MARKETING TRANSFORMATION: Mrs.

Nayan Mitra

MARKETING TRANSFORMATION: FROM RURAL TO GLOBAL; FAITH TO FAD - Mrs. Nayan Mitra
On my recent visit to rural West Bengal (now, Pashimbanga; India), three hours drive from the metropolitan city of Kolkata, I came across a man on a cycle, laden with various kinds of goods. He had a loud speaker attached to the front of his cycle playing contemporary Bollywood numbers. It was apparent; his coming to the village is an incident of great merry making and much joy. People, of all sizes and shapes, flocked as soon as they heard him. The children followed him from house to house, dancing to the tunes of the popular Hindi songs. This invoked interest in me and moving forward, I saw, the villagers handing over to him some conspicuous packets. As I interacted with the villagers and the mysterious man on the cycle, guess what I found out! The villagers were selling their HAIR in lieu of material possessions ranging from sweetmeats (bonde: a variety of fried, sticky, miniature balls of sweet meat usually yellow in colour) to stainless steel bowl and other household items, depending on the weight of the hair. These hair are naturally fallen hair, painstakingly accumulated over a period of time. This man comes once in a while to collect them through a process of age-old barter system.

Photograph by: Nayan Mitra

Apart from door-to-door collection (broken or waste hair, discarded from the comb, picked up from floor, bought off ragpickers or collected every week from rural households), in India, hair is also sourced from temples. It is ingrained within the Indian social system of sacrifice of hair on various occasions and beliefs to appease Gods. This is especially prevalent among the Hindus. 1|Page

MARKETING TRANSFORMATION: Mrs. Nayan Mitra

The diagram is as follows:

SOURCE OF HAIR

INDIVIDUAL HOUSEHOLDS

TEMPLES

Indian hair is vastly regarded in the hair industry because of its flexibility, durability, and texture. This is so because Indian hair is normally thicker in nature and luster (secretly and nontechnically, I think, much credit goes to the Indian ritual of oiling/ nourishing/ moisturizing/cleansing the hair on a daily basis with herbal elements like coconut oil, ritha, shikakai ) that gives it the option of incorporating various styles. Indian hair is also widely available (Eg. The Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam auctions huge quantity of hair very four months that are bought and exported by businessmen). Its natural thick and lustrous nature provides best possible styling and installation options for extensions. Indian human hair also comes in various other colors like dark brown, brown, grey and white apart from the predominant black. The natural darkness of the hair works wonders with most braiding and weaving applications for women of color. Raw hair is auctioned and the highest bidder bags the deal. Infact, a legal battle is underway between the Tirumala Tirupati Devastham and the hair exporters. The fight revolved around hair prices, which exporters claim the temple authorities raise arbitrarily by 10-15 % every auction whereas the international market revives its rates only once or twice a year. The hair is then inspected and graded into bundles before processing. Processing, for most hair companies in India are done manually by sorting, washing, drying and bundling the hair to meet customer requirements. The hair is used for making Mannequins and wigs, and sold at very high prices at the domestic, as well as the International market. The thickness of individual hair depends from person to person and also nature of hair (whether it is straight, curly, wavy and silky). Approximately 10-20 hair piled up on top of another will give a thickness of 1 mm. A head full of hair will have approximately 1,20,000 1,50,000 hair. So, a completely bald person will require that much hair to cover up his baldness! 2|Page

MARKETING TRANSFORMATION: Mrs. Nayan Mitra So, there, right in front of me, unveiled a picture of a simple demand-supply mechanism that exists right under our nose, but of which, many of us are unaware of.

DEMAND: Mannequins, wigs, hair extension/weaving through bonding, tracking, fusion, netting

SUPPLY: Door-to-door: a normal human being loses about 50-100 hairs naturally per day. 70% of Indian population resides in the rural sector. Temple: Hindu ritual of sacrificing hair to appease Gods.

Processed hair can be classified as: i) VIRGIN HAIR: 100 per cent natural, processed hair is known as virgin hair. It is so natural that the cuticles are not damaged, so as to give it a completely natural look. ii) REMY HAIR: Remy hair (also spelt as remi) is also known as cuticle hair. It is also virgin hair, where both the cuticles and the ends of all the hairs face the same direction, so as to give a tanglefree look. The highest-grade of human hair which is available is known as Real Remy cuticle hair and comes from a single individual. This kind of hair is parted and made to fall according to its natural growing pattern. It is then cut and sewn with utmost care so as to keep up its normal direction of the cuticle and to prevent matting and tangling. The hair collected by ragpickers from individual, rural household, like our man in cycle is non-remy hair. Other commercial terms used by hair traders are:

a) Single drawn hair: Here, the hair is assorted in the shape of a ponytail with various lengths of hair. However, very short hairs are not taken. The normal sizes vary from 16 19. b) Double drawn hair: Here, all the hairs are of the same length, no bigger, no smaller. This type of hair is expensive as the entire procedure is manual. c) Bulk and wefted hair: The former, as the name suggests, is loose hair, having the flexibility to be braided as well as used for hair extension. The later, on the other hand, is the hair used for sewing or bonding or, in weaving.

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MARKETING TRANSFORMATION: Mrs. Nayan Mitra These various types of processed hair is bought, directly or through auction by wholesalers and then further processed into finished goods, which are thereafter bought by the retailers and reached to the end-users through various salons, hair-care shelves, hair treatment centres and other stores in the forms of: MANNEQUINS, WIGS: It is used to make mannequins, wigs for all in need. HAIR EXTENSION/ WEAVING: The different ways in which hair extensions/ weaves can be used are the followings:

a) BONDING: It is a temporary solution used to add volume and streaks of colour to ones existing, natural hair whereby streaks of hair are glued with the help of a unique adhesive to the scalp. b) TRACKING: In this case, the natural hair is braided around the head, and extensions attached to it. However, this required extensive care and regular replacement. c) FUSION: In this case, hair extensions are glued to individual strands of natural hair with the help of a hot glue gun. It is time consuming (varying between 8 to 16 hours), as well as expensive method (varying between 800$ to 1,800$), but gives a very authentic look. d) NETTING: Here, the natural, existing hair is put in a net and then the extension is weaved into the net.

Curly machine weft human hair, Straight Hair, Wavy machine weft human hair, Colour ring of hair, Body wave hair, Deep wave hair, Jackson wave hair, Silky Straight Micro Hand Wefted Hair, Bleached hair, Special hand wefted hair, Bleached machine wefted hair, Silky straight machine weft hair are other product varieties that are high in demand both in the domestic as well as the international market. In the domestic market, a premium-quality Bollywood wig of 50-60 inch long hair can cost Rs. 1.5 lakh a kilo. Womens premium-quality wigs may cost anything between Rs. 20,000-60,000 and male ones for Rs. 6,000-10,000. In the International market, hair can be sold at a price ranging between 100$ per kg. to 1100 $ per kg. by wholesale hair traders. Indian hair export is valued over Rs. 1300/- crore a year. A large percentage (as high as 70%) of the Indian hair export market runs on non-remy hair, that costs one-third the price of remy, that is exported to China, which in turn, makes wigs and sells it to the American, and African market, especially Nigeria. Remy hair, got from the temples has a big market in Europe and US, where they are woven into wigs. India currently boasts of over 40 exporters, which includes about 10 big players in the hair export business. The wholesale processed Hair promotional media is restricted to internet sites and sporadic newspaper classified advertisements. Other modes of communication limit itself to word of mouth and industry knowledge. The reason behind it is that, with India being a country with 70% of its population living in the rural areas, the consciousness of actually buying hair to look good was almost non-existent. Even in the urban areas, people did not have so much of disposable income as to indulge in luxuries of hair treatment. Those few who went in for special hair treatments did it on

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MARKETING TRANSFORMATION: Mrs. Nayan Mitra the sly and did not want it to be known. So, India till a few years back was a safe place of supply of human hair to the world. The hair industry is actually in its growth stage in India. This growth has its genesis with more and more people becoming aware of various modes of reviving hair and style consciousness. Earlier, hair industry thrived in developed countries with loyal customer base, but what is interesting to watch now is that even in India it is growing. Mumbai-based 2S Consulting estimates the hair and beauty industry to have grown to around Rs 6,900 crore from Rs 1,500 crore six years ago. Says Rajeev Surana, partner at 2S Consulting: It is expected to reach Rs 29,800 crore by 2015 and get to Rs 98,500 crore by 2020. to Rs 600-800, against Rs 200 earlier. Who knows, maybe the most glamorous of wigs and hair extensions that our celebrities boast of, in India and abroad, may have its genesis in the interior villages of India or the product of some religious faith of some trusting devotee! Welcome to the world of marketing transformations: from rural to the global, from barters to dollars, from poverty to luxury, from faith to fad; from innocence to sense!
BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Truth-About-Synthetic,-Human,-and-VirginHair&id=902924.) 2. http://www.indiamart.com/humanhairindia/natural-hair-wigs.html 3. http://theweavesblog.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html 4. http://indianhairs.com/process.htm 5. http://theindianremyhair.com/products.html 6. http://chennai.metromela.com/Indian+hair,+Hollywood+bound/article/341 7. http://www.businessworld.in/businessworld/businessworld/content/Hair's-Money.html

(Mrs. Nayan Mitra, the author, has over eleven years of experience in teaching and training undergraduate and post graduate students in various disciplines of Marketing in reputed Universities of India. She also has a number of social researches to her credit that have become important bases for future action by eminent NGOs.)

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