Iron Sisters

IN 2019, Adina Goldberg, a firmware engineer for Intel, bought a sheitel from a supplier in China. She got constant compliments on it. “I kept trying to encourage my friends to order their own wigs from China,” she recalls, “but a lot of people didn’t want to put their money down on something that they couldn’t see or feel.”

Frustrated by how her friends’ caution was keeping them from saving money, Adina ordered five wigs from China in a range of lengths and colors, and held an open house in her home in Ramot, where women could come and try them on. When the open house proved successful, she began placing custom orders per each customer’s requirement. When the orders arrived, customers were able to decide if they wanted to buy them. Women loved this model, and Adina’s side chesed, originally called Ramot Wigs, now called Wigbox, grew. And grew.

At first, Adina was working out of her living room, sending women into her daughter’s room for privacy as they tried on the sheitels. As her inventory and customer base grew, she hired an assistant to meet customers in her basement guest room. “Women would complain that they have to walk through my house to buy a wig, and ask why I sold them out of bags instead of a proper display,” remembers Adina. “They didn’t get that I didn’t plan to make a business out of it.” But it became a business, with women coming from all over — up north, down south, even visitors from chutz l’Aretz.

As word spread, Adina hired staff, moved her “storefront” to a cabin in her yard, and grew her inventory to over 1,000 wigs. In three years, Wigbox sold over 2,000 wigs; Adina estimates that her customers have saved over seven million shekels.