| Category | Cars |
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| Created | 2019-11-22 | ||||
| Owner | freemexy | ||||
| Title | The Cost of Sourcing Real Hair Extensions Around the World | ||||
| Description | The Cost of Sourcing Real Hair Extensions Around the World Human hair is a commodity. And an incredibly hot one at that. In 2016, imports to the U.S. alone were a business of almost $700 million (up from $51.6 million in 1992). The most highly publicized sources are Indian women: Hindu pilgrims travel for days and line up for hours at temples, where their heads are shaved as part of a sacred ritual called tonsuring.Hair factory The temples sell it, for up to $700 a kilo, to buyers who then process, sell, and ship it all over the world. The temple in Tirumala has been said to make more than $7 million a year in hair sales. But there are many other potential starting points — and often many pit stops before a bundle of thick, shining hair makes it to a storefront or salon. The international hair trade is as vast as it is unregulated; which is why, for our March 2018 "Culture of Hair" issue (featuring actress Lupita Nyong'o), we followed four shipments from scissors, creating maps of a few of the key hair trade routes — information you may want to keep in mind the next time you're thinking of purchasing extensions. Piny Benzaken has been creating hairpieces for celebrities both on camera (for movies like Pulp Fiction and Planet of the Apes) and off (for stars like Kim Kardashian West and Julia Roberts) since 1977. For much of that time, he’s worked with a Russian supplier. Many of the Russian suppliers we spoke to source hair from Ukraine, some from Siberia. (This hair is often then processed in China.) Eastern European hair is in relatively short supply — and is accordingly highly priced — because women in the region aren’t as desperate to sell their hair for extra cash as they are in developing countries. “When my supplier comes with a suitcase of hair, I buy all of it,” Benzaken says. Indique Hair, a retailer with 16 stores in the U.S., sells hair sourced from Indian temples and collectors in Southeast Asia. The company’s CEO is based in Delhi, India, near the factory where Indique’s wigs and extensions are made. From there, stock is sent to offices in Boston, where it’s shipped to U.S. stores as well as online customers from Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, and Western Europe. Manhattan hair-extension and blowout bar RPZL sells and applies its own brand of clip-in extensions as well as semipermanent taped and ultrasound-keratin-bonded ones. RPZL’s hair is sourced and sanitized in India, then dyed and packaged in Naples, Italy. Cofounder Monica Thornton, a former human-rights lawyer, does her best to identify ethical suppliers: “I look for the longevity of the operation. If it’s been around for a while, that tells me that they have a positive, stable relationship with their communities over time.” Amber Harrison, the owner of Wicked Weaves Salons in Dallas and East Harlem, buys hair — about 90 pounds a month — at a New York City storefront. “Their factory is based in Qingdao, China,” Harrison says. “They tell me that the hair comes from the residents there, but I don’t know how true that is.” (We asked dozens of industry sources how hair in China is procured, but no one could say for certain where or whom it was coming from. Some reports claim that hair agents visit villages, offering poor women payment for their hair.) Harrison always inspects strands closely to determine what’s natural and what she suspects has been mixed with synthetic fibers. | ||||
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| Broken | No | ||||
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| Promotion level | None | ||||
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