Quick summary: Hair accessories are one of the cheapest categories to start a business in, because inventory is small, cheap per unit, and does not need sizing. This guide covers the eight steps from registering the business to placing a first order you can actually sell through, with real wholesale numbers rather than round ones.
Why hair accessories are an easier first category than most
Most people starting an accessories business begin with jewelry, and jewelry is a good category. But hair accessories are easier to start with for three reasons that have nothing to do with taste.
There is no sizing. A claw clip fits everyone, so you are never stuck holding the wrong half of a size run. The unit cost is low: wholesale hair accessories generally run between $2 and $12, and most of what sells sits around the $5 to $6 mark, so a serious opening assortment costs hundreds rather than thousands. And the category repeats. People lose clips, break ties, and buy new ones for a season. A jewelry customer might buy once a year. A hair accessory customer comes back.
The trade-off is that margins per unit are small in absolute terms. You are making a few dollars per sale, not fifty. That means volume and sell-through matter more here than in any other accessories category, which is why steps three and eight below are the ones that decide whether this works.
Step 1: Decide what kind of business you are actually running
These are four different businesses and they need different inventory:
- Online only. Your assortment can be narrow and deep. You need photography more than you need variety.
- Markets and pop-ups. Variety wins. Customers browse a table for two minutes and buy on impulse, so you want a wide spread at a few clean price points.
- A section inside an existing shop. Buy to complement what you already sell, not to compete with it.
- Salon or barbershop retail. Higher price tolerance, smaller assortment, and the stylist’s recommendation does the selling.
Pick one before you buy anything. The most common early mistake is buying an assortment that would suit a market stall and then trying to sell it online, where nobody sees the variety.
Step 2: Register the business and get a resale certificate
You need a registered business and, in most states, a resale certificate or seller’s permit before a wholesaler will open an account for you. This is not a formality wholesalers impose to be difficult. The certificate is what lets you buy without paying sales tax on goods you intend to resell, and it is what the wholesaler keeps on file to prove they were right not to charge you.
The process varies by state, costs very little, and is usually done online in an afternoon. Do it first, because it gates everything else.
Step 3: Work out your numbers before you buy anything
Here is the arithmetic, using real wholesale prices rather than illustrative ones.
A three-piece claw clip set costs somewhere around $5.50 wholesale. At keystone pricing, the standard retail doubling, you sell it for $11. Most independent shops price accessories above keystone, at 2.2 to 2.5 times cost, which puts the same set at $12 to $14. Call it $13. Your gross margin on that set is $7.50.
Now work backwards from what you need. If you want the category to produce $1,000 a month in gross margin, you need to sell about 133 sets a month, which is four or five a day. That is a realistic number for a market stall or a busy shop and an ambitious one for a brand new online store. Doing this before you order is the difference between a business and an expensive hobby.
The number that actually matters is not margin percentage, it is margin per shelf-inch per month. A $5 item that sells twice a week beats a $20 item that sells once a month, and it is not close.
Step 4: Buy an assortment, not a catalogue
A useful split for a first order is roughly 60/30/10.
Sixty percent basics. Neutral claw clips, plain headbands, black and tortoiseshell, simple hair ties. These are boring and they are what pays the rent. They sell every week of the year and they never go out of style, so leftover stock is not a loss, it is next month’s stock.
Thirty percent seasonal. Colours and materials tied to the current season. Pearl accents, marbled resin, florals in spring, richer tones in autumn.
Ten percent statement. The oversized, the crystal-set, the pieces people photograph. These sell slowly and they earn their space by making the display worth stopping for.
New buyers almost always invert this. They buy the exciting ten percent first because it is more fun to choose, then wonder why the table looks striking and nothing sells.
Step 5: Find a supplier who will sell you small quantities
The thing that stops most first-time buyers is minimums. Overseas manufacturers offer better unit prices and then ask for 500 pieces per style, six week lead times, and no returns. That is a fine deal for a business with proven sell-through and a terrible one for a business guessing at its first assortment.
What you want at the start is a domestic wholesaler with low minimums, stock on hand, and fast shipping, so you can order small, find out what actually sells in your market, and reorder in days rather than months. You will pay a little more per unit. You will lose far less to inventory that never moves. Our wholesale hair accessories are held in stock in Los Angeles for exactly this reason.
Step 6: Place a first order you can sell through in ninety days
Set a budget you would not mind losing entirely, because the first order is tuition. For most people starting out that is somewhere between $300 and $800.
At a $5.50 average cost, a $500 order is roughly 90 units. Spread that across 15 to 20 styles rather than 40, so you have enough of each to display it properly and enough data afterwards to know whether it sold. Two or three pieces of a style tells you nothing when they go; six tells you something.
Write down what you expect each style to do before it arrives. You will be wrong, and being wrong on paper is how you learn faster than everyone guessing from memory.
Step 7: Photograph and display better than the price suggests
A $13 claw clip photographed on a bathroom counter looks like a $4 claw clip. The same clip on a clean background, in someone’s hair, in good light, looks like it belongs in a shop. Presentation is doing more work in this category than in any other, because the product itself is inexpensive and the customer is deciding in about three seconds.
In person, height and grouping beat volume. Group by colour story rather than by type, keep the table full, and put your basics where the hand reaches first.
Step 8: Reorder on sell-through, not on feeling
Ninety days in, sort every style by units sold. Reorder the top third immediately and deeper than last time. Leave the middle third alone. Mark the bottom third down, clear it, and do not reorder it however much you personally like it.
Most small retailers know this and still do not do it, because the bottom third contains the pieces they chose most enthusiastically. The shops that grow are the ones that let the numbers overrule their own taste.
What to expect in the first ninety days
Your first order will contain roughly one third that sells quickly, one third that sells eventually, and one third that does not sell at all. That is not failure, that is the normal shape of a first buy, and it is why the first order should be small. The second order, informed by the first, is usually twice as good. The third is where it starts to look like a business.
If you want to see what a starting assortment looks like at real prices, our hair accessories collection runs from about $2 to $12 wholesale across clips, headbands, ties and bows, and you can browse the rest of the wholesale accessories range alongside it.