Wig Maker Keeps Things Fair With Blond Focus

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Kathleen C. was born in Chicago and now lives in Long Beach. Her hair made a more circuitous journey, starting in Eastern Europe and going to Weihai, a northern coastal city in China, before finding its way to Beverly Hills and onto her.

Hers is one of the high-end wigs manufactured by Follea Inc., which specializes in premium blond hair pieces.

“It was lighter, nearly indistinguishable from my own hair in color and texture,” said Kathleen, who lost her hair after chemotherapy treatment and asked that her last name not be used. She got her honey-blond wig last week.

The $823 million U.S. wig and hairpiece manufacturing sector has seen prices start to climb, especially at the high end, where human-hair wigs are increasingly sought after.

That has prompted Follea of Beverly Hills to start a registry system last month to assure customers that they have not purchased a counterfeit product. Each hair piece, which can cost up to $6,000, is embedded with a serial number, and when a buyer purchases a Follea from a third-party vendor, they can enter that number on the company’s website to make sure it’s not a fake.

“I’ve seen many instances of counterfeits,” said Michael Leigh, president of the company. “We decided not to wait until it becomes a flood to see what we could do about it.”

Leigh said counterfeits haven’t cut into sales in a significant way yet. So far, Follea has come across four cases of counterfeits, two in China and two in the United States.

Rising prices are behind a rise in crime. According to a news report last week, members of a crime ring have grabbed long-haired women in Venezuela and quickly cut off their hair. And reports of stolen and counterfeit wigs are becoming more common.

Leigh said a kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds, of high-quality, long blond hair from Eastern Europe can cost as much as $3,000, while good hair from India or China, two of the largest human-hair exporters, is about $300 to $500 a kilogram. Some manufacturers even use hair that has been swept up from floors, which is even cheaper.

Blond hair from Eastern Europea is desired because it doesn’t require chemical treatment to alter its color. Darker hair from India or China requires an acid treatment to wash out its natural color, followed by dyeing. Though stronger than light hair, dark hair becomes weak and looks unnatural after such processes.

One factor driving price increases, said Christopher Webb, publisher and editor-in-chief at National Hair & Skin Journal, has been a simple change in style. As shorter hairstyles have come into vogue, women are less inclined to grow their hair to the lengths necessary for wig and extension manufacturers. (Human hair grows at a rate of from a quarter-inch to a half-inch a month. Manufacturers look for hair that is 18 inches or longer, requiring at least a three-year growth period.)


Combing the globe

The wig business is much like any other. Manufacturers sell to wholesalers who in turn supply retailers with branded or private-label goods.

But Follea, which has a showroom on South Beverly Drive, is vertically integrated. It makes wigs in its factory in China, using human hair purchased in Russia and Eastern European countries. The finished pieces are shipped to Beverly Hills and from there distributed to vendors around the world.

Follea’s founder, Daniel Hafid, started manufacturing in China in 2000 after two decades of working in the hair-creation business. The son of late French stylist and wig-maker Rene Hafid, known as “Rene of Paris,” Daniel Hafid at first focused on private-label manufacturing, but felt the need to start his own brand.

He formed Follea in 2008, and asked Leigh, a longtime friend who had 30 years of experience in advertising and running technology companies, to be president. Hafid remains in China, supervising the factory operation, while the company is headquartered in Beverly Hills.

While he declined to disclose revenue figures, Leigh said that over the last two years the company had seen year-over-year sales growth of more than 50 percent.

Follea’s focus on manufacturing in China runs against the current tide of insourcing, but Leigh said the company has been very happy with both the quality and price of the working coming out of its facility. He said “several hundred” people work at Follea’s five-story, 150,000-square-foot plant in Weihai.

“The craftsmanship is incredible there as long as you allow that craftsmanship and personal discipline to come through,” he said.

He admitted low cost was a key factor in the decision to locate in China, although costs have tripled since the factory opened.

Follea’s factory was shut down for three months after a fire in 2011. The company temporarily moved its manufacturing to the United States and Europe, as well as cheaper countries such as Indonesia and Thailand. Leigh said the experiment just showed how much better off the company was in China.

“There are a lot of bad products that come out of China,” he said. “But if you want good products and if you run a factory correctly, people that are available there are extraordinary.”

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