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Updated April 2nd, 2015

As a specialist in hair extensions,  I was excited to offer what I considered to be the most flawless hair extension method available.  I had done about as much research as was possible, watching all the Youtube videos and looking for blogs on the topic. Since it’s a method that someone is charging a premium for, the actual process was shrouded in mystery, likely protected for proprietary reasons. I was unable to learn more without actually paying to be trained in the method myself. 

I am still building my business, so I don’t have a whole lot in savings at any-one-time, but I was so determined to learn this method because the results in the image gallery were so beautiful and DKW seemed so bubbly and confident. I made the risky decision to wager our honeymoon fund on a trip to Tuscon Arizona to learn from her directly. The education alone was over a thousand dollars, plus the expense of having her perform the technique on me, so sum total we spent several thousand dollars if you include travel from Portland Oregon and accommodations. I believed at the time that I would be coming home with an in-demand technique, that would attract new clients and earn my investment back in time. I was sorely disappointed. 

Natural Beaded Rows are a combination of micro-link beads and sewing with wefts, made popular by Danielle K White  (DKW) (Formerly of Gilbert AZ, but currently in California). Technically these two techniques stand alone as popular methods, but through a couple tweaks DKW has innovated a third way of doing things that reportedly was less damaging and better for fine hair. Without divulging too much, a row of links are created in the hair, and the wefts are layered and sewn between the links with the thread. Typically this is called bead-and-sew but there are a few knotting, placement and hair-brand tweaks l that make it NBR. 

I studied under DKW  in person to learn her technique, and I also paid to have my own extensions done. (I do not offer any methods that I haven’t experienced for myself.) While initially I publicly vouched for their comfort and natural appearance, as well as their easy styling, low-maintenance versatility, I have done a complete 180 on the service, the brand Bohyme Hair (Particularly through LuxeRemi.com), and the professionalism of DKW as a business entity.  I’d like to preface what I’m about to say by clarifying that I’m not here to start anything, but I do field a lot of messages, calls and emails from stylists interested in the technique but concerned about the expense of the class and the journey. I felt that it was time to finally explain why I don’t do NBR, and why I can’t recommend it as a method. ***Everything you are about to read was my own personal experience, and only shared in the interest of educating consumers so that they may make their own decisions regarding the technique. I share this in good faith that people have a right to hear the experiences of paying customers in regards to things they paid for. 

The key issues were:

Two bald spots on the client’s scalp, at the beginning and ending of the top row, which appeared to be caused by tension from the angle of placement, and the weight of the hair itself. Before anyone says that’s something that could have been adjusted for, I’d like to submit that both myself and another stylist from a completely different state who contacted me, experienced the same pattern of balding from the extensions that DKW did herself on us at our lesson. When I contacted DKW she dismissed this as part of having hair extensions in general, and implied that her clients don’t mind. Because the placement of the tracks is key to the method looking consistent, it was impossible to adjust for this issue. It really boils down to the fact that the hair around the face, the temple area, is finer and more fragile in general, so placing the weft there is ill-advised, especially as those two front beads become load-bearing with the angle of the track. As traction alopecia (aka bald spots that occur from pulled hair) can cause permanent balding, this was a major issue for me. I could not, as DKW suggested, express to clients that no method was completely damage-free.

The next issue was that the brand of hair she insists we use (Bohyme) turned out to be much more shady than you would expect. I had a serious issue with one of their licensed distributors over being scammed hundreds of dollars in product that was unfit for use (literally I have video and pictures of the extreme matting that began after the first wash). When I tried to get my money back, they had me send the hair in for the lab to test to confirm that it was faulty, and that turned out to just be a lie. They don’t have a lab or that kind of policy for returns, they just wanted the hair back so I would have less proof. (Yes I am an idiot for falling for that, and for not keeping some for myself, not that I could afford legal processes, but I do at least have video and images). When I sent the hair back, I also returned unopened hair because I didn’t want to deal with their company until the issue was resolved. They took my returns, and did not refund me or return the unopened product, so I eventually had to report them to BBB. 

While all of this was happening, I contacted DKW in a panic to see if she would help out by advocating. She does a ton of business with them and refers everyone to them for hair purchases, so I had hoped she would have a little more clout with them than I did. She didn’t want to get her hands dirty, and tried to blame me and my clients for the hair, essentially discounting my credibility and professionalism, which was really adding insult to injury. When I wrote her back in shock that she was so dismissive to someone who had paid a lot to learn from her, her husband emailed me this weird email, titled “LET ME REPEAT MYSELF” in all caps, even though he had never corresponded with me before. In that email he essentially stated he was the CEO of DKW and that all communication would go through him from now on. I found that deliberately intimidating and creepy, and that’s when I threw in the towel, officially. 

As for any positive reviews, I was solicited to make the one on her site before I even had a chance to get my feet wet with the method on my own clients. I regret helping out with those statements, but like I said I was super excited to have learned something new, and really believed I was going to be offering an amazing new service. I could only attest to the extensions I had on my head, and the bald patches didn’t show up until a little while later. (When I noticed mine, I thought it must just be me, i mean, DKW wouldn’t intentionally install extensions that caused bald patches, right? But like I said, later I received messages with pics via FB from another stylist who had the same issue, and I realized that it was a design flaw within the method, which DKW confirmed she was aware of.)

In summary: The education is very expensive. It consisted at the time of me meeting up with DKW and spending about an hour or two in her small studio practicing on a doll-head, and watching her perform the service on her client. For the price, she gave me a little tupperware container with a kit consisting of needle and thread, beads, needle-nosed pliers and a crochet-needle. She gave me remnant hair from  previous client services to work with on the doll head.She works super fast, and talks pretty fast so you do need to pay close-attention. I found having the service performed on me was necessary because I learned a bit more from feeling what she was doing, in a way that I couldn’t have learned from just watching. 

I would say that the exclusive videos you had access to on her site were poorly done for the money. They’re kind of bonus feature anyway so maybe that’s not a big deal, but if you take into account that you really find yourself relying on them when you get home, it would be better if they were improved. Having made a tutorial myself, I totally get how hard they are and how difficult it can be to get your education across in a clear manner, but I feel that she charges a lot for her education so as learning materials they should be a lot better than content the rest of us share freely. She could also easily shoot quality instructional videos, and charge a lot less for them, and that would be more reasonable for a method that still has kinks to work out. 

The placement charts she emailed me were also confusing, as there was little to no difference between the two images. Actual pictures on a real person would have been more helpful for placement.

I found that I definitely needed to practice the method on real people before charging the recommended rate. However, you have to charge something up-front because the hair itself is several hundred dollars and if you use cheap hair you aren’t technically going to get good at handling the tricky to use tiny hand-tied wefts that the method is known for. Cheap, machine wefted hair is easier to use, but it’s also heavier and bulkier. Good luck finding models willing to spend $300 + on a sew-in from you when it takes 5+ hours and pulls out hair. Also, because the service isn’t “free”, models think like clients, and they aren’t as flexible with your learning as someone who is getting free services, which tends to be awful. If you can, I recommend practicing on friends and family, and not doing an open-call. It just isn’t worth it. Also: you may have a hard time retaining models as clients once you are done practicing and ready to charge properly for the method, depending on your area. In the PNW I had an exceptionally difficult time with moving out of the discounted advertised rate to a more reasonable rate for extensions. Unlike unique methods such as Great Lengths, there is a lot of competition for extensions that use sew-in wefts, and thrifty people will find another deal. 

The recommended service charge is high. It’s roughly $800 without the color you see so often in the NBR gallery. The color is actually a really important part of the service, as is the curls, so without those two elements the method isn’t nearly as impressive. I didn’t receive color in my service and as you can see, my hair isn’t totally gorgeous at the end. My hair color wasn’t a perfect match for the extensions, and you can even see where the blonde is peeking through at the top of the weft. Color would likely have camouflaged that better. I would say that the color-education aspect of the class was not thorough enough. I would have appreciated a nicely printed step-by-step for the price and video resources that were also clear. I referred back to her existing youtube quite frequently to try and parse out exactly how she was doing things. I later decided it was just the Sombre or Color Melt method, and began following other stylists with videos on the technique.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the service down to the hour and a half recommended service time, so I was pretty disappointed by the claims it was a fast service. DKW is super fast, but whatever shortcuts she uses were not something that could be taught in a class. It takes awhile to get that fast, and I would venture to say that the practitioner is a big aspect of that. I am a perfectionist, especially when the service is expensive, and found that it was taking me hours. The juice is not worth the squeeze. She also suggested you could apply the extensions to wet hair and then dry them in, to save time on clients who required color. This was a really bad idea, primarily because applying tension to wet-hair causes breakage. Wet thread is also an issue. So for clients who need root-retouches with their extensions, you wind up doing things separately and it takes FOREVER. People are so irritated with you by the end of the service that they don’t leave feeling like they got their “me-time” and that eventually breeds contempt, even though you are the one who stood there for 6 hours and didn’t charge them full-price. 

I currently use Klix Hair in a very similar placement, and those are super fast, skin-wefts, with micro links already attached, so it really has a very similar end result. They also come in a variety of colors so you can easily match them and don’t have to customize the color yourself as much. You can do a full install of Klix easily within an hour, and a retouch is only 30 minutes in most cases. There may be other brands that offer this style of extension, so shop around. Klix is just the brand I have experience with now and I really appreciate how easy and fast it is.

I am saving up for Great Lengths training, as they are tried and true and have excellent training/reputation, and that should be sufficient for permanent methods with a natural appearance. They are the ONLY extension brand that can say that their hair is sourced ethically, that people are compensated fairly for their hair, that the hair is healthy and processed to retain health, and that the end-product is quality-consistent and guaranteed. They also have a great referral method for professionals, amazing educational resources (it’s like a gigantic book you take home after the intensive three day training, which includes high quality tools). Yes, it is expensive, but for what you get in return it makes sense. I don’t get how DKW charges pretty much the same price for something that is still in need of so much polishing and proving.

I LOVE Halo style extensions, and that has become the most popular method for my clients. It’s not permanent, but it definitely gives you in one step all the hair you could possibly want, with NO DAMAGE and no commitment, for a very affordable price. The brand I trust is Hidden Crown Hair, and they do offer professional rates if you email them. It’s very easy to build a service around, and  it’s almost 100% foolproof. I say almost because you will occasionally find someone who just isn’t a good fit for extensions, but for you and most of your clients, it’s win/win. Their brand is wider temple-to-temple than competing brands, offers more hair for the money per unit, and from my own experience lives up to the quality promised. It’s a wonderful product for the price.

 I will post a follow-up blog on those two services as soon as I can!