'I stockpile in summer'

| Friday April 9, 2010 00:00

Perhaps you should consider saving your hair for the hard times when you will really need that cash, say when the motshelo lady knocks at your door for the unpaid interest. Then you can look at her, with a twinkle in your eye and tell her that you will settle the P1,000 debt in the afternoon.

That is if you take Koketso Jeremiah's advice - and you had better believe him. This hairdresser at Tilly's Hair Salon in the African Mall could in the next three years be shovelling in money from human hair dreadlocks. He buys and sells human hair dreadlocks.

There are no taboos in his business. 'I will buy any good dreadlocks. No, I don't care about what you have been doing or where you are from. As long as you present me with a good pack of dreadlocks - either sitting on your head or in a plastic bag,' he says.

Jeremiah is one of a growing number of dreadlock entrepreneurs who buy and sell human hair dreadlocks. I ask if those buying are not worried about where the hair came from or if the one who 'donated' the hair is alive or dead.

'People don't worry about such things. When a client, who wants to have a dready look comes around, what he wants is a good packet of dreadlocks that will match his or her hair and cannot be distinguished as another person's hair.

So you have a lady buying hair that was cut from a man and vice versa. You have people buying hair from other nationalities - it doesn't matter, so long as it matches your hair,' he says as he leans to open the cabinet drawer to pull out a plastic bag.

'You saw the young man I was standing outside with? The bald headed one? I just bought these dreadlocks from him for P400. I have about 65 pieces and I'll probably use about 42 on my next customer who has already booked,' he says as he spreads the 30 something-centimetre locks on the cabinet. The 42 pieces he says he will use will fetch him at least P600, which is the lowest price he will agree to drop to. If the client doesn't negotiate the price down, Jeremiah could fetch an even better amount.

Jeremiah's dreadlock business is only a 'side job' he does in addition to his work as a fulltime hairdresser/barber.His idea to buy and sell natural dreads hit him like a thunderbolt one day. 'There I was cutting and throwing away dreadlocks from some of my clients when at the same time I had customers who desperately wanted dreads and could not wait for the little spikes on their heads to grow into full-length dreads,' he says.

That was five-years ago and he has not looked back ever since. So what happens after you get another guy's hair stuck onto your head? 'Once I have knitted the dreads to your hair you cannot remove them. As your own dreads grow, the ones you bought will remain part of your hair.' He winks: 'So if you have friends who are tired of their dreadlocks or find their maintenance expensive, tell them to come talk and to me.'

The price for your dreadlocks will be determined by a number of things. 'The dreadlocks must have good texture and should not have those small knots that look like 'lumps'. No one wants to buy dreadlocks like that. They look dreadful, ' he says, pursing his lips and shaking his head to convey the type of disapproval his clients would have for such dreadlocks. 'The longer your hair, the better the price. Sometimes your hair may be shorter than the 30 centimetres that I normally want, but I can still buy it for a good price if the texture is good.'

What about hair from smokers if you are a non-smoker?'Generally people who keep dreadlocks wash their hair. However, I will still wash the hair and dry dreads after I buy them. Before I keep it, I spray it with dreadlock spray to prevent it from losing texture and colour. I then store it in a tight plastic bag until there is a buyer,' he says.

'The length of the buyer's dreadlock does not matter.  It depends on what they want: If they want long hair they will get it, and again they can choose to have shorter dreadlocks,' he says. For most people, the length of dreadlocks is determined by the time of year. 'When it gets hot, most people sell or just cut off their dreadlocks.

This is the time I get a good number of people who want to sell. I usually get about four to six people in a month selling their dreadlocks around this time. On the other hand, I get a lot of people who want dreadlocks during winter. So yes, summertime is the time to stockpile.'

But the stockpile gets depleted quickly in winter and it can be quite a challenge finding sellers, Jeremiah says. 'Then you are only getting one or two people who think maintaining their dreadlocks is getting expensive or just don't want to twist anymore.'

He is planning on developing a 'buying and selling strategy' in a bid to expand his business. Given Jeremiah's zest for this 'strange' business, it may not be long before those with dreadlocks begin to really appreciate the expensive commodity that hangs down the shoulders of someone who just walked into your office or sat next to you in a kombi. It is that previously dreaded piece of fashion known as dreadlocks.