I’m trying not to sound like dr. Martin Luther King but I have a dream and that is to be able to provide top-quality hair in the future to customers. Therefore I’m currently looking for honest hair vendors I can work on a long term with. Right now I’m in the process of trying out hair from potential vendors. I’m getting to know them, their history, their companies, and where they source their hair from. The type of hair I’m looking for is preferably raw and virgin hair. I happened to come across a raw hair vendor and I’m sharing my experience next.
What is raw hair?
I’ll first start by explaining what raw hair is and I literally did a simple google search on the term raw hair and that search gave me a few results. In a short and simple sentence; raw hair is hair in its purest form. This type of hair is unprocessed and hasn’t been (chemically) treated in any way. Raw hair is considered to be the highest quality hair there is.
One raw hair bundle is usually hair from one donor. The hair gets collected by cutting the hair in a ponytail or braid directly from a donor’s head and turning it into a weft. The reason for this is to keep the cuticle of the hair strands aligned. That means the cuticles of all the hair strands go in one direction, this will cause less tangling and matting of the hair.
There is no processing of any form, some vendors don’t even wash the hair bundles and ship them just like that. This is the reason why some raw hair bundles have lice, look dirty or dull, like the hair doesn’t have any luster and shine to it. I’ll be honest with you, that’s what I prefer. I don’t mind washing the hair myself for my future customers, but I don’t want the bundles to have lice. Cause that’s another headache I don’t want to deal with. The downside to this type of raw hair is that it is a challenge to market the hair because people and customers want the hair they buy to look beautiful and uniformed.
Beware of raw hair scammers
So, I went and looked for raw hair vendors. Looking for raw hair vendors is not easy. This is the tedious part of the whole finding and trying a hair vendor process. There are a lot of hair companies scamming people with mixed hair bundles, lying about the quality of the hair and lying about its origins. These scammers just know when you’re an inexperienced hair enthusiast and they know that based on the type of questions you ask. Based on my research, I also came across people who didn’t get their hair bundles after paying for them and the vendors are gone, not responding or even changing their number.
The type of raw hair I wanted
The type of raw hair I was looking for is Cambodian hair. I wanted Raw Cambodian hair because the hair strands of Cambodian hair are thick. This type of hair blends in better with African American hair compared to other hair ethnicities.
My hunt for a vendor landed me on this hair vendor based in Vietnam and sells Raw Cambodian hair. The name of the vendor is Nid and the company is called Beladyhair.
After sending her a few questions that she answered, I placed my order.
I’ve ordered Raw Cambodian hair in a wavy pattern, in lengths 12, 14, 14, and a 12-inch 5X5 closure. She told me the closure is made out of HD lace.
The processing time was 9 – 11 working days and the shipping via UPS took 3 days.
The bundles
When I received and opened the package I noticed that the hair did not have a weird smell. The wavy pattern of the hair bundles is uniformed. The bundles are thick from weft to end. There was no shedding when I ran my hand through the bundles. The hair did not tangle when I ran my hand through the bundles. It felt like the hair had some sort of film/ product on it, I felt this on my fingers after running my fingers through the bundles. The hair had a healthy shine. The hair was true to length. The bundles are single wefted. One of the bundles had lice eggs.
The closure
The size of the closure is 5×5 inch and it is true to size. The length of the hair on the closure is also true to size. The closure shed a lot when I ran my fingers through the hair. The majority of the hair strands on the closure look the same length, it had very minimal to no short hairs. The knots are thick also in the front of the closure. The lace of the closure is HD lace. Unfortunately, I’ve never tried HD lace before, therefore I could not compare the lace. Let’s take the vendor’s words for what it is and go with the HD lace. The color of the lace is white/ transparent. I noticed that the lace also had some sort of stretch to it.
What did I do with the hair?
I turned the bundles and the closure into a wig. Well, I’ve actually made two wigs. Two bob wigs. I already had an extra 4×4 closure laying around that I did not use. Now, I have a short and a long bob. I’ve only used the short bob so far and it is super convenient. I mean it’s easy to put on and take off. I’ve also received many compliments at work, people love my bob hairstyle.
My overall review
Cambodian hair is extremely beautiful. It has some sort of shine of its own and the hair strands are thick. Making the wigs was easy because the bundles are single wefted. The single weft makes it easy to do the fold-over method. This means that I don’t have the cut the tracks of the wefts when I start to sew a new row of hair. Not cutting the weft will produce less shedding.
One thing I did not like is that one of the bundles had lice eggs. This surprised me because the vendor said that she washed and cleaned the hair before shipping it out to me. I noticed the eggs in the process of making the wig. When I had a closer look I could see that the eggs were already broken, which I think means that the lice already came out of the eggs.
Another thing I didn’t like is that she steam processed the hair to give the bundles a uniform look. The reason for that is to make the hair marketable, that was the vendor’s answer when I asked.
When it comes to the closure, I’ve had better closures before. It was difficult to bleach the knots of the closure because the knots are so thick. I also wish the closure was a bit more full.
I discovered that this vendor is part of another raw hair vendor called Ivirgio hair. Then I discovered that there are many more small raw hair vendors like this vendor that are part of a big company. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think that these small vendors all get their own small commission on selling hair. I just want to order hair at the main source, I don’t want to deal with small vendors unless they are the main source.
The price
The hair bundles are expensive, watch the video below to see how much I’ve paid for these bundles. This was not a surprise to me. But I have a feeling that the price of this vendor is a bit higher than other vendors. The only question is do the other vendors sell raw hair? I don’t know.
I wouldn’t mind paying this price but then I would like to have longer hair bundles for that price. But maybe this is the amount I should expect to pay when it comes to raw hair. That’s why I would continue to do more research.
Watch the video of me unboxing and giving my initial review of the hair
Thanks for stopping by.
xx,
Cher
