Many Chinese wig producers are running short of raw material - genuine hair, which they used to import in large quantities from neighboring countries including India, but the surging coronavirus pandemic cut both production and transportation from those countries, industry insiders told the Global Times.To get more news about human hair wigs, you can visit monavirginhair.com official website.

The situation is creating opportunities for companies with available hair inventory, particularly leading industry players."Now, who have real hair inventory have the whole market," Zhang Tianyou, deputy general manager of China's wig giant Rebecca, told the Global Times on Monday.

According to the industry practitioners, China has been heavily reliant on other Asian countries to import genuine hair as well as hair processing equipment. Currently, China imports most of its real hair from India, while countries like Thailand and Bangladesh also exported real hair to Chinese companies. Most of the hair is processed and knitted in North Korea.

However, the pandemic outbreak has caused many Asian countries to halt production or cut off transportation with China. North Korea, for example, has sealed off its borders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus for many months. This is causing wig companies in the country to run short of raw materials.

"As far as I know, many wig companies in China are close to running out of hair inventory, which is causing wig demand to significant outrun supply," Zheng Jiangmin, manager of the Dongyang Lansi Wig Co, a wig producer, told the Global Times on Monday.

Zhang Tianyou, deputy general manager of China's wig giant Rebecca, said that because many small factories in China don't stock raw materials, many have already halted production. The lack of raw materials and the inconvenient shipping have caused the price of hair materials to surge in recent months. For example, the price of some real hair lace strips has surged by 10 times, Zheng said.

The raw material price surge has also pushed up the price of end products. Zhang disclosed that the company had raised the price of its products twice recently, and is considering another price rise soon."The price of real hair has surged almost three times, and we have no choice but to increase our product price to follow the market fluctuations," Zhang said.

To cope with the situation, many domestic companies have tried to train their own hair knitters. Rebecca, for example, has started to train domestic hair knitters at a time when hand-knitted hair was hard to source from overseas countries.

Zhang told the Global Times that he visited dozens of Chinese provinces during the epidemic last year trying to develop hand-knitting bases. The company also developed similar bases in five overseas countries to fill the industry gap after North Korea locked its borders.

"It is not easy to train hair knitters in a short period of time, not to mention that China's labor cost is much higher than that in some other Asian countries," Zheng said. According to him, so far, China is still not able to have a real hair knitting industry with scale production.

For several years, Satwan Kumar has been bartering crisps and candy floss for tufts of hair collected from women in the northern Indian town of Kasgunj.To get more news about human hair wigs, you can visit monavirginhair.com official website.

Mr Kumar, 18, is one of many hair collectors in India who roam villages and towns to gather the human hair that is raw material for making wigs for the multi-billion dollar world fashion industry.Since January, his business has been hit after the Indian government imposed restrictions on the export of human hair, part of an industrial policy to boost the local wig-making industry.

"My business is almost dead. My profit has halved because there are no takers for the raw material," Mr Kumar told The National.

The teenager from Uttar Pradesh state learnt the trade from his father and elder brother as a child.Many women in India do not throw their fallen hair away in the belief that tresses are a part of their body and they preserve them according to age-old traditions.

India is one of the leading suppliers of human hair for wigs for the fashion industry and people suffering from conditions such as alopecia or hair loss through chemotherapy.

During last April and November, India's hair exports were worth $145 million, a huge jump from $15.28m in the previous year, according to government data, with China a major export market.Much of the exported hair comes from scores of temples, where female pilgrims tonsure their heads - clipping hair as a religious gesture for Hindu deities.

The hair, known as Remy hair, fetches high prices and is known for its quality as most of the donors come from rural areas where use of hair artificial beauty products is less common.

Hair derived from salons is not used in the industry as clippings are too short, increasing demand for naturally fallen or "virgin" hair that hawkers such as Mr Kumar collect from door-to-door.

Depending on the quality and the length, the hawkers buy the hair for 2,000 rupees ($26) a kilogram, which is sold to dealers for 6,000 rupees.Most of the hair ends up in the eastern part of West Bengal state's thriving cottage industry, where workers untangle the clumps, wash it and straighten it.

Once ready, the raw hair, called "goli", is flown around the world, mostly smuggled to China, where it is used in wigs, extension braids and curls.

But the government restrictions on exports of human hair - in part to address smuggling - have severely affected the small vendors and cottage industries as demand and rates paid for hair have fallen.