
Our New York and Santa Monica, CA, academies are not just about informing and teaching the technical parts of hairdressing—they are creative and artistic destinations where stylists can find inspiration from everything around them.

Our master colorist program is a unique four-level educational program that progresses colorists to color mastery across technique, communication, service and artistry—all the elements a colorist needs to build a successful business. We also offer specialized courses such as our On Set three-day editorial fashion photoshoot workshop with Dimitrios Tsioumas and Babak utilizing professional models that results in a portfolio of work for each participant.

For every dream or passion a stylist could possibly have, we offer a course to get there. Combine that with our award-winning artistic team members and state-of-the-art national academies, and no one offers stylists better educational opportunities than Goldwell and KMS California.

Mutual Growth
We focus on helping salons grow service revenues and product sales with business-focused tools, planning and educational support. We teach how to use social media to bring in new clients and how to leverage upgrade menus for incremental revenue. We run national ad campaigns and events such as our recent Salon Style Week to drive consumers through your doors.

Formulation for Success
The number denotes the degree of lightness and darkness, and the letter denotes the shade or tone of a color. Goldwell uses a European level system to determine the depth of color (measurement from dark to light), with level 2 being the darkest black and 10 being the lightest blonde. Every haircolor, natural or color-treated, can be categorized between levels 2 and 10.

Goldwell has chosen 9 levels of variation from light to dark, eliminating the overlap of levels and the duplication of shades. The system is explained horizontally for a greater variety of shades within each level. Goldwell uses a lettering system to determine the shades and tones found in the hair. The letter relates directly to the base color within the shade. When two letters are present, the base will be predominantly the first letter in the direction of the second letter. For example: GB tones are predominantly gold in the brown or beige direction.