A market for Russian blondes

For the global beauty industry,this is golden treasure.

Nobody else has this,nobody in the world, said Aleksei N. Kuznetsov,the buildings owner. Russian hair is the best in the world.

Buyers of human hair flock here. They pay small sums for a heads worth of tresses sheared from women who often have few economic alternatives.

Human hair is now in particularly high demand for hair extension procedures in more affluent countries. Dark hair from India and China is more plentiful,but blonde and other light shades are valued for their relative scarcity. The largest market is the US,where tens of thousands of beauty salons offer hair extensions. African-American women have long worn hair extensions,but the trend among women with lighter hair has been popularised by celebrity endorsementsJessica Simpson and Paris Hilton.

Great Lengths,an Italian company has estimated the American retail market for hair extensions at 250 million annually. The average price for extensions is 439,according to a 2009 survey by American Salon Magazine,although the procedure can cost several thousand dollars.

An estimated 20 percent of Russian hair is used domestically,by the well coiffed of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The blonde harvest is not new,moving from Western Europe in the 1960s and 70s,through Poland in the 80s and to Ukraine and Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Its not hard to understand why people in Ukraine sell their hair a hundred times more often than people in Sweden, said David Elman,a co-owner of Raw Virgin Hair Company,an importer. They are not doing it for fun. Usually,only people who have temporary financial difficulties in depressed regions sell their hair.

In Mosalsk,a 16-inch braid fetches about 50. Natalya N. Vinokurova,26,grew up nearby in Yukhnov,a town where half the homes lack indoor plumbing and the average monthly wage is about 300. What little cash-crop agriculture there once was collapsed with the Soviet Union. But Vinokurova cultivated something with market value: strawberry blonde hair.

I wore it in a braid,a ponytail,different ways, she said. But I got sick of it so I cut it, and then sold it,she said.

Kuznetsovs company here,Belli Capelli,which processes human hair into extension kits,is the largest business of its type in Russia,with annual revenue of about 16 million.

This is capitalism, he said. Why does one woman sell her hair to another? The person with money wants to look better than the person without money.

Although Kuznetsov has no local rivals that he knows of,he keeps a security guard posted at the entrance to his storeroom. The milk crates,filled with the hair of thousands of women and sorted by categories including Southern Russian and Russian Gold.

Generally,about 70 percent of the hair bought in Russia comes from locks kept at home from previous haircuts. Some Ukrainian and Russian women traditionally cut their hair after the birth of their first child,and may decide only years later to sell it.

Hair is bought,often after some haggling,directly from the head of the seller,who then gets a haircut on the spot. As a courtesy,in Russia,the deal is nearly always done in a salon so a hairdresser can cut carefully.

Some women cut their hair to change their style,others need the money, said Sergei V. Kotlubi,a buyer. Its like fishing. You never know what you will catch.