The Murray Hill resident spent $20,000 last year on two rounds of full extensions, but she now goes into Gemini 14 every five months for touch-ups at $2,000 a pop.

She pays for them with a combination of savings and credit cards, hoping the sexy waves will lure new customers and keep the old ones coming back.

“I feel like it’s an investment in my career,” said Bazazian. “It’s hard for me to justify to my clients that I will be able to make them look beautiful if I don’t look great myself.”

Here is another picture of her I found where you can definitely see where her hair ends and where the extensions are.  This is the one thing that makes me so irate, stylists don’t use enough hair and charge for a full head! I have outlined her hair in red, clearly a highly visible difference!

Here is the original picture.

Original Article

I totally agree with this part of the article, it’s the truth.

“Without the extensions people say, ‘Well, she’s cute,’ ” she says. “You add all this hair and it puts a ‘Who is she?’ factor on me. Without the hair, I’m this normal average person. But with it, I walk around the corner, and it’s like there’s a wind machine on me. It’s like I’ve stepped off the pages of a centerfold.”

But this part???

Dozens of other New York salons use the same hair extensions as Barricelli, but no one charges five figures. Most cost about $3,000, says Barricelli, adding she’s one of the most experienced practitioners of hair lengthening in the US — she’s been working with extensions for 10 years — and her prices reflect that.

I’ve been doing hair extensions twice as long as her, does that mean I should charge 6k and up?
I have a hard enough time as it is with people thinking it’s too expensive and the most costly installation I could do would cost $750 (for non-ukranian hair), which is about $700 less than what salons in the Seattle area charge.
And I bet you THEY haven’t been doing extensions for 20+ years.

Great Lengths is notorious for charging salons a LOT of money for equipment and supplies. They make you sign a statement saying that you will not charge under a certain amount. If you do, they will not sell to you and you are banned. The only reason why they can get away with this is because they have great PR and the name is well known. I was going to work with their hair when I first found out about it back in 1996 but as usual there is a class that you HAVE to take in a far off city…. or they won’t sell to you. Even in 96 I had been doing extensions for 10 years and knew most methods, including the Great Lengths method. It’s all a money making scam for the company. I don’t blame them. And hey, look at how huge they are now with all the hairdressers out there being sucked in by their marketing strategies.

The hair is nice, sure… but there is hair just as nice available out there that isn’t as expensive. I always charge clients what I pay for the hair. Most salons jack up the hair price by 100% to make a profit.
I am NOT a salon, I don’t have to do that.