Mrs Victoria Billa is a business woman who keeps dreadlocks to earn additional income to make ends meet. She spoke to THE WHISTLER about her dreadlock and why she has been carrying it for the past 7 years…..CONTINUE READING...CONTINUE READING
Kindly Introduce Yourself
I am Victoria Billa, a married woman living with my husband in Kpegyi, Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), Abuja. I have two adopted lovely boys as my children. I do business for a living and sell a lot of women’s stuff like jewelry, hair, shoes, and clothes. I also bake cakes for weddings, birthdays, and so on.
How Long Have You Been Keeping Your Dreadlock?
This particular hair is up to seven years now.
How Do You Maintain It?
It depends on who is maintaining it for you. If You have an understanding person, you will agree on a price, but if you want to re-lock the hair, some people collect N3,000, some N7,000 and some N5,000. In fact there are those collecting N10,000, N15,000, depending on who is locking it for you.
There are professionals that are doing the relocking, but those that are not professionals are the ones collecting less.
So, if you want your dreadlocks to look good and well maintained, you go for the professionals. And if you want to start locking for the first time they may collect N20,000 to N25,000 or so. From N10,000 upward is what the professionals charge.
As time goes on you have to keep relocking it to maintain the dreads, just like you plait hair from time to time.
You Said People Are Already Asking You To Sell Your Hair To Them, Why?
Sometimes I may just be passing and you hear people saying ‘wow is this your hair? It’s so fine’, even in the supermarket somebody may just be staring asking, ‘are these dreadlocks? I’m interested.’
The guys that are relocking (the hair stylists) have been saying they are also interested in buying and will even try to convince me to sell to them because they will gain when they resell. They usually ask, how much do you think you can sell your hair? But because I’ve gone to the Internet and have mingled with people that have dreads and are selling it, I already know the price.
How Do You Sell Your Hair?
We sell dreads inch by inch, one by one before calculating the number of dreads on your head. If a single deadlock is 18 inches, we’ll multiply the number of inches by the prices we want to charge.
A single inch can be sold at N100 or N200, or even N500 per inch, that is why we calculate it.
But some dreadlock sellers that don’t know may be cheated by the stylists who can decide to charge N500 on each dread without calculating the inches. They try to buy cheap and later resell to another buyer inch by inch. You see, they have made a lot of gain. But if you know, you know, if you don’t know, you don’t know.
Like my hair now, I have so many people that are interested in buying but I’m not ready to sell just yet. Some are even ready to buy it at N400 per inch but I won’t sell yet.
You Said You Have Sold The First Batch Before This One You Are Carrying. How Much Did You Realise From The Sale?
The first batch was just 6 inches I sold and had about 60 pieces of dreads sold at N180,000.
So, you see this one that I’m carrying, the last time I checked it was almost getting to 20 inches, it remains just half an inch to complete it to 20 inches. But by now I know it’s up to 20 inches. We use measuring tapes. I do not want to sell it now because I want it to add length so that I can make more money from it…..CONTINUE READING
