Japanese Ahead in the Hairpiece Market
Japanese men are notoriously self-conscious about baldness. Many will spare no expense to conceal shiny pates.
This concern has turned Japan into the world’s biggest toupee market.
And Japanese hairpiece firms stand poised to sew up the global toupee trade after a major U.S. rival bowed out of the race last year.
At the top of the field is Aderans, which commands 60% of the Japanese market. Its 1986 sales were $169.53 million.
Aderans got even bigger with its takeover last year of the top U.S. toupee maker, International Hairgoods of Eden Prairie, Minn.
Aderans’ closest rival is Tokyo-based Art Nature, which had sales of about $53 million in 1986.
Hairpieces Common
Demand for toupees is strong in Japan, where men are much more likely to wear a hairpiece than in the United States, Aderans spokesman Koichi Yamamoto said.
“Some Japanese customers tell us they always wear a toupee while in Japan, but leave it home when they do business in America,” said his colleague, Mamiya Iguchi.
One 36-year-old Japanese toupee wearer said he wore his wig religiously because he felt he looked much older without it.
“I would never have been able to marry as well as I did if I had gone to the O-miai (first meeting with a prospective spouse in arranged marriage procedures) with a bald head,” he added.
He wound up marrying the daughter of a prominent brewer.
Aderans also has the biggest toupee factory in the world--a cavernous 426,509-square-foot building in rural Nakajomachi, north of Tokyo.
Private Fitting
On fitting day, the customer is ushered to a fancy leather barber’s chair in a booth curtained off to ensure privacy. A pliable waxlike frame is put over his scalp.
The material softens with the customer’s body heat and begins to mold itself to the contours of his head.
The fitter draws arrows on the surface of the now-domelike mold to show the direction of hair growth. The mold is sent to the factory where an artificial scalp is made to measure.
Human hair matching the customer’s remaining hair is sewn by hand--strand by strand--onto the artificial scalp with a fine embroidery needle.
Painstaking Work
It takes about a month of painstaking work to produce a good toupee, Yamamoto said. Toupees produced by Aderans cost between $2,000 to $2,600.
When the toupee arrives, a specially trained barber trims it to the customer’s specifications. The wearer fixes it to his remaining hair with four or five ingenious comb-like clamps.
“You don’t have to worry that a stiff breeze will carry your toupee off,” Yamamoto said.
He said a good toupee should last at least three or four years, and much longer with care.
“It’s just like a car. There are people who take good care of a car and it lasts 10 years, and those who crack their cars up within a year.”
