How Toronto salons and brands buy hair wholesale

What Toronto buyers get wrong first

Ash shades under Canadian winter salon light expose brassiness that looked fine in the box. Judge the shade in the room where you will install it.

The mistake is judging hair on the day it arrives. Fresh hair is easy to make impressive: a coating makes it slip through the fingers, and a fast bleach makes a shade look clean. Both wear off. The supplier you want is the one whose hair is the same at wash ten as it was at wash one.

The three tests to run before you commit

Slide your fingers from tip to root. You should feel resistance from the cuticle. Smooth in both directions usually means the cuticle was stripped and the hair was coated.

Wet a strand and stretch it slowly. Healthy hair gives and returns. Hair that snaps or stays stretched has been over-processed.

Wash the same piece ten times with a normal shampoo, heat style it between washes, and look at the mid-lengths and ends. Tangling at the nape and dry ends at wash ten is the failure you would otherwise discover in a client's chair.

Shipping, paperwork and cost per kilo

Buying both product types from one factory is only an advantage if that factory keeps a reference of each of your approved shades.

Consolidating several shades into one shipment usually lowers your landed cost more than negotiating the per-gram price does. Ask the supplier to quote both ways before you decide.

The reorder question

A first order is easy for any supplier. The one that matters is the third. Ask what physical reference the supplier keeps of the exact lot you approved, and what happens if a run does not match it.

At RemyPatra we keep the approved reference piece here and match every later run against it, so colour, weight and weft construction repeat rather than drift.