Sacramento, Calif. – The first thing you want to know when you encounter the longtime owner of Neal’s Hairpieces for Men is, does he or doesn’t he? The answer reveals itself in a minute.
Neal Young, the 62-year-old who has run his Citrus Heights business through thick and thin – and thinning – and through fads and fashions, has plenty of happy repeat customers.
People such as Lon Cantor believe in him.
“He is the best hairpiece guy I know,” says Cantor, 75, who has worn one hairpiece or another for 20 years. “He’s an artist.”
Adds Cantor, a Folsom resident who retired from the advertising business, “Nobody knows I wear a hairpiece unless I tell them.”
Young is like most people who see a bad toupee. He’s horrified. And bad hairpieces are bad for business because most people assume that all toupees look like that – a swatch of roadkill sitting on some poor guy’s scalp, so obvious and so sad. The good ones go unnoticed (most of the time).
Take Young, with his handsome head of blond and gray. His hair was made in China, meticulously stitched strand by strand. That natural look is right out of a catalog – color No. 2060.
“Most people can’t fathom I’m as old as I am,” Young says with a smile, raising his right hand to – horror – pull off that seemingly healthy head of hair.
He is bald. “Look at me. Don’t I look older?” asks the suddenly older- looking owner. “Now if I took my teeth out, I’d really look older.”
Young has been trying to look young since he was young. He went bald at 22 and got his first hairpiece that same year, shelling out $400. Wall-to-wall carpet was selling for less in those days.
“I was combing my hair forward and over and doing all types of crazy styles to cover my baldness,” he says.
A trained hairstylist, Young began selling more and more wigs to women, riding the fad in the early and mid-1960s.
When wig sales dwindled, Young focused on men. In 1980, he opened his business, renting a building for $300 a month. It was slow going at first until he built his reputation.
Turns out, being the best hairpiece guy around requires a variety of talents. You have to put people at ease. You have to know your products. Most of all, you have to make that hairpiece look like hair.
To do that, Young explains, requires “cutting it in,” which means trimming and fitting the toupee so it blends with the client’s real hair. Those bad rugs you see are placed on top of the guy’s head without much thought.
Making the transition from bald guy to someone who wears a hairpiece can be tough. Young says it’s all about having the right attitude.
“Generally, people aren’t that aware. They know something is different but they can’t put their finger on it,” he says. “Then you have to have the attitude, ‘I don’t care. I look better and I feel better.”‘
