The Biggest Struggle When Starting A Hair Business (Q&A)
My biggest struggle is how to attract clients
Imagine that you're a buyer looking for hair. You randomly run into 10 hair sellers, and one of them is you. Would you buy from yourself, or would you buy from your competitors?
Advertising and attracting clients. I’ve paid for ads a few times l, but didn’t like the outcome. I advertise wig videos.
Are you mainly paying for ads to have your content shown. And what kind of content do you end up advertising for?
There are a lot of people posting wig videos. Do you feel that yours stand out?
Finding a reliable vendor. Finding a 613 vendor
I've never seen a "virgin" bundle in 613 which was worth selling. It's simply overprocessed and won't last long. There's some hair called "Yunnan remy hair" which could be fairly decent in 613 as virgin, but it's hard to find the real thing.
Most hair where you pay around $120+ for a 30" #613 bundle should be cut directly from a donor. But about 75% of that is still mildly processed. It's decent for 613 hair, but it's still more prone to shedding than the remaining 25% which didn't get processed at all.
Even if you're looking for other textures, as long as you can meet their MOQ, they could make it in any texture.
The price market; I don’t mind spending 300-400 on hair especially if it’s quality but it’s so many people with cheap affordable hair. I tried getting the affordable hair I didn’t like it and I had to wear it just because that’s what I was selling never got a bad review but from personal experience and what I like it was very bad it was really what I paid for ….
Since the pandemic, prices of the hair material that was cut directly from a donor skyrocketed, and went up by about 50%. The affordable hair has remained relatively the same, leading to a high shift from both vendors and sellers towards this processed affordable hair.
Even the manufacturers who produced high-quality hair, dropped their quality, up to a point where our only solution was to step up our game and customize our own bundles. Even sales aren't that good for this type of hair, simply based on price, but it's still worth it as it attracts some larger buyers.
Even if demand from your clients is this more affordable hair, at least it pays the bills. If you're passionate about the higher quality hair, you will find the right people as well.
Finding affordable vendors to start with
I feel the prices of the hair from most vendors is quite universal. With one vendor you might save $5 per bundle, but might screw you over on sending hair that barely reaches that length.
Try to find someone who can offer what you need, and go from there.
How to open my shop in my place because the is no hair styles in my area
Sounds like a good opportunity. If your difficulty is starting, don't overthink it and just start with whatever you already have available. Waiting for everything to be just right, often leads to people talking themselves out of it.
I tend to overthink things when deep down I know that will keep me stuck from moving as I should. I already make wigs and now I’m looking for a graphic designer to do my website. I’m working on putting my policy in place, picking my brand colors, logos etc. It overwhelms me just thinking about it. It’s a slow journey for me🥱
Big steps are scary. Try to break down these steps into very small ones. For example, coming up with a logo. Every day take 5 minutes of your day to create 5 small sketches of a logo. By the end of the week, you will have made 35 sketches. At the end of the week, take a couple of minutes to reflect on the sketches, pick the best ones. Repeat the process another week, and you'll have 70 small designs.
It's just one way of producing a lot of material, not being afraid to fail and throw some away, and boost creativity in very limited time.
Things like a website, just find websites you absolutely love, and pick their best elements and try to implement them in your own. You could even "steal" a design and make it your own. They will give you a quick foundation you can build on. And when you have these things in place, it's much easier to let a web designer make something and be close to the result you desire.
And most of all, if your passion is making wigs, keep focusing on them. Learn to present them as well as you can, meaning good lighting, a decent camera, and maybe a corner of your house simply set up to take great pictures/videos. I think developing this ability to p resent your work well as a wig-maker, will make you grow more than your website, perfect logo, or perfect brand colors would.
Finding a vendor that offers good quality with the hair textures 3a - 4c hair, kinky and yaki straight, that can bleach to 613.
I have found a trading company in china but they are expensive😭
Oh yeah, I can imagine how that will be difficult.
Mostly vendors with good quality hair could customize their texture, but that would come with an MOQ, which will be harder to meet for people starting out.
It's especially difficult to get curly hair right. The cuticle direction of curly hair is basically 360 degrees. So at some level, the cuticles aren't aligned. It tends to get processed to some extent, and there isn't a fixed ratio for it. It makes these textures relatively hair-care intensive.
And do you mean the hair has the ability to get to #613? As bleaching textured hair to #613 would straighten them out, that's why on our end, they're textured after bleached.
Half the trade companies call themselves hair factories. They're simply saying anything to get a sale, and sometimes the salespeople are kept in the dark about the hair itself, and are just following some script. I know vendors who advertise hair that only bleaches to #27, and say that it bleaches to #613.
Best way is to test it by yourself.
Sometimes the price is a giveaway. For example, if you see a 30" bundle for around $100 from China, it's simply too low for hair cut directly from a donor. It might be some mix, or some really overhyped processed hair. Mostly those lengths should be between $120-$140. Although when they charge these prices, you'd still have to fall back on testing it yourself.
And don't worry if anyone is a trading company. Some seem to prefer manufacturers and think they can get much cheaper prices, but that's an exaggeration. Just find someone who can deliver what you need. If price is an issue, you could possibly start with the expensive one and keep on looking while you're actually earning some money.
Good hair and marketing. good quality affordable no short hairs
Prices of raw hair without short hairs are astronomical, so you would probably have better luck with the "virgin" hair. Vietnamese are better with higher fullness of this type of hair
Being discouraged, I have been told it was too saturated.
It's too saturated for everyone doing the same thing. Selling "virgin" bundles + closures is what everyone is doing, including your Asian vendor. That makes competition fierce. At some point it will be getting closer to having more sellers than buyers.
But let's say that you're good at coloring hair, or styling hair, customized wigs sell much better, and it might be easier to start as it requires fairly little hair on hand. Your Asian vendor can't do this well, and these pre-made wigs are mostly bad quality. Even though we produce more quality customized wigs, we don't have that many customization options. Doing something like this would greatly reduce your competition.
Even something like Jewish wigs, some are paying $2500 a wig. And it's definitely not magical hair or anything that is that expensive to produce.
Of course there would be a whole lot of problems to solve, but simply start small, keep it simple, and perfect your c raft.
Don't look for what everyone else is doing, look for the opportunity and what unique thing you can offer.
SALES
Do you feel that there's something unique that you can offer?
Everyone is selling bundles + closure or frontal, so that makes it very competitive, and very difficult to convince people to buy your product.
It's great to think about something unique you can offer, which they can only get at your place. If people can see this, then they're more likely to choose for you
Finding a real raw hair vendor!
Finding a honest vendor
I’m looking for vendors that supplies hair cut directly from donors
Dishonesty is frustrating. There's a massive culture aspect to it as well. People in general aren't taught to think for themselves, just to follow others. That makes it very difficult to learn about hair and adapting to foreign culture.
But make sure that you're looking in the right price ranges. 30" easily goes for $130 per bundle in China. I'm not too sure about other countries, but as they don't appear to be dominating the market, I assume the difficulty finding a raw hair vendor from them is also difficult.
And testing for raw hair is probably easier than testing for a good quality "virgin." Just find 10 vendors in the right price range, order their shortest bundle, or even a fraction, and you can tell quite a lot from that piece alone. Can test by washing, feeling, smell, bleaching, scraping the hair, using acetone, and so on.
You would be able to collect a lot of data for relatively cheap. And only then move on to do a 2nd round of testing for the vendors who sent you the best hair.