This is a somewhat random note on the subject, but after reading one of the threads yesterday on Stripe, I found myself reading through their list of prohibited businesses/services (it's an interesting read if you're curious about high-fraud/sketchy business models).

And sure enough:

54) human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions

which says a lot about the industry.

(Note in looking this up just now, I found its only in the UK prohibited businesses, not the US list, which is also somewhat interesting)

What a totally bizarre posting. Capitalism is the best system except for these fundamental facts about how f'ed up it is?

And on a post about the craziness and bad experience in a wasteful business area that shouldn't exist? The entire concept of African American women buying Indian hair is just a continuing piece of systematic racism taken to its fullest by the victims themselves. This entire system from the hairdressers lacking capital for inventory to the women buying the hair is all disgusting waste.

The whole "this garbage (capitalism like this) is the best possible option" is pathetic learned helplessness.

In the Orthodox Jewish world, many women wear sheitels, essentially wigs sourced from human hair. The entire buying experience is very different from what Ben describes in his blog. The women who sell the sheitels provide the whole experience, from picking out the hair type/color/length, etc, to making sure it fits well and that the customer is satisfied. Granted this is a much smaller and niche market, and the products (sheitels) themselves can easily sell for $1,000-$2,000+. (source, my wife regularly wears a Sheitel in accordance with Halacha).

A good starting point for this article is the movie "Good Hair" by Chris Rock. But rest assured, there is already a lot consolidation that already happened for Temple Hair in India. The raw material for this is, faith of Hindus (Hindu Women to be specific - since they have the long hair), that giving away hair as a form of surrender to God. Any guess, how long that will last?

edit: changed movie name [Bad Hair]

Sounds like vc money has found another industry to come into and kill thousands of mom and pop businesses. As this process continues, massive investments to take over every industry by using efficiencies of scale, will there be any room left for the lower class entrepreneurs?

I bought a wig for Comic Con last year[0], and it was an interesting experience. The local shop carries 3 grades, with an option to spend even more.

The entry level is polyester, with colors not normally found in nature. The mid-grade polyester (what I got) normally sells in the $180-230 range. Natural hair starts at $400, and obviously looks the most realistic.

Most of the hair is sourced from outside the US, from India and Asia. So the colors are usually very dark. They will bleach it to produce lighter shades, but if you need/want true Blonde, you'll have to buy either a bleached darker shade and hope for a good match, or spend significantly more for northern-European sourced hair.

Hair length is an issue - waiting for your hair to grow long before selling it obviously takes a while, so it sells for a premium.

And now I know a lot more than I ever thought I would about aftermarket hair supply. :)

[0] I went as Lucius Malfoy (Draco Malfoy's father) from Harry Potter: http://nebula.wsimg.com/773ae27d6ab68c28500b6986588b0da2?Acc...

"Mayvenn will send you a check for your earned commissions every month. You can do anything you want with it – pay rent, pay for your car or buy those shoes you wanted!"

From Mayvenn's site. Does this seem insulting to anyone else?

Why complain about the supply chain if the problem that's being fixed is only the customer experience?

    I’m into distribution, I’m like Atlantic
    I got them mutherf**ers flying across the Atlantic

One of my coworkers just pointed me to Chris Rock's documentary called "Good Hair" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-4qxz08So

Wow.

Marc Andreesen made a comment on a recent a16z podcast that they were interested in the challenges of global remittances. This seems like a related interest: How can we use technology to provide credit, transfer and remittance services to a user base that may be exclusively using mobile phones and/or in emerging markets with limited internet access? There are likely a number of industries where this pattern can be repeated.

“whom”

Hey this is Neeharika from Sonar. We spoke with Taylor Wang, COO of Mayvenn yesterday and wanted to share a post on how Mayvenn's thinks about community and SMS: http://blog.sendsonar.com/2015/06/19/how-mayvenn-grew-its-co...

What the fuck is with motherfuckers misspelling words like "fuck" and "motherfucker"?

It's rude to misquote something. The rapper known as Rick Ross didn't say "mutherf ASTERISK ASTERISK ers", he said "motherfuckers". It's right there in the song if you hit play.

Why does he edit the text of the song but not the audio?

What the fuck is wrong with Americans thinking that some words are "bad" and should thus always be misspelled?

If they're bad, stop using them. If you're going to use them, spell them right. Spelling it "mutherf ASTERISK ASTERISK ers" doesn't keep my brain from thinking "fuck".

PS: HN's markdown doesn't let one escape an asterisk to get a literal asterisk.

I can't help but see parallels between Mayvenn and Uber. Will the next we hear about Mayvenn be its investments in lab-grown hair the way that Uber is heavily investing in driverless vehicles?

Indian women sell hair to Chinese, who productizie it and sell to Koreans, who further refine it and eventually sell it African American women == worst experience? I think this sentence is soaked in prejudice.

Most global supply chains, some for super luxurious products have these three countries involved... I dont know how that automagically qualifies for a horrible experience

So, basically African-American owned beauty salons can't get credit even though they are clearly good for it since this business can happily carry out arbitrage against it.

Um, that's a pretty ringing indictment of capitalism, not an endorsement.

It's interesting that the yiddish word for expert is spelled similar to maven, which is also means expert in English.

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hairbitrage

WhoM do you trust? Not "who" do you trust.

Whom

> A nurse, whose dedication to her craft saves lives and brings hope to the hopeless, will make a fraction of what a crappy banker, who brings misery to everyone she encounters, earns.

A part oft this problem is that the health system is also an economic system. It shouldn't be, but they're trying to make and save money in every aspect.

There are few things that I wish were more strictly regulated by the state. Health care, with health as the primary goal, is one of these things.