I am assured you have wondered what the fact is about the prices of wigs made from European human hair. From store to store you will discover a huge variation in prices – anywhere from 300 USD to as high as 10.000 USD (!). So permit me take you through every step of the process of producing high quality handmade wigs, and show the exact costs.
Firstly, take the acquisition of hair. The value of hair for one wig (0,2 to 0,4 kg) varies from 30 to 40 USD throughout largely Eastern European countries. There is tiny variation there, but an top additional cost is incurred by high-quality wig-makers who collect hair in an appropriate and really-controlled method. The important wig-makers visit hairdressers and keeping for the hair themselves, using no middleman. They do not buy hair from wholesalers because wholesalers blend hair, because it is so period-consuming to obtain efficiently excellent hair. One simply has to find a girl between hairdresser’s clients that has good-looking, healthy hair and who wants it cut. The hairdresser can offer a free service to such a girl and actually pay her for her hair – and clearly both sides benefit from such a transaction. But this shows that, by its very nature, acquisition of fine-quality hair cannot be a effortless big-scale automatic process. That explains why outside of Eastern Europe the value of acquiring good quality hair is skyrocketing – not because the hair in itself is expensive, but because of its rarity. It is difficult to imagine a huge-scale cheap method of acquiring high quality human hair in European countries.
Second, take the other materials used in making wigs. These are not expensive and their costs do not exceed 50 USD for a typical wig. These are the materials used to produce a cap. More and more wig-makers are now buying arranged-made caps, so called “monofilament”, which are gaining recognition and their charge is not very high.
Third, take the labor involved in making high quality handmade wigs. This is the main value factor. Handmade wig needs at least a week to be produced by an skilled specialist worker. It takes a week of hard work, with each hair being knitted to the cap with a very small crochet-needle otherwise glued with a special glue. In the example of long hair, the production period could be two to three weeks. Honest wig-makers knit hair with a double-knot which makes the construction much more durable but requests any extra work-time. Depending on the type of wig, length of hair and type of cap the fee of labor is from 150 to 300 USD.
Finally, you cannot forget other typical manufacturing costs – investment’s amortization, management costs, taxes, insurances, rent, and profit. Altogether, the cost of a handmade human hair wig made from European hair cannot be lower than 500-600 USD even for the shortest hair. There is no upper limit and it only depends on how much a customer is willing to pay, but before you pay 1000 USD or else more for your wig remember the exact costs of its creation.
And now for a true mystery. Why are European human hair wigs not made in China where labor costs are much lower than in Poland, Russia, or else the Czech Republic? The main reason is no good quality European human hair available in large sufficient quantities to make profitable great-scale production in China probable. This is because wig-makers in Eastern European countries are buying everything of the available hair for their own production. Surprising? – but that is how it is. And that is why most of wigs produced in China are made of Asian hair or blended hair generally available on a wholesale market.
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