How to sell wigs online

Twenty people asked "is it human hair" today, and the honest answer takes longer than a DM allows.

So build the answer into the listing instead. Say what you can actually verify: the weight in grams, the length measured stretched, the cap construction, the density, and where you bought it. Stop repeating grade letters that nobody issues. Photograph colour in daylight and film a short video, because a still photo of a ₦180,000 unit under a ring light is a refund waiting to happen. And on any custom unit, take a deposit that covers the cost of the hair itself, not a neat percentage.

That's the whole trade. Every argument you'll have in the next year is one of those five things.

The grade on the bundle is not a standard

You've seen 8A, 10A, 12A, sometimes higher. Vendors print it on the packaging and sellers repeat it because everyone else does.

There's no standards body issuing those letters. Two suppliers' "10A" will not match, and the same supplier's 10A this quarter may not match last quarter's. It's marketing shorthand, not a measurement, and a buyer who has been burned once already knows that.

The same goes for the words stacked around it. "Raw", "virgin", "unprocessed", "cuticle-aligned" and "double drawn" all mean something in principle. In practice they mean whatever the person who printed the label wanted them to mean, and you are three steps down a supply chain you cannot see the top of.

Which puts you in an awkward but survivable position: you can't verify origin, so don't claim it. What you can do is describe the hair in front of you, in terms a buyer can check when it arrives. That's a stronger sales position than a grade letter, because it's the only claim you'll never have to defend.

What you can honestly claim, and how to check it yourself

Do this once per supplier, on one bundle, before you sell fifty of them. It costs you one bundle and saves you a season.

Weight it. A standard bundle should be around 100g. Weigh it on a kitchen scale. If a supplier's "100g" bundles come in at 82g, that's a supplier problem and you now know it before your customer does.

Wash it and dry it. Shampoo, condition, air dry, then comb from the ends upwards. Good hair combs through. Blended or badly processed hair mats in the mid-shaft on the first wash, and that's exactly when your customer will find out.

Heat a small piece. Take a strand from the weft, not from anywhere visible, and pass a flat iron over it at moderate heat. Human hair behaves like hair. Synthetic fibre stiffens, melts or smells like burning plastic. Do this outside or by a window, and do it once per new supplier.

Tug the weft. Hold the weft and pull a small section firmly. Some shedding is normal on any weft. A handful is a returned unit in three weeks.

Count what's actually in the pack. Single drawn hair has mixed lengths through the bundle, so it's thick at the top and thinner at the ends. Double drawn is more uniform and costs more. Both are legitimate. Selling single drawn while showing photographs of double drawn is not.

Then write what you found into the listing, in plain words: 100g per bundle, weighed. Single drawn, so the ends are lighter than the roots. Combs through after a wash, tested. Takes heat up to medium. That paragraph sells hair to the exact customer you want, which is the one who has been disappointed before.

Length is measured stretched, and that's complaint number one

A 20-inch deep wave bundle is 20 inches when you pull it straight. On a head, hanging in its own curl pattern, it sits at roughly 14 inches.

That gap is the most common argument in this entire trade, and it is completely avoidable.

Put it in the listing. Photograph the tape measure against the hair, straightened. Then photograph or film the same length installed, curly, so the buyer sees both numbers. One sentence does most of the work: "20 inches measured stretched. On a curl pattern this tight it will hang around 14 to 15 inches."

Two related honesty points. Lengths from most suppliers run a little short rather than a little long, so measure your own stock rather than trusting the packet. And when a customer orders a 26-inch unit, tell them where it will actually fall on a person of average height, because "waist length" means different things on different bodies and she has a picture in her head.

A number you published is a specification. The same number explained after delivery is an excuse.

Colour is where photographs lie

Natural black, dark brown and off-black look identical in a phone photograph taken under a ring light. They are visibly different in daylight in a bedroom, which is where your customer will open the parcel.

Ring lights are the problem. They flatten, they shift warm, and they blow out the highlights that make one shade distinguishable from another. Blonde photographs yellow indoors and almost white outdoors. Burgundy photographs brown. Honey blonde photographs however your bulb feels that evening.

What works, and it's cheap:

1. Shoot near a window, ceiling lights off. Same window, same time of day, every time. Consistency across your shop matters more than perfection in one photo.
2. Put a plain white sheet of paper in one frame. It gives the eye a reference and it quietly corrects for the colour cast on the whole photograph.
3. Hold the hair against a hand. Skin is the reference every buyer uses anyway. It also proves the unit is in your possession.
4. Film ten to fifteen seconds. Turn the unit slowly by the window, run your fingers through it once. Video is far harder to fake than a photo, and buyers know that, which is why it converts. The mechanics of a short product video that doesn't look amateur are in how to shoot a product video.
5. Photograph the actual unit you're selling. Not the supplier's catalogue image. Coloured units especially: every dye lot is a slightly different colour, and a buyer who reverse-searches your photo and finds it on a wholesaler's page will post about it.

Then write the caveat, and write it small and specific rather than as a blanket disclaimer: "Photographed in daylight with no filter. Screens vary, so expect the shade to be within one step of what you see here. If it isn't, message me."

Custom units need a deposit and a measurement sheet

A ready-made unit on a stand can be sold to anyone. A unit built to one woman's head, plucked to her hairline, bleached to her skin, cut to her preferred length, can be sold to almost nobody else, at maybe half of what she agreed to pay.

That asymmetry is why the deposit exists, and it's why the deposit percentage everyone quotes is wrong.

Take the deposit at the cost of your materials, not at a tidy fraction. If the bundles and the frontal cost you ₦95,000 and the finished unit sells at ₦180,000, a 50% deposit is ₦90,000, which still leaves you ₦5,000 short on the day she stops replying. Take ₦110,000, or take the full hair cost plus your styling time, and say exactly what it covers: "The deposit buys the hair. It isn't refundable once I've cut into it, because at that point it's yours."

Set a notice period and hold it. A custom unit from stock you already have is realistically seven to fourteen days. If the hair has to be sourced first, it's longer, and the honest thing is to say so before she pays rather than after.

Take the measurements in writing, in the order, not in a voice note you'll lose:

Measurement	How to take it
Circumference	Around the head, along the hairline and above the ears, meeting at the nape
Front to nape	Centre of the hairline, over the crown, to the bottom of the nape
Ear to ear over the top	Over the crown from the top of one ear to the other
Ear to ear across the front	Along the hairline from temple to temple
Temple to temple around the back	Around the back of the head
Nape width	Across the base of the neck

Ask for a photo of the tape in place for the circumference. Half the measurements you're sent are wrong, and the circumference is the one that decides whether the unit sits.

The general shape of charging for something that doesn't exist yet, including how to word it so nobody feels ambushed, is worked through in getting paid for a custom order, and the deposit conversation itself is in taking a deposit before you start.

What a unit actually costs you

People price wigs by looking at what other sellers charge. Do the sum instead, once, and you'll price differently.

Say a three-bundle set with a matching frontal lands at ₦140,000 including shipping and clearing. Say the ventilating, bleaching and plucking takes your stylist ₦20,000, or four hours of your own time if you do it yourself. Add the cap, the combs, the elastic, the packaging box: ₦6,000. Add delivery inside Lagos at ₦3,500, or more outside it.

That's ₦169,500 before you've earned anything, on a unit you might list at ₦230,000.

Two things fall out of that. First, your margin is smaller than it looks, and the styling time is the part people forget to charge for. Second, the difference between a good month and a bad one is almost entirely how many units sit finished and unsold, because each one is ₦169,500 of your cash sitting on a mannequin.

Which is an argument for taking deposits on everything, not just the customs. Even on ready-made units, a part payment to hold it is reasonable and buyers in this market are used to it.

Taking the money, and the honest limit

Your buyers will pay by transfer, and some will want to pay part now and part on delivery. That's normal here and it's workable.

Here's the limitation, and for a Nigerian seller it's the one that matters. Sailo's card payments run through Stripe and only Stripe. There is no Paystack integration, whatever you may have read, and there's no mobile money rail either. If you can't open and get cleared on a Stripe account where you are, the card button will not appear no matter which plan you're on, and the Business plan at $49 a month buys you nothing at all. Check that first, before you build a plan around cards.

What does work: bank transfer, with your account details and any instructions you like in the checkout, and cash or transfer on delivery. Sailo never touches that money and takes nothing from it. The catalogue, the options and the address all arrive properly written, and the payment happens between the buyer's bank and yours.

The second half of that limitation is confirmation. Sailo cannot tell you a transfer landed, because it never sees it. Only your bank can. Which means marking an order paid is a thing you do with your own eyes, and doctored transfer screenshots are common enough in this trade that you need a routine rather than a vibe. The routine is in how to know a bank transfer actually arrived.

On cash on delivery: do not send a ₦230,000 unit to a stranger on full COD. The exposure is too large and the refusal rate on high-ticket items is real. A part payment that covers your hair cost, with the balance on delivery, is the version of COD that works on expensive goods. The wider picture of what buyers here expect and how trust gets built before money moves is in selling online in Nigeria.

Returns on hair, and what a fair policy looks like

Say it plainly on the page, because vagueness costs more than a strict policy does.

A workable position that most buyers accept:

• Unopened, uninstalled, in the original packaging, within 48 hours: exchange or refund.
• Installed, cut, coloured, plucked or worn: no return. Not a policy choice, a hygiene one, and everyone understands it.
• Wrong item sent, or a genuine defect like heavy shedding at the weft in the first wash: replaced at your cost. Ask for a video, not a photo.
• Custom units: no return. Adjustments to the fit, yes, within a fortnight, free.

Then honour it faster than you have to. A seller who replaces a shedding weft within a week without an argument gets talked about, and being talked about is how hair sells in this market. One replaced unit costs you ₦140,000 once. A reputation for arguing costs you every referral for a year.

Worked example: Aisha, Ikeja

Aisha sells about nine units a month, split roughly six ready-made and three custom.

Her ready-made units sit between ₦95,000 and ₦180,000 depending on length and cap. Her customs run ₦210,000 to ₦320,000. She holds four finished units in stock at any time and no more, because five was ₦700,000 of her money asleep on a shelf and it nearly finished her in her second year.

A typical month: six ready-made at an average ₦135,000 is ₦810,000. Three customs averaging ₦255,000 is ₦765,000. Call it ₦1,575,000 in. Against that, roughly ₦960,000 of hair, ₦120,000 to her stylist for the custom work, ₦45,000 in delivery she doesn't fully recover, and packaging and data and the rest at maybe ₦40,000. She clears somewhere around ₦410,000 in a good month.

Three things she changed that moved that number. She started taking ₦150,000 deposits on custom units instead of ₦100,000, after one customer disappeared on a ₦280,000 build and left her holding ₦170,000 of hair cut to a stranger's hairline. She started filming every unit by the window instead of photographing it under the ring light, and her "this isn't the colour" messages dropped to almost nothing. And she stopped writing 12A on anything.

That last one lost her nothing. The customers who care about grade letters were never going to be satisfied by them.

What to do next

Take one bundle from your current supplier and run the four checks today: weigh it, wash it, heat a strand, tug the weft. Write down what you find.

Then rewrite one listing using only what you verified. Weight in grams, length measured stretched with the tape in the photo, cap construction, density, and a fifteen-second daylight video. No grade letter.

Then set your deposit number by adding up what the hair actually costs you, and put that figure, in naira, into your custom order form. Not a percentage. A number.