Unihair gets a grip on baldness

Men have also started to experiment with other ways to counter the problem, for instance through conventional hair transplant procedures.

Nov 2010

Unihair of Japan, the world's biggest wigmaker, is hoping for a big increase in sales through what might be regarded as the ultimate cutting-edge technology - a method to "grow" luxuriant displays of new hair on a person's scalp.

The method uses cell-generation processes derived from pharmaceuticals research. "We see a tremendous number of possibilities [from the new process]," said Tadao Otsuki, Unihair's chief executive. "It adds up to a fundamental shift in how the world can combat problems of baldness."

Unihair has found it difficult to lift sales and profits in recent years as demand for its wigs in Japan has started to dip, partly because men appear to be less worried about going bald.

Men have also started to experiment with other ways to counter the problem, for instance through conventional "hair transplant" procedures.

In such methods, doctors remove thin strips of skin from a patient's scalp with healthy hair roots and then install these skin pieces in areas of hair loss.

The technique suffers from the drawback that there is no way to prompt more than one follicle to grow from a single root.

With Unihair's alternative "cell-generation" technique, however, scientists take follicle samples from a person and use them to replicate new hair cells in a laboratory, before later injecting the greatly multiplied number of cells into the person's scalp.

This procedure offers the promise of promulgating relatively bushy clumps of hair wherever people need them, Mr Otsuki claimed.

If the procedure can be shown to work effectively, he hopes that Unihair may be able to sell it on a global basis, reducing the company's dependence on sales in Japan.

The only other company in the world regarded as having developed a similar cell-generation procedure for hair is Intercytex, a UK company owned by Regenerative Solutions, an investment group.

The price of a spell of treatment for a person using the new ideas would probably be set somewhat above the roughly $10,000 cost of conventional hair- loss treatments based on transplant methods.

The company registered a Y5.2bn operating loss in 2009-10, and expects another operating loss of Y3.9bn on sales of Y52bn in the current financial year, before returning to profit in 2012.

Unihair also hopes to increase sales by opening a new chain of shops to sell wigs and hair-loss treatments in China, while branching out more to sell wigs to women - not just in Japan but around the world. Out of the Y150bn sales for Unihair which Mr Otsuki is projecting for 2017, a third would come from outside Japan, he says.

Unihair says 400m people around the world - mainly men - have a problem with baldness. The total market for wigs, restoratives and medical treatments for combating this adds up to about $6bn a year, according to the company.

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