Wednesday, June 14, 2017

WHY IS AUTHENTIC VIRGIN HAIR SO HARD TO FIND?

When looking to purchase a hair piece is always best to start with a bit of research.  FeatherLite specializes in collecting virgin Slavic hair for our hair pieces, so we will go over some of the challenges in finding virgin hair, how to know if it's authentic virgin hair, and why wig manufacturers often avoid working with virgin hair.  



Why is virgin hair so hard to find?  Let's start with a little background info.  My name is Isadore Hoffman.  I have been the owner and main wig maker of FeatherLite wigs for 9 years.  When I first started in the industry I was completely perplexed with the terminology used by wig makers and factories concerning types of hair and what it all means.  Even more challenging, was finding the quality of virgin hair that I wanted once I understood how it all worked.  It seemed to me that people who had it were impossible to find unless I was willing of visit Russia myself in search for it.  But I had a dream.  I wanted the perfect hair that I could simply wash, air dry, and leave the house with.  I wanted to be able to flip my hair from side to side, play with it between my fingers, and put it up in a ponytail just like I did with my own hair.  I wanted to make women feel beautiful!  And so, my journey began, and today I'm sharing this information with you in the hope that it will help you make more educated decisions about purchasing hair pieces.

To start with, virgin hair was not always hard to find.  As Slavic countries started to modernize, women stopped growing their hair so long.  They started dying it, cutting it, and adopting more modern hair styles.  Hair collectors had their work cut out for them, having to travel to more remote areas to find women with longer hair who were willing to sell it.  This began the surge in prices that continues today. 

Another road block I ran into, was discovering that the market is saturated with fake virgin hair ponytails fashioned by hair sellers who have perfected the art of chemical processing.  Now, this doesn't mean the hair is not Slavic or that it's cheaper hair sourced in India or China.  The issue for hair sellers is that hair comes mostly in darker colours and requires colour treatment to provide the spectrum of colours hair buyers and wig makers are looking for.  In addition, the hair often needs some chemical processing to make it finer.  This is part of the reason why you are almost never getting the hair you think you are getting.

When I finally started producing hair pieces on a larger scale in around 2010, I quickly found out why wig makers avoid using virgin hair.  That's right, big brand wig makers AVOID using virgin hair!  Why?  It's important to first understand how wigs are produced.  Normally, hair is sent to the factory in large quantity and gets sorted according to texture and general colour.  Any differences in texture are corrected and made uniform by chemical processing (more about this later), and the hair is dyed to meet consumer demands for various popular colours.  This way, they are always producing exactly what clients demand.  Virgin hair wigs are significantly more complicated to make.  Firstly, the hair available for purchase does not reflect consumer demand for colour and texture.  This means more women need light brown and blonde hair than there is hair available to purchase.  Only a small percentage of the hair available is naturally those colours. Secondly, more women are looking for straighter hair than wavy or curly hair, but the majority of the hair available is wavy or curly.  Therefore, if you wanted to produce wigs on mass to meet the demands of your consumers, you would not be able to do so with virgin hair.

I hope this was helpful to you all!  Stay tuned for our next blog post on how virgin hair wigs are made.  Visit FeatherLite by Isadore on Facebook  for information and events or email flhairsystems@gmail.com for inquiries.

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