Why Are Human Hair Extension Prices Rising?

Hair extensions and everything else the world has to offer for purchase is increasing as the years (even quarters) go by. The question on everybody's lips is why? The costs for a variety of items are slowly increasing and sure enough in the not so distant future, consumers will be shocked to find their favourite brands slap a high increase on their products and will be left to feel like they're getting ripped off because what you were paying before any increases seemed affordable.

Shock from increased prices will settle in for food, clothes (especially anything made of cotton) and fuel - let this be a warning that HUMAN hair extensions will be included in these price increases. If you are a consumer reading this blog, what you might not understand is that businesses go through a back-and-forth manner to finalise prices to ensure a sufficient profit is made and is affordable for their customers (this is how Hey Stacey works anyway, we are all about making luxury affordable and staying competitive in price with other hair extension brands on the market). How businesses manage these cost increases will overall be the determination of keeping loyal customers or losing them. 

Yes, human hair extensions are not manufactured like electrical goods such as Apple or Androids but as the demand grows for hair extensions, the more limited our industry's resource for human hair becomes. Believe it or not, but the condition of the world plays a major role in dictating the price of human hair and the hair extensions that come from that hair. It's not just how the hair extensions are made in the factory that determines the price, it's the transporting, the sourcing and everything in between that adds onto the price that manufacturers need to charge to support their business of supplying hair extensions to brands that sell hair extensions to consumers. 

The table above breaks down the costs of hair extensions and where the costing for human hair extensions stems from. When manufacturers source for human hair there are businesses that provide this service to the manufacturer and this is an added cost manufacturers need to add onto their cost price when charging businesses that will supply human hair extensions to consumers. Oil prices are spiking and that includes fuel - without fuel the hair can't be transported by air which is much more affordable than sea freight. This of course may mean nothing to a consumer but understanding the breakdown of hair extension costs might allow consumers to empathise and understand why businesses need to raise their prices as environmental factors change each year.

Transportation plays a very significant role in the cost of human hair therefore this is why the prices are rising as the demand grows larger - as we mentioned, resources for raw material used in human hair extensions is becoming very sparse this is an added cost because genuine high quality items almost double in price due to the difficulty to be found. For example, say you have in possession a once in a lifetime coin, it may be worth $2 if used in a shop to anyone that didn't know its worth but to anyone collecting coins would know that coin is worth a lot of money due to the limited amounts therefore the price to be sold is almost doubled due to it being so rare - the same logic applies for high grade human hair, it's hard to find therefore when found prices are doubled, sometimes even more! 

Manufacturers then have to sort, clean and chemically process the human hair to achieve it's colour and restore any lacking moisture from transportation or environmental factors such as the climate from where the hair was sourced from. The price of hair extensions increases depending on the processing as well. For example, Hey Stacey hair extensions are double drawn and this means during the manufacturing process each set of hair extensions is stripped of any shorter hairs that would make the ends thinner and replaced with longer hairs to allow thickness from root-to-tip. This is an incredibly time consuming process and time is money, this is a cost any manufacturer would wager into their final invoice supplied to a business. It may only be a small fee but depending on the quantity ordered per order, it adds up quickly. Again, we understand that as a consumer this may mean nothing to you, but it's important to know how your hair extensions are made and how the business you're purchasing from works out their prices. 

Hair extensions businesses aren't always quick to increases prices though - believe it or not, the consumer is a businesses number one priority. Without the consumer, there is no business. That's the case for Hey Stacey anyway, we can't speak on behalf on other hair extension companies. Businesses may become reluctant to raise prices during an economic downturn, COVID-19 being a major, major shock to the economic system. It should come to no surprise to see price increases in your food at your local grocer or your favourite clothing store during this pandemic because the cost of transportation is sky rocketing by the month! Everyone that buys fuel knows and should understand the importance of gasoline therefore should empathise when businesses need to up their prices to cover the skyrocketing oil prices around the globe.  

Hey Stacey is a business that wants to support both consumer and trade customers, this mean we endeavour to understand both sides of the purchase being made by a customer through Hey Stacey. We understand that public customers will always have a higher RRP to someone that works in a salon and this is kept in mind when creating Hey Stacey prices. We could write down a simplified yet descriptive dot point list of all the factors that go into the costing of hair extensions from start to finish but for a consumer the list can become overwhelming and the knowledge and true understanding of how the industry works can become blurred. It's a hard pill to swallow in this generation where trust between business and consumer can be difficult, but knowing the process behind the product you're buying is important because it might allow room for empathy when price increases are questioned.

Long story short: if you are after high quality, high grade human hair extensions expect the prices to rise every so often because the raw materials used in human hair extensions is lowering drastically and the cost of fuel for transportation purposes if increasing at an alarming rate. Every small cost adds up.