Last year’s blue jean bandits gave crime a new bottom line, but this year’s hair heists have turned crime on its head.
From Detroit to Los Angeles, the intersection between thieves’ desperation to make a dollar and consumers’ vanity have turned high-end human hair into a lucrative haul. And this new avenue of crime has forced some local hair retailers to take precautionary measures.
If human hair seems like an odd commodity for illegal trafficking, popular culture tells a different story.
“It has everything to do with some of the secrets that Chris Rock revealed in his documentary, ‘Good Hair,’” said Lanita Jacobs, associate professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Southern California. “Hair is a multibillion dollar business, and it is not just African-Americans who are aware of it.”
The hair in demand is the high-quality human hair imported from India and Malaysia that is used for weaving and wigs. Known in industry parlance as “Remy” hair, it appears more natural than synthetic hair and can be reused several times before it is discarded. It can retail for as much as $200 per bundle, with the average individual needing two to three bundles to complete a hairdo.
Because all premium hair originates abroad, it is subject to the same cost increases as other imports. The higher cost of fuel, the weaker value of the dollar and global demand in Europe, Latin America and Africa have all conspired to push up the price of human hair.
In metro Atlanta, a series of smash and grabs that began this spring at local beauty supply stores has resulted in at least $100,000 of hair being stolen. Similar thefts have occurred in Chicago, Houston, San Diego and other cities nationwide where the take has ranged from $10,000 to $150,000 worth of hair per heist.
While the thieves have resorted to brutish methods — ramming trucks into storefronts and even killing a Michigan store owner — their math skills are more sophisticated.
“Black women get their hair done biweekly, not monthly,” Jacobs said. “Even in this economy, the black hair care business is going to thrive. Hair attachments are significant because anthropologically speaking, [hair] is the one thing on your body that you can change,” Jacobs said. The desire for that type of adornment, she said, transcends race and class.
The most popular trend in hair weaving today is driven by young, relatively wealthy, half-Armenian reality TV star Kim Kardashian. “Her weaves are very nice,” said Vanessa Mason, managing partner of the Weave Boutique ATL Salon in East Atlanta Village. “The whole fashion thing now is the longer, the nicer. When you are getting 22 to 30 inches [of hair], you have to [special] order that.”
The salon orders hair from several vendors, but they don’t keep a mass supply on the premises — which pretty much keeps them below the radar of thieves. But in any given week, at least three people come through the door announcing that they sell hair, said managing partner Rhonda Morgan, and they could very well be the folks who have acquired that hair through illicit means.
Professionals may have a certain ability to eyeball a bunch of hair, evaluate the asking price and figure out if it is too good to be true, but the average consumer who resorts to buying hair on the street may encounter hair weave thieves reselling their authentic loot along with others trying to pass fake Remy as real.
Some local vendors, concerned about the crimes, have taken measures to secure their wares and reassure their customers.
Dafina Memberr, of the family-owned Sunny’s Hair and Wigs, recently moved the shop from a street side in Buckhead to the more secure environs of Brookwood Plaza. The plaza’s 24-hour security team is aware of the hair crimes and has partnered with the businesses to improve safety, Memberr said.
Still, Memberr is wary of the potential for copycat crimes.
“I just think other avenues of crime have been saturated. If you were sitting on the fence about it, you may decide to try it,” she said. She hopes the city and law enforcement officials will find ways to work more closely with local shops.
“It is easy to be dismissive of the nature of what we sell,” Memberr said, “but our customers spend money, and we treat them well, and they should have the experience that merits any other product they spend lots of money on.”
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