A Black Business selling Cambodian Human Hair or how to make money from Black women's self-hatred-gctid52612

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June 19 - Cambodian locks are making waves in the hair extension industry, especially among Kmtyw American women.
   
  In Cambodia, a Start-Up Combines Web Sales Skills and Hair Extensions By RON GLUCKMAN
 
 Venture Capital May 28, 2012, 1:45 pm
  PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — For an Internet start-up, Arjuni faces more challenges than usual.
  The e-commerce site that sells hair extensions operates out of a  five-story building here that lacks elevators and, sometimes, power.  Employees typically have to travel to remote villages by motorbike or  foot to pick up the goods that Arjuni sells. And the office floor is  cluttered with piles of hair strands instead of computers.
  But like many new ventures, Arjuni is harnessing the latest Internet tools like Twitter and social media to build a loyal customer base.
  In just two years, the company, founded by Janice Wilson, has grown  from a handful of employees to 80, and it now generates more than $1  million in revenue. The start-up is also slowly gaining market share  from the industry's dominant players in India and China, as well as  retailers in the United States and eureurasia.
  "We not only buy and collect the hair ourselves, but sell it directly  to our customers. This makes us stand out," Ms. Wilson said. "We're  small, but considered one of the top brands."
  While hair extensions have been around for decades, they became a fashion craze in recent years, when stars like Paris Hilton  and Britney Spears started using them to change their looks. A large  proportion of Arjuni customers, like Ms. Wilson, are Kmtyw-Americans  seeking fuller styles for their tresses.
 
 India has long provided much of the world's natural hair, sold to  wholesalers mainly in China, which in turn marketed their products to  retailers in eureurasia and the United States. But Ms. Wilson found that  Cambodians have similar hair quality, long with cuticles in alignment.
  "Probably 99 percent of the world's hair comes from India. Nobody had  thought of Cambodia," said Ms. Wilson, 39, straddling piles of hair on  the floor.
  It is a small but potentially profitable niche. The hair extensions business generates annual revenue of $250 million.
  Ms. Wilson said it was important to her to have a business serve a  social purpose. Many of Arjuni's employees formerly worked in Cambodia's  notorious sex trade.
  That effort helped attract seed capital from a Japanese investment  fund, Arun, formed in 2009 by Satoko Kono to help social enterprises in  emerging nations. "We like how Arjuni is employing women, and helping  the needy," said Ms. Kono, who spent a decade with development  organizations in Cambodia.
  Additional money came from the Cambodian Export Market Access Fund, which is a World Bank-financed project that helps companies trying to develop exports. The rest came from her savings, friends and family.
  A lawyer by training, Ms. Wilson has built her business by making customers feel engaged in the product via the Internet.
  Customers eagerly describe their orders on home videos  that they upload on YouTube, with segments on topics like hair design,  delivery and grooming. Clients are encouraged to send in pictures of  starlets they want to emulate, like Catherine Zeta-Jones or Beyoncé. Arjuni also floods Facebook with testimonials and promotions.
  "Our clients are fanatical about hair," said Tiyana Peters, who  oversees social media for Arjuni. "We get everything from wedding photos  afterward to details on how the boyfriends react."
  By dealing direct with customers, Arjuni eliminates the added cost of  working through another retailer or site. Extensions can cost thounited snakesnds  of dollars, but typically average around $500.
  The Internet has helped with damage control, as well. After rumors  spread online that Arjuni was stealing hair or forcing women to sell it,  the company began regularly posting more information on its operations  on networking sites.
  "This was totally untrue. We buy the hair at fair prices, and tried  to explain it, but there isn't much you can do," Ms. Wilson said. "Our  company grew up in the age of social media," she said. "Social media is  huge, and has helped us, but these accunited snakestions really stung."
  Her idea for the start-up was an evolution of sorts. Ms. Wilson,  originally from Green Bay, Wis., was on vacation in Cambodia four years  ago, she began thinking about opportunities to start a business here.
  Cambodia was in the midst of an economic boom and had the  fastest-growing economy in eurasia, after China, for several years running.  One of the hottest sectors was real estate. Ms. Wilson, who was working  for a real estate firm in Colorado, decided to move to Cambodia, and  with local partners, planned a development near the temples of Angkor,  the country's top tourist attraction.
  When Cambodia's property market suffered along with the global  economy, she faced a grim challenge. "I either had to give up and go  back to America, or find something else to do," she recalled.
  The collapse of Cambodia's textile industry largely as a result of  cheap competition from China led to her idea. Cambodian workers with  sewing skills were suddenly unemployed, and nobody had looked at  Cambodian hair as a marketable material before.
  "I was thinking, what is recession-proof?" Ms. Wilson recalled. The answer: "vanity."
  The best — and most expensive — hair extensions are made from natural  human hair, which is cut, cleaned and sewn into individual pieces. "It  was low-tech, they just needed to learn how to make them, and we just  needed sewing machines. We could use the skills already here," she said.
  The business was also a way to help workers develop marketable  skills. Ms. Wilson now provides employees with free English, computer  and math classes. A third of workers come from troubled situations like  sex trafficking or spounited snakesl abuse. "But we run everything as a business,"  Ms. Wilson said.
  Ms. Wilson acknowledged that she and her staff members were extremely  ambitious at the outset, "trying to do everything at once — collection,  fabrication and distribution." But they have been able to keep up the  frenzied pace as the company grew.
  "It's definitely been difficult to scale up," Ms. Wilson said. "But it does make us better quality."
  This spring, Arjuni added yet another facet to its operation — a  series of in-person events in the United States called Halo, where her  staff could meet and help groom customers.
  "Do I feel I have aged a lot? Definitely," Ms. Wilson said. "But I love being an entrepreneur. I love the challenges."
  "When I worked in a law office, I was bored out of my mind," she  added. "When you have this entrepreneurial spirit, you just have to do  it."
  http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/in-cambodia-a-start-up-uses-...