She had just earned the promotion she’d worked toward for decades. A new office, a new title, a view she’d imagined a hundred times. But as she sat beneath the glare of the overhead lights, something shifted.
The light caught her scalp in a way that made her heart drop. Every person who stepped through her door seemed to look first at her head, then her eyes.
“She was just so devastated,” recalls Gretchen Traicos, founder of Custom Hair Company in Hamilton. “She came to me in quite a state. She wasn’t comfortable at work. She couldn’t be there. She was thinking she was going to have to give up her job and her career and her livelihood.”
The woman wasn’t vain. She was simply being seen differently in a world where confidence and presence are inseparable from appearance. Hair loss had become a barrier between who she was and how others perceived her.
Gretchen fitted her with a lightweight, custom-made topper, hand-cut and coloured to blend seamlessly with her natural hair. “We started with just a small amount of hair, so it wasn’t a massive change,” Gretchen says. “But it took away all that transparency. She’s been able to keep her job and keep performing. It made a massive difference to her and her whole livelihood.”
For Gretchen, it’s not about transformation so much as restoration. Giving people back what the mirror took away. Custom Hair Company exists in that quiet, profound space between craft and compassion, where a few strands of human hair can help someone recognise themselves again.
Gretchen was raised in a salon. “After school I was there every day, so it all came naturally,” she says. Hair was never just a skill; it was a form of connection. However, her real transformation came after moving to Australia, where life reshaped her.
“I had my children over there. I built a house over there. I built my own little business there. I started a new career there,” she says. “So, it definitely shaped me a lot, and I’ve just come back with so many more skills and tools in my belt.
And I’m really happy to bring it back to New Zealand and have all these services available for people that are in need.”
Her introduction to wigs felt almost fated. “It was this wonderful wig studio full of just hair, like a candy shop for a hairdresser,” she recalls. “I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. So, I just jumped at the opportunity.”
She began learning from her mentor, Sharryn Sinclair of the Australian Wig Company, who she fondly calls her “wig godmother.” “She has been hairdressing for decades. She’s done films, TV, commercials,” Gretchen says. “She shared a lot of knowledge with me, gave me also a lot of responsibility and just really let me bloom under her wing.”
The experience sharpened both her artistry and her intuition. “You can’t go out and get a qualification in wigs and toppers. Unless someone takes you under their wing, you just don’t get that experience.” She remembers thinking it was a whole other level, something that felt almost like destiny.
“I knew that one day I would have my own studio,” she says. “I didn’t know if it would be a year or 10 years, but I knew it would happen.”
When Gretchen eventually returned to Waikato with her family, that quiet conviction became reality. “It never felt like it was a choice to come back here. It felt like I just had to,” she says.
“With the skills that I have and the knowledge I have and the products I have, it wasn’t fair that I stayed over there with the Australians. It needed to be available to New Zealand.”
She opened Custom Hair Company, specialising in human hair wigs, hair toppers, and hair pieces for women, men, and children. The Hamilton studio was designed to feel calm, private, and personal. “I had a vision of a very welcoming, home-like environment,” she says. “We have the private rooms where our clients come in and they can bring their family and friends and we can go through things one on one with them there.”
The studio reflects her belief in care over commerce. “You need to sit, listen, and hear what they’re saying before we even pull any hair down to look at.” Outside, the garden softens the street noise. Inside, sunlight drifts across shelves of natural hair in muted blondes, browns, and silvers. “It’s trustworthy, safe, and fun,” she says. “That’s the environment I want to create.”
The phrase that defines her brand came to her in a dream. “I actually get quite a lot of my intuitional messages in my dreams,” she says. “One day, I woke up and just knew: ‘We do hair for people who need help.’”
That phrase became both her motto and her mission. To Gretchen, it captures the essence of her work: a constant reminder that what she offers is far more than a product. It is, at its core, an act of care.
Her Human Hair Range is designed specifically for New Zealand and Australian women. “They are low density, which means that basically our products are going to sit to your natural head shape,” she explains. “They can all be styled with volume if you choose to, but they all fall a lot more naturally. They move more natural and they’re easier for the clients to wear. Less wig like.”
She takes pride in small details. “We use European hair,” she says. “We select the higher grade. In our wigs, the blondes that you see are natural blondes. They’re not bleached or anything like that.”
But her process is as much about empathy as it is precision. “Every client’s situation is different,” she says. “So, you have to sit, listen, and understand before you even touch a piece of hair.”
Over time, Gretchen has seen too many quiet transformations to count, and every single one stays with her.
One man she worked with had worn a hat every day for 25 years. He wouldn’t even go to the service station without it. When Gretchen fitted his hair system, he was able to walk out of the studio for the first time without that hat. For him, it meant stepping back into the world as himself again.
Then there was the young girl who couldn’t bring herself to go to school after losing her hair through treatment. When she received her new hair, she looked at herself in the mirror and smiled for the first time in months. Later, she turned up to school with her hair plaited, proud and confident. Gretchen says the change didn’t just help the girl; it helped the whole family to feel like life was moving forward again.
Another client, a grandmother, came in believing she couldn’t justify spending money on herself. Once Gretchen told her she might be eligible for the government subsidy, her eyes welled up with tears. She told Gretchen she had made her day. For the first time, she felt like she could walk out looking like herself again.
Each story reinforces the same truth: this isn’t vanity. It’s dignity.
Every client journey begins with a free consultation, either in the Hamilton studio or online via video call. “We are very used to doing the video consultations,” Gretchen says. “We move around. We show them in different lightings. We send photos afterwards, videos afterwards, just to streamline it all and make it as easy as possible for them.”
From there, the process is deeply personal. “We usually do some colour work on the pieces and then the client will come back in and check that they’re happy with the colour before we cut into it,” she explains. “Because that’s the permanent part. The cutting. So that’s always done last when we’re 100 per cent sure of our decision.”
She also makes sure each person leaves confident. “I say that they have to get their licence before they can leave,” she adds with a smile. “They need to show me that they know how to put the wig on correctly, that they know how to clip the topper on.”
Support doesn’t stop at the door. “When people have got their hair, often it’s a whole new experience for them,” she explains. “So, there’s a lot of questions they have afterwards and in a month’s time when they wash it and in six weeks’ time when they want to curl it. So, we provide all that service to them and are available for all their questions.”
As an approved Ministry of Health Wig and Hairpiece Subsidy provider, Gretchen also helps clients navigate funding. “If you’re diagnosed by a doctor with temporary hair loss, you’re eligible for $408,” she says. “If you’re diagnosed with permanent hair loss, you’re eligible for $2,300 roughly. The process usually takes about 20 days for the government to process it. So, it’s pretty easy.”
For Gretchen, building Custom Hair Company has been a community effort. “I’ve been very grateful for the other businesses in Hamilton that have supported me in many different ways to be here,” she says. Her partner, Ash, helps with the technical side and anything too complex. She smiles as she recalls how he moved from Australia on blind faith.
She’s honest about the challenges. “Contracts and admin are quite a bit out of my comfort zone,” she admits. “But there’s nothing yet that has slowed me down or stopped me.”
After more than 20 years in hairdressing, her purpose remains steady, grounded in one idea: helping people reconnect with who they are. “Sometimes they think they’re searching for a previous identity,” she says. “But really, they’re searching for that feeling of being themselves again.”
