Dean writes:
"Why did it take you nearly 3 years of testing factories before you selected your Partners? What else did you do during this time?"
The 3 years of pre-testing and factory searching that we did - before Easypiece even became a reality - happened very naturally over that time and, like all good quality enterprises, was born out of passion, not just business sense. In fact, we had no interest in starting a service at all. I was consulting for some relatively important organizations (nothing to do with hair systems), and starting a hair system company was of zero interest to me. All that was of interest to me was finding how I could create a great hair system for myself in the same super analytical way that I go about my daily life. I was a customer of a few different places and, being so analytical by nature, became obsessed with how hair systems were made. I don't just mean the standard practices of how they were created - I was interested in that too - but a whole lot more.
For example, I would receive a piece from a well known net retailer and the hair at the back would be ventilated in a strange direction, as opposed to just flowing down. Why? It just wasn't common sense. How could that even be allowed to happen? How could people, whose JOB it is to create hair systems, even begin to think that that was acceptable? These were the experts?Another time, I even got hair that looked green in certain lights. My hair is dark brown. Does anyone have green hair except for the Incredible Hulk? (oh yeah, The Joker does - and from the look of these pieces maybe he was the one making them...).
Of course, they weren't ALL that bad. Most of the time it was more subtle things that I wanted to improve. Like why did some of the hair get dry and parched quicker with some systems than others? Why did some hair, when I washed it, get all tangled up and take an hour to brush out? Why did some hair systems have excessive shedding problems way beyond the norm? When you bring these questions up with retailers, they just shrug it off either because a) they're too busy, or b) they don't care, or c) Both. Then I realised what the problem was.
These companies don't make hair systems. They just sell them.
This realization started the long, drawn out, research process into the hundreds of factories and manufacturers that create custom hair systems. These are the places that almost every hair replacement retailer uses to create your hair systems. Most of them are based in China too (although, a few are in places like Mexico). And much of the time, they are just a stone's throw away from each other in the same city. Some are even housed together in the same building (seriously).
A good friend of mine, also a hair system wearer, came along for the ride. The first thing we did was to find factories that would actually deal with us as individuals (as opposed to having strict minimum order quantities). We thought we had hit the jackpot with these places - they promised to create ultra custom pieces for as little as $45. We thought, "If it can be done for this cheap, then we've been getting seriously ripped off by some people..."
Well, it was done for that cheap...but the finished product was rarely to our liking. In fact, most of the time the pieces just reminded us of some of the pieces we used to get from the super cheap net retailers. Back to square one. They weren't all terrible, but none of them were great, and we never got the same piece twice. Every time we tried to educate the factories to do something a certain way, it would all get lost in translation, or they just didn't care, or the quality of the materials or hair simply wasn't good enough.
But we still believed it didn't have to result in using the most expensive factories either. We had tried quite a few of them and were paying up to $400 per piece just for the raw production cost. Of course some were awesome, naturally. But more than you might think, plenty others were no better than the super cheap factories. It was the age old tactic of charge a high price and hope that the customer believes they are getting something better. No dice with us.
Of course, all this time we still had our jobs to do, but nevertheless - slowly but surely, factory by factory, piece by piece, the work was being done. Methodical doesn't even begin to describe it. You see, it really wasn't about you at this stage; it was about US... The way we saw it, if we found the right combination and the right set up of suppliers, being as fussy as we are; then it would all trickle down to you guys, the customers. And if it didn't? No problem. We would at least have discovered a way of making the best hair systems for ourselves and carry on happily with our regular jobs. So, unlike so many businesses, time was definitely NOT a pressure factor for us. It was simply a case of "Get it Right - Or Don't Do It At All..."
Simply making hair systems like everyone else wasn't good enough. Ours had to be the BEST; the best hair, the best procedures, the best practices, the best materials. Otherwise we weren't interested. Sure, we're shooting a little high, and perhaps even being a bit unrealistic. But as the great Oscar Wilde once said, "If you shoot for moon, you might hit the top of the trees." If it wasn't him it was someone else.
You're probably thinking: "Yeah, sounds great....in theory...but how can you make sure of the quality and consistency being kept to such a high level? Everyone makes mistakes..."
You'd be right. They all do. WE all do. Which is exactly why we developed a unique scoring process for each order that NO ONE else has ever thought of.... Easypiece Beta, and Easypiece Factory Evolution are the two processes that make SURE that no one ever sleeps on the job without getting a rude wake up call...
So, whilst everyone does need to keep their expectations in check regarding hair systems and hairpieces, since mistakes will always be made or something may not always be perfect, we at least have a couple of processes in place that keeps everyone on their toes:
Check them out right now:
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