Hair Extension Production: What You Need at Each Stage

Hair production is not a field you can enter with no investment at all. First you have to invest in good raw hair, quality chemicals and dyes; everything else can be cheap at the start.

Is it hard? No, if you follow a clear process and do not try to make the hair do the impossible. You can start with a basin and grow step by step into full production. Below is what you need at each stage, from choosing the raw hair to the finished bundle.

Please note, cheap dark raw hair, dyed or mixed needs more stages. Undyed or lightly dyed single-donor raw hair reaches blonde in fewer gentle stages.

What you need at each stage

1. Raw hair

The raw hair decides what you get in the end: cheap mixes or single-donor hair. The price range is very wide. For example, 1 kg of raw hair 60 cm long: India about $700, single-donor Chinese hair for blonde about $1,500.

2. Combing

You need a hackle, a board with rows of steel pins, to comb the hair through.

3. Stitching onto fabric

You need a sewing machine, fabric tape and thread. After stitching, the hair is weighed, so you also need scales. At the start, with small batches, an ordinary sewing machine for €200–300 is enough. An industrial one costs from about €700 to €2,000. You do not have to buy it right away, but later it will speed up the work a lot.

What matters more is not which machine you use but how you stitch: stitch thin, so the chemicals and dyes soak all the hair under the thread.

4. Washing and preparation for bleaching

The stitched raw hair is first washed with a deep-cleansing shampoo. It removes the oils, silicones and greasy coatings that suppliers sometimes put on the hair. Then the hair is prepared for bleaching, which takes 12 hours. You need a container and chemicals.

5. Bleaching

You need containers that hold the temperature:

• ordinary basins — then you have to keep the temperature by hand for several hours;
• a bain-marie, like the ones on buffet tables, at least 24 liters, better 30–36. A stainless steel food pan goes inside, the bain-marie is plugged in through an external temperature controller with a probe, and the temperature holds by itself. The bain-marie alone costs €90–130; in Germany a set with the pan and the controller comes to about €150. It is convenient for batches of 500–800 g. With a large batch and a lot of solution, extra heating may not be needed at all. We use these bain-maries at our offline training, and how to set one up and choose it is in the article “Bain-marie for hair bleaching”;
• for production — industrial bleaching tanks.

6. Dyeing

You need industrial dyes and toners. A set costs about $500. Our course students recently made a group purchase in their chat: the volume and the cost can be split with others. Dyes are weighed on precise jewelry scales. After dyeing, the hair is treated with conditioner.

7. Taking the hair off the fabric

Once dry, the hair is taken off the fabric and thread with a crochet hook.

8. Assembly

The hair is pulled through a hackle and then through another one, mixed and assembled into a finished bundle. At the end it is rinsed and left to dry naturally. The whole process, including stitching and drying between stages, takes up to 3 days.

Between stages: drying

The hair is dried several times: after bleaching, after dyeing and at the very end, so you need drying racks.

Chemicals and supplies

Chemicals are needed not only for bleaching but also to prepare for it. A first purchase of good laboratory-grade chemicals costs about $300–400; on the course we give a chemicals supplier for Europe and beyond. Bleaching and dyeing 1 kg costs $15 in one country and $30 or more in another: it depends on the price of chemicals and the volume you buy. Small items and supplies add about €100.

Work with chemicals in chemical-resistant gloves and a respirator or a mask with a carbon filter, in a well-ventilated room. Containers and measuring tools must be clean and used for chemicals only.

Workshop or home

How much you need to start

There is no single neat number for the start. It all depends on the country, on the price and volume of the chemicals and dyes you buy, on the raw hair you choose and on the product you want to make. But you will need to invest either way: for good chemicals and raw hair, we recommend at least €1,500–2,000 of free money on top of the course fee.

The whole process can be scaled up to serious production. We teach how to bleach and dye hair the industrial way on our course.