In today’s world, there is absolutely no doubt in saying that the cosmetic hair industry is among the most lucrative and profitable investments there is, promising a bright future for all of its participants. For hair entrepreneurs wanting to start a hair business, having only a limited, or extremely low budget can be considered as one huge limitation, unabling them from reaching the resounding market success they initially aimed for. However, one’s passion and ambition should not be hindered with such issues. Indeed, for new hair business owners, there is still hope, especially for those looking for ways on how to start a hair business with no money!
In this article, we will go over all the aspects regarding how to start a hair business with no money: the market’s current consumption trends, available product lines, ways to start up, as well as valuable advice for hair businesses just starting out.
1. What makes the Hair industry worth your investment?
There’s no debating in saying that the hair industry is one of the most profitable and worthwhile investments there is! According to Grand View Research, the global hair wigs and extensions market have already been sized at $6.46 billion in 2022 and is even estimated to grow to as impressive of a number as $12.27 billion by 2030, given its CAGR of
8.4% from 2023 to 2030. Such a number is truly a feat, promising a stable business growth and profits for all hair businesses. However, given the current market trends, social changes and technologies advancements, the hair industry is rarely a passing trend or a temporary success, rather, it is a worthwhile long-term investment for all hair business owners learning how to start a hair business with no money:
- The improved income: in recent years, as the world has witnessed an overall improvement in industrialization, the global population has been promised an improved living quality and more disposable income, accompanying the dynamic economic and commercial trading that comes with an industrializing world. Indeed, with more spending power in hand, hair buyers are granted more freedom to spend on wigs, extensions, or other related products to please their personal beauty needs.
- Beauty demand: following a high, improved living standards is the increasing beauty demands. In fact, as they have acquired a more leisurely and comfortable lifestyle, they can now have more time and resources to pay more attention toward what were once considered unnecessary or exclusive only to the affluent. Among the aforementioned aspects includes their appearances, with more and more women purchasing wigs and extensions in an attempt to elevate their natural beauty and achieve their desired hair look.
- Social media: with the development of social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, also comes the huge influence of celebrity and influencer culture. Indeed, seeing famous, influential figures appearing in luxurious, elegant hair look, social media users cannot help but purchase similar wigs, extensions or other related products to mimic the similar hair effect as their favourite icons.
- The development of information technologies: as technologies continue to innovate, e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba, Esty, Amazon,… are made more and more accessible for hair buyers and hair sellers across the globe, making the buying and promoting process much more time and money-efficient, especially for hair business learning how to start a hair business with no money! Indeed, utilizing such favourable platforms can not only make your brand and products more recognizable to a wider range of clients, but also keep the functioning fees at their lowest.
2. Must-know: Hair trends in the market
For hair entrepreneurs just starting out or wanting to learn how to start a hair business with no money, the ability to ride the waves and grasp the newest hair consumption trends is a must-have. Indeed, by providing the most suitable hair products for your targeted market, you can secure maximum profit made, as well as increase your brand recognition among other competitors in the market.
Factors affecting hair consumption often include: racial/cultural backgrounds, income level, and beauty standards,… In fact, one of the most significant aspects controlling hair trends in the market is often geographical features, as people in different regions often have varied natural hair features, financial state, and beauty standards, hence creating different market sectors and different consumption patterns. In the current scale, the three largest and most profitable geographical hair market are North American hair market; European, Latin American hair market; African hair market, each with its own preferences and buying incentives:
- European + Latin American hair market: deeply affected by the European hair beauty standards, focusing on elegance, natural beauty, this particular hair market is more prone to purchasing similar hair textures, colors that best resemble natural European women’s hair. These textures might include: body wave, natural curly, straight, with Slavic hair colors such as blonde, platinum, or light brown,… As they belong to the higher income class, this market’s buying patterns often lean toward high-quality, bleachable hair, delivering an air of elegance and grace to their natural beauty.
- North American hair market: the United States is often considered as a land of freedom and individualism, hence, their go-to pick is often bleachable, versatile hair that could be styled freely to their own liking, especially the single-donor, raw, unprocessed hair lines. In terms of textures, American hair buyers are often more prone to classic, natural textures, such as straight, body waves,…. much like the European/Latin American hair market.
- African hair market: belonging to a lower-income class, the typical African hair market tends to be in favour of affordable, and durable, long-lasting hair lines. African women are lively, enthusiastic, and full of energy, hence, their choice of hair also reflect a part of their personality: bold, striking and eye-catching are extremely in demand, alongside sleek, bone straight textures, offering a unique shine to one’s hair look.
3. How to start a hair business with no money?
Fear not small business startups, for that even when you have an extremely limited budget, you can still realize your dream. In fact, many successful hair enterprises have successfully started their million dollar business with a budget less than $500! To follow their footsteps into market success, you can take note on the following ways on how to start a hair business with no money:
3.1. Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a unique business model, adopted by many beginner hair businesses in the market, mainly for its low-cost operation and beginner-friendliness. Indeed, in a typical dropshipping model, you only serve as a mere middleman, connecting larger suppliers to their clients.
Its operation is among the most beginner-friendly there is. In fact, as a business owner offering dropshipping, your task is to simply collect orders from your customers, forward them to your suppliers, have the items shipped to its recipients and gain profits from the pricing gap between your offered price and the suppliers.
For example, for a 20” straight 1B wig, you can charge its customers for the retail price $300/piece. After collecting enough requests from your clients, it would now be the time to place the bulk order to your suppliers, having them produce the adequate amount and ship the batch to the customers in need.
The magic of dropshipping is that the producer’s pricing would always be much cheaper than the overall retail pricing. For instance, for a standard 20” straight 1B wig, they would only charge $275, much cheaper than your initially offered $300 range – leading to a $25 price gap which can be collected as profit for your business.
As can be inferred through the above information, dropshipping does not require you to have an extravagant capital or purchase a huge amount of inventory like the traditional business model. In fact, for start-ups with extremely low amounts of capital, this method is highly recommended as a good way to jump start one’s success. Indeed, once gathered enough resources, recognition and business scale from dropshipping, hair entrepreneurs can go on to establish their own hair store enterprise to aim for a more stable and reliable business approach.
Notes for entrepreneurs learning how to start a hair business with no money:
- Online platforms: dropshipping thrives on social media, in fact, platforms such as Instagram, TikTok are some of the major store outlets chosen by many dropshippers in the market. Indeed, functioning online could help your business to get quick access to a much wider customer base, while keeping other external costs such as accommodation, staff, storage at their minimum.
- Find a suitable hair vendor: for a beginner hair business, prestige and customer satisfaction are everything, as it can make or break their newly started business and brand recognition. Hence, to ensure optimal user experience and the most positive feedback for your brand, it is absolutely required to team up with reliable hair vendors capable of providing customizable, high-quality and consistent supply.
- Gather a large amount of order: for dropshipper just starting out in the business, this can be a difficult task, but it is highly suggested. In fact, buying in bulk order from suppliers can unlock for your brand hidden exclusive discounts or package deals, as well as making full use of the international shipping fees, taxes and related costs that comes with the process.
3.2. How to market your products effectively?
Providing reliable, decent-quality hair is one thing, but attracting customers into buying those products is another. In fact, many hair startups have failed to create an effective, suitable marketing approach for their brands, ultimately leading to stagnant business activity, low sales and hence, low profit to keep the business functioning.
Indeed, marketing is the defining factor that determines your market presence and success, as well as gathering more attention and securing more sales for your business. For entrepreneurs learning how to start a hair business with no money, some marketing strategies can be adopted are:
- Targeting a niche product: instead of supplying multiple products at once, causing more difficulty in inventory management and supplier sourcing, you can just target a specific, niche product line such as Virgin/Remy hair, or colored hair. This way, you can minimize the number of competitors, as well as targeting a concentrated, explicit customer base in the market.
- Social media: Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are ideal for product presentation and brand exposure. In fact, ways to exploit these platforms might include: posting reels, images or posts promoting, demonstrating your products, linking up with hair influencers, KOLs, or running advertisements to encourage consumption.
- Email Marketing: Email marketing is among the most effective ways to keep track with past customers, as well as expand your brand reach to a wider, more professional clientele. Through email, you can inform your potential and past clients about your newest deals and programmes, as well as maintaining a long-lasting relationship with past big buyers.
- SEO: one of the most professional and reliable marketing strategies out there! Indeed, by website contents, articles, you can not only get access to a more potential, professional customer base, but also give back to the hair community by providing informative, quality-driven articles regarding hair-related matters.
4. Valuable information about the hair industry
For beginner hair businesses learning how to start a hair business with no money, jumping into the competitive hair market not knowing necessary information regarding the available product lines, hair origin, or the factors affecting the hair’s pricing is an extremely unwise move. Hence, to support hair startups with such a complex market like the hair industry, we have been able to provide the most newly-updated insights regarding the market’s existing product categories:
4.1. The existing international hair vendors in the market
Noticing such high profitability that comes with supplying hair to dropshippers, retailers, and distributors, many large-scale factories have managed to take advantage of such huge demand, providing high-quality hair in massive quantities. In terms of nationality and characteristics, the available international hair factories in the industry can be sorted into three main sources:
| Vietnamese hair vendor | Chinese hair vendor | Indian hair vendor | |
| Hair origin | Rich domestic hair source: women of minorities still have the habit of keeping their hair chemically-free and often sell their hair for money
→ abundant raw material supply for hair production |
Extremely limited domestic hair source: due to globalized hair trends, Chinese women often use chemicals to style their hair.
→ Have to source their raw supply from many other countries |
The most abundant hair source, supplying hair to Chinese vendors. Collect hair from two major sources:
|
| Scale |
|
|
Large-scale production due to abundant hair source. However, extremely obsolete technology: relying mostly on manual labour and old-fashioned hair production methods |
| Diversity | Rich experience in the field, as well as expanding market reach → extremely market-driven, able to provide equally trendy and fashionable textures and colors as Chinese hair vendors | Being the oldest in the market – acquiring the most insights and is extremely sensitive to trends and changes → offer the most diverse and trendy product lines. | Extremely low diversity: due to their dependency on traditional manual labour → can only provide natural, simple textures: natural wavy, curly,… |
| Hair features | Considered World’s Finest for a reason: winning hearts with its soft, silky, and strong strands → meeting the strict and high demands for physical appeal, versatility and quality | Hair sourced from multiple origins: is of mixed quality and cannot guarantee consistency for all of their product lines | Typical Indian hair: coarse, thin, with natural curls → natural-looking, but can only offer limited styling range due to its weak strands.
Obsolete processing method: often use chemicals to treat the hair → leading to deteriorated hair quality |
| Price | Reasonably priced | Low pricing | Lowest pricing due to large availability and cheap production |
4.2 Hair types in the market
In order to better satisfy the complex and ever-changing hair needs and pricing preferences in the business, hair manufacturers and distributors have come up with many different hair type variations, each with its own features, suitable for a specific customer range. However, beside the high-quality, market-ready hair types, also exists the poor-quality mixed, chemically processed hair, unsuitable for consumption.
| Virgin Hair | Remy Hair | Non-remy hair | Synthetic hair | |
| Features |
→ 100% cuticles aligned and healthy → Soft, silky, minimal tangling and shedding → Can be styled repeatedly and be bleached to bright blonde #613 |
→ Cuticles are slightly misaligned, more prone to tangling → Still soft, silky, and have a natural hair shine → Can still be bleached to #27 and work extremely well with warm colors |
→ Extremely fragile, cuticles are heavily misaligned, more prone to breaking. → Short lifespan, cannot be styled |
|
| Pricing | The highest pricing range – provide the best hair quality out there | The more affordable option of quality hair | Low pricing due to inauthentic sourcing methods | Extremely cheap due to being artificial hair |
5. Advices for those learning how to start a hair business with no money
For hair entrepreneurs eager to jump start their business, it is recommended to first go through some advices we have in store for them, given that we have been able to work with numerous new hair business in the past:
5.1. Make full use of free resources
Nowadays, given its development and prosperity, the hair industry has successfully captured the attention of many people in the market, many among those – like you, showcase more than just curiosity toward this industry, rather, want to establish their own business and get their fair share of the cake. As a result, more and more free or low-cost resources are made available to the masses, satisfying the needs for information, guidance over the problems on how to start a hair business with no money. These resources include: workshops, conferences, mentorship programs, social media communities,… offering cost-efficient yet valuable insights, especially for hair entrepreneurs with limited budgets looking for guidance in this highly complicated market.
For example, for business owners unknowing of reliable hair vendors to entrust their supply, yet lack the financial power to sample tests different vendors, using free vendor lists, or inquiring references from Facebook hair communities is a great way to get access to the best supplier out there, without the length wait or costly sample orders.
5.2. Identify your business plan
To better navigate your business growth when learning how to start a hair business with no money, as well as creating an effective management scheme to overlook your development stage, it is highly recommended to create a thorough business plan. Such advance planning can help you to gain a better perspective of your own brand growth, as well as establish the most suitable route as your business orientation. For a complete, carefully-crafted business plan, some must-have features would be:
- Brand vision: a short summary going over the overall concept and direction of your hair business.
- Market analysis: a detailed overview of the hair industry, including current trends, market demands, consumption behaviors, as well as your competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, and how your brand would position itself within the market. In this analysis, you should also make the decision regarding your niche products, as well as the targeted customer base for such products. In order to gather such extensive range of information, hair entrepreneurs must first do some ground work and inspect the market beforehand,
- Products and services: in this step, you must dig deeper into your niche products – what it has to offer, its quality, pricing range, as well as the most suitable hair suppliers from whom you can source your hair. Knowing the products’ advantages can help to better navigate through the marketing process, determining the best approach to promote your niche to the customers. Once finished, you can now move on to the service sector, deciding on the business terms and policies, with which you will use to protect your own and your customer’s right during the transaction.
- Marketing and sales strategies: determine the methods you’ll use to reach your target market and promote your brand effectively. This includes outlining how you plan to attract attention, build brand awareness through online or offline campaigns , and turn potential buyers into loyal customers. For online marketing, you can use the aforementioned method: using social media, email marketing, or SEO content to promote your brand. For offline campaigns, you can also consider handing out print advertisements or setting up small outlets in hair trade fairs.
- Budget estimation: calculate your key expenses such as input cost, accommodation, storage, and taxes. Estimate your potential profits and adjust your pricing strategies accordingly to maintain a stable, sustainable financial plan.
5.3. Be socially active
A major element of learning how to start a hair business with no money is that you must become socially active. Indeed, for a startup to stay afloat in such a complex and diverse hair market, it is crucial for them to first establish a wide social network, consisting of potential customers, suppliers, competitors, precedents in the market. Having such a diverse and expanded network could not only improve your brand reach through references from customers and colleagues, but also help to get your hands on valuable information regarding supplier options, marketing strategies and customer base of other businesses in the industry. In fact, being socially active could also land your brand rare, profitable and advantageous collaboration opportunities, further improve your brand recognition and take full advantage of the partner’s customer base.
For example, currently in the market, we can often see collaborations between hair businesses and stylists, salon owners – one provides hair, another provides service. Such a team-up is especially a mutually advantageous one, not only helping the stylists to secure a stable hair supply needed to perform their services, but also helping the suppliers to gain a stable sales amount monthly.
5.4. Expect to fill in roles
To save up from staff salary and maximize the profits incoming, many hair businesses with limited budgets often resort to taking multiple roles themselves. For example, being a newly-established hair business owner, Sierra – my loyal customer, often had to take on the role of the marketing executive, customer service, accountant, and the manager of her brand. However, she also shares that, buying being the “Jack of all Trades” she has also learned many valuable lessons regarding business operation, while saving an enormous amount of money on staff salary.
Such an approach can be tiring, slowly wearing off your determination, but all businesses must go through a rough start in order to prosper. Indeed, after saving up an adequate amount of money, you can now start to hire people to manage the business for you, slowly but steadily scaling up your hair brand.
5.5. Be patient
One key element of how to start a hair business with no money would be to be more patient, trusting in yourself and the growth process of your business.
Indeed, starting a hair business with limited capital can be a lengthy and tiring process, but after all, good things come to those who wait. If you adopt the right methods for your business, certain growth will surely take place, even small, considered-insignificant increases are a positive sign to never stop trying. Or even if your business witnesses a decline, don’t panic, rethink the whole process and reconsider your business approach, marketing strategies, and make adjustments where needed. When not knowing where to make changes or what new approaches to be applied, consider taking our advice above, or taking references and recommendations from your friends, colleagues, or attending hair business conferences to broaden your perspectives.
6. Why K-Hair is the Best Choice
Learning how to start a hair business with no money can be a major challenge, especially when you need to balance product quality, pricing, and customer support for your offering. For such cases, K-Hair truly stands out as the ideal partner for new hair entrepreneurs looking to grow sustainably without breaking the bank:
- Affordable pricing: K-Hair offers one of the most reasonable wholesale prices in the market, thanks to its direct-from-factory production. There are no middlemen involved, meaning you get authentic, high-quality Vietnamese human hair at factory cost. This is a huge advantage for beginners with limited budgets, allowing them to deliver premium products to their customers without the extra costs seen in other suppliers.
- Fast production and delivery: With a strong production capacity and a well-established factory system, K-Hair ensures fast production times even for customized or bulk orders. Whether you need restocks or special styles to meet sudden market demands, K-Hair can fulfill your order quickly, helping your business stay competitive and responsive.
- Consistent quality: Every strand of hair from K-Hair is 100% Vietnamese human hair: soft, silky, and durable, with minimal tangling and shedding, allowing your customers to bleach, dye, and style the hair freely. This consistent quality helps new businesses build trust and credibility among clients from the very first purchase, as well as earning new customers through references from past buyers satisfied with their products.
- Dedicated consultation: For first-time buyers or new entrepreneurs, K-Hair provides one-on-one consultation services to guide you through product selection, market trends, optimizing your buying experience. Indeed, their experienced sales team can help you choose the best-selling hair types based on your target market and budget, ensuring a smooth operation for businesses starting out in the hair industry.
Many successful hair brands across Africa and beyond started their journey with K-Hair as their first supplier. By taking advantage of the brand’s affordable prices, stable quality, and professional support, these businesses were able to grow quickly and secure loyal customer bases within months.
Contact For More Information:
- Website: https://khairvn.com/
- Address: 10A, 171 Nguyen Ngoc Vu, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam
- Phone: +8496 789 4448 (WhatsApp)
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KHairFactoryVN/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KHAIRFACTORYBESTVIETNAMHAIR
- Whatsapp: +84 96 789 4448
>>Want to start a hair business? Check out this video about our loyal customer, who is now a successful hair business owner:
How did my customer start a hair business successfully? | K-Hair Vietnam
7. Conclusion
With the information provided in this article, we hope that we have managed to assist young, ambitious business women in the hair industry about the overall market, tips, and most importantly, how to start a hair business with no money. Doing business requires long-term commitment and support from trustworthy business partners, we proudly present ourselves not only as a trusted hair supplier, but also a supportive friend who will always have your back in this competitive industry.
Need to chat with a hair specialist? Contact us through the following link:
- Website: https://khairvn.com/
- Address: 10A, 171 Nguyen Ngoc Vu, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam
- Phone: +8496 789 4448 (WhatsApp)
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KHairFactoryVN/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KHAIRFACTORYBESTVIETNAMHAIR
- Whatsapp: +84 96 789 4448
