Issue
DOCUMENTARY
MORE THAN
JUST
EXTENSIONS:
We catch up with Riqua Hailes
after the release of her
Documentary
A
68
COSMOBIZ SALON DECEMBER 2015
Hair, it is every bit, if not more, important to the industry and how we perceive it.
1. Can you tell us a little bit about your
background?
I am an entrepreneur, who invested in a new business
concept of an express extensions salon—I am not a licensed cosmetologist. What makes Just Extensions a
beloved salon is our various extension applications and
affordable prices, along with our team which consists
Images from Justextensions.com
fter a bad experience with
supposedly high quality hair
extensions, Riqua Hailes decided she needed to learn what
really went in to the high quality stuff and
why not everything she was getting was
making the cut. Hailes has been working
in the industry and with extensions for
ages when, after just a month of wear, a
client came back to her with matted hair
that had cost her a pretty penny. After this,
she decided to take a closer look at where
her hair came from. Hailes, along with a
client and a cameraman, boarded the first
of what would quickly become many
flights. Starting in China Hailes winds her
way through the eastern side of the hair
industry, eventually making her way to
Brazil and Peru where she found that the
words on packages have little to do with
the actual places.
The documentary, which is available
through her website and iTunes, follows
her and her team as they make their way through the
baffling and sometimes ugly world of hair extensions.
What she finds is something we often talk about here at
CosmoBiz; because the world of extensions is unregulated, there are very few specifics a manufacturer has to
go by. We had the chance to catch up with Riqua Hailes
about what her experience was like and what she came
away with. If you’ve ever dabbled in the hair industry
we recommend giving the full documentary a watch.
While it does have fewer jokes than Chris Rock’s Good