Purbalingga wig business unfazed by crisis

By Agus Maryono and Ngudi Utomo

PURBALINGGA, Central Java (JP): Carefully Kasini, 50, sorted the strands of hair in front of her. She picked the good strands out of the tangled bunch to make accessories ranging from hair- knot nets to modern wigs.

Some other women busied themselves combing sorted hair with a small wooden board studded with nails. The whole day they were busy working out hair collected by scavengers from practically all across Indonesia.

Kasini and her colleagues are some of the 500 women who work in the "hair industry" at Karangbanjar village, Bojongsari district, Purbalingga.

Their products are not only popular in the Banyumas region and the surrounding districts, but they are also in great demand outside Central Java and even abroad.

Karangbanjar village is generally associated with the wig industry which has attracted Korean businesspeople. There are five major Korean companies which make wigs mostly for export.

However, the women in Karangbanjar have no direct links with the factories. The villagers have always maintained the business as a cottage industry they run by traditional methods.

They refuse to be recruited by the foreign companies which have employed more than 20,000 workers in Purbalingga.

"It is better to work independently. We don't like being ordered around," said Kasini. Her co-workers nodded in acknowledgement.

They say that they make more than enough money from the cottage wig industry and that they are not much affected by the crippling economic crisis.

"We are very grateful that our industry is surviving the crisis because the price of hair waste has not risen," said Maryoto, 55, Kasini's husband who has been in the business since 1962. "We can support the whole family with this business," said this father of five.

Pioneers of the industry, so the story goes, were inspired by women's habit of collecting hair that fell when they combed themselves. In the past, women generally grew their hair long. They cared so much for their hair that they would collect the fallen strands.

"Very few women at the time cut their hair short as women do nowadays. Many loved to wear their hair long -- so long it touched the ground," said Kasini.

Kasini and her co-worker Sumiyem, 45, said that in the old days women treasured and preserved cut hair and fallen hair.

"My mother used to tell me that hair must be kept so that it would bring us luck," said Sumiyem.

The hair collected for months is well kept and remains in a good condition.

In the course of time more and more people from other villages came to Karangbanjar to borrow gelung (hair-knot wigs), making the villages famous for wig making.

"Afterwards people came here to buy it. That gave rise to the birth of the wig industry in this village," said Maryoto.

At the beginning, Karangbanjar villagers collected hair from their relatives. Then, they also went to other places to look for hair to meet the increasing number of orders for gelung.

Since then not only gelung has been made, but also a variety of other items, such as hair-knots, bandeaus, hair accessories, hair-knot nets and hairpieces.

These Karangbanjar products are not only popular in the Banyumas area. They have penetrated the markets in Yogyakarta, Magelang, Semarang, Wonosobo and places outside Indonesia like Singapore and Malaysia.

Precious

A long process is required to make precious products from hair.

"We get hair mostly from scavengers. The hairs are then sorted out. Tangled hairs are discarded," says Maryoto, adding that the hair is collected from places across Indonesia.

"We go as far afield as Sumatra for hair. Next week we will go to Ponorogo in East Java to buy hair," says Maryoto, who usually buys up to 20 kilograms of hair at Rp 75,000 per kilogram on such business trips.

"I buy hair three times a week," he adds. If he buys it directly from beauty salons, he can have it at Rp 50,000 per kilogram of hair measuring at least 25 cms long. Shorter hair is difficult to process.

When the hair has been sorted, the selected pieces are arranged. Strands of hair are separated according to their types, such as length, color, and whether curly or straight, et cetera.

Then, the hair is straightened by beating it on a wooden board.

"Hair waste obtained from the scavengers, both straight and curly, must still be straightened to make it easy for us to shape it," says Kasini.

Hair already beaten is boiled in water for about one hour. This is to make the material sterile and make it free from bacteria and dirt.

After that the hair is dried in the open. After the drying process there is still one phase to go: to dye the hair in order to make it shiny black especially in the case of grayish hair.

"I can make 20 hair pieces from one kilogram of cleaned hair. They sell for Rp 7,000 a piece," says Maryoto.

The same quantity of hair makes only five wigs that cost Rp 150,000, he says.

Long hair is used for gelung (also called sanggul) which can fetch Rp 20,000 each. One kilogram of hair makes four pieces of gelung.

Demand for sanggul is high ahead of the Kartini Day, April 21, the commemoration of Indonesia's emancipation heroine. Most buyers are old women.

The economic crisis is boosting this hairy business and wig makers are busy.

"The number of orders has increased, especially from Singapore and Malaysia," says Maryoto, who is planning to export the products to Suriname.

"I have heard that the people in Suriname, mostly of Javanese stock, need a lot of our products especially sanggul, but we have difficulties in sending the products there."

Local government officials say that thanks to the industry, all the villagers are employed.