Big Kizzy vs The Hair Shop

We make a tape tab and a remover that compete with both companies here, and we earn money when ours sell, so read this knowing that. Both of them are cheaper than us on consumables and both publish specifications we do not. This page is about them: we appear as a third column in the tables and in one labelled section near the end, and nowhere else. We hold no affiliate arrangement with either company and have received no product, payment or commission from either. Every figure attributed to Big Kizzy or The Hair Shop comes from a page on their own store that we opened on 31 August 2026 and listed at the foot.

These two brands turn up in the same search and they are not the same kind of company at all, which is the thing that settles most of the decision.

Big Kizzy is a tape-in accessories specialist. Its about page gives 2016 as the founding year and names Christopher Box, a salon owner who spent about a decade doing extensions before starting the brand. Everything it sells exists to install, hold or remove tape-in extensions: named adhesive lines in double-sided and single-sided formats, three numbered removers, an application tool, shears and clips. It sells no hair, and every price is on the page with no account.

The Hair Shop has been selling hair since 1988. Its story page names Ryan Tokko, whose background it gives as polymer engineering and science, and lists retail stores in Los Angeles, Orange County, New York and Houston. It sells six extension methods, a tools catalogue running from a $2.00 cotton thread to a $114.00 tripod, and hands-on classes. Tape is one row in a very wide spreadsheet, and the three products in that row exist to keep The Hair Shop's own extensions in service rather than to serve tape-in work in general.

So the useful question is not which brand is better. It is what you are doing in the chair. On a conventional weft that needs sandwiching, one of these companies sells the part and the other does not, and no price argument survives that. On The Hair Shop's own Smart Tabs and Skinweft, the same sentence runs the other way. The numbering below is reading order rather than a ranking, and we have not named an overall winner because the honest answer changes with the job.

What we compared, and what we could not

These two companies overlap on exactly two products, a replacement tape and a bond remover, so those are the axes we used: published price and pack size, cost per tab and per ounce, what the tape physically is, what the remover is made of, what each company publishes about performance, and whether you can buy any of it today. We have run no laboratory test of adhesion, residue, wear duration or skin response on anything named here, and nothing on this page should be read as one. Every hold duration, yield and residue statement on either side is a manufacturer claim reproduced as a claim.

Tape format

Does the tab physically fit the hair already installed

Cost per tab and per ounce

Published price divided by published count or volume

Formulation disclosure

Is a full ingredient list published on the remover

Performance disclosure

Dimensions, hold duration, adhesive statements

Workflow after removal

What the base leaves behind, and what that costs in time

Availability and breadth

Stock, tooling, education, and what one account covers

The short version

Big Kizzy and The Hair Shop figures as published on their own stores and read on 31 August 2026, with the source for each listed at the foot. Vanity figures are our own published prices. Per-unit figures on all three sides are our arithmetic on published numbers, shown so you can check them. A blank cell or a not published means exactly that, and we have not filled one in with an estimate.

Which one you should actually buy

• Buy Big Kizzy if the hair on the head is a conventional tape-in weft. The Hair Shop does not sell a double-sided sandwich tab at all, so that is availability rather than preference.
• Buy Big Kizzy if you need a stated hold to book a move-up against, if your client has a latex sensitivity, or if cost per tab is the constraint and you can buy in 120s at about $0.10.
• Buy The Hair Shop if you install Smart Tabs or Skinweft, or if you need to know exactly what is in the bottle. Their remover lists all seven ingredients; Big Kizzy publishes none for Remover 1.
• Buy The Hair Shop if you want the cheapest remover on the shelf, a press sold on its own, a gel for keratin and i-tip bonds, or hair, tools and hands-on classes on one account.
• Buy neither on price alone until you have checked stock. On 31 August 2026 every tape-relevant Hair Shop SKU we opened was out of stock; everything we opened at Big Kizzy was buyable.

The money, worked through properly

Most comparisons of these two quote one pack from each and stop, which produces a wrong answer in both directions. Big Kizzy's most-quoted pack is its dearest per tab, and The Hair Shop's cheapest bottle is its dearest per ounce. Here is the whole picture from the pages we opened.

Per-unit figures are our arithmetic on published prices and counts, shown so they can be checked. Big Kizzy tab lines are also sold in 600 and 12,000 counts, and Remover 1 in a 32 fl oz size, for which no price rendered when we opened the pages, so we have published none.

Two conclusions come out of that table and they point in different directions. On tape, Big Kizzy is cheaper if you buy the 120-count lines and dearer if you buy the 72-count Regular Hold pack, so any brand-level claim that one company is cheaper than the other is false without naming a SKU. On remover, The Hair Shop costs less to buy and more to use. If you go through solvent, the bigger bottle wins; if you want to try one without committing, the smaller one does.

What each company publishes, and what it leaves out

A not published is a statement about what the page says on the date we read it, not an accusation. No company here is obliged to publish any of it, and all three would be more useful if they did.

That table explains why two sensible stylists compare these brands and reach opposite conclusions. Neither company is being evasive. They are different kinds of company disclosing what their own kind of customer asks for.

Mineral oil against oil-free, and what each one buys you

Take the oil side first, because it is the one usually written up badly. Pure alcohol solvents work fast and evaporate fast, and both halves come from the same property. Fast evaporation means a short working window, so on a hard-cured bond you go back and re-apply, and it means a drying feel along the shaft and on the scalp. Oil does not evaporate, so a mineral oil fraction holds the solvent in contact with the adhesive for longer and lubricates the interface, and the tab tends to slide off rather than crumble and strand gum down the hair. The panthenol sitting next to it in The Hair Shop's list points at the same intention. Plenty of experienced stylists prefer exactly that behaviour on a ten-week bond on dry hair, and they are not wrong to.

The alcohol side buys the other half of the appointment. Pressure-sensitive adhesive builds its bond from clean, dry contact under pressure, so anything left at the site works against the next tab. Big Kizzy's page states Remover 1 is oil-free and evaporates in seconds, which is what makes a same-appointment re-tab straightforward. The Hair Shop's answer is printed on its own page: their solution requires no cleaning before re-taping or reapplying extensions, with the direction that the extensions and the natural hair should dry first. We reproduce that as their claim, not a finding, because we have run no residue test and neither company has published one. From the chair, if a fresh tab slips early after a hybrid removal, residual oil is the first thing worth ruling out, and a clarifying wash rules it out at the cost of the twenty minutes you were saving.

So it is a trade, not a defect, and it turns on which appointment you are running. If the client leaves and comes back for the install, the oil costs you nothing and buys dwell time. If you re-tab before she stands up, an oil-free solvent takes the variable off the table instead of asking you to trust an untested claim.

Latex, and the reader who has to care

Adhesive tapes in this category are not uniform in chemistry, and at least one brand in the wider market states on its own site that its tape adhesive contains latex. So a printed latex-free line is a checkable claim rather than a decoration, and Big Kizzy prints one. What it does not do is print it on every line: we opened the Pro Hold, No Show and Seamless Hold pages and the phrase does not appear, so the statement is line-specific rather than brand-wide.

The Hair Shop publishes nothing either way. That is not evidence of latex and we are not implying any. It is an absence, and an absence is unusable when a client has a diagnosis.

Stock, and the thing to check before you plan an order

On 31 August 2026 every tape-relevant product we opened on thehairshop.com was showing out of stock with a notify-me option: the Tape-in Remover, Smart Tabs Tape, Single Sided Tape, Skinweft Tape, D-Bond Gel and the Pro Tape-in Press. Most also carry a final sale marking, which we read as a returns condition and nothing more. We found no announcement of any change to the business, we are not implying one, and stock on a catalogue that size moves. Everything we opened at Big Kizzy was purchasable. A consumable you cannot buy on the day is not cheaper than one you can, so check availability before you build a move-up schedule around a price.

Flammability, which applies to both

Both removers are alcohol-led and both should be treated as flammable, as should ours. Keep them away from heat, sparks and open flame, work in a ventilated space, and cap the bottle between bonds rather than leaving it open on the station. The mineral oil in The Hair Shop's formula changes nothing about that, because isopropyl alcohol is still the first ingredient on the list. This is not a competitive point in either direction. It is the price of a solvent that works in seconds instead of minutes.

How to decide in five minutes

1. Look at the hair on the head, not at the priceIf it is a conventional weft that needs two faces bonded around a section of natural hair, you need a double-sided sandwich tab, and only Big Kizzy sells one. If it is Smart Tabs or Skinweft, you need The Hair Shop's precut tape or roll. Get this wrong and every number below is irrelevant.
2. Decide whether you need a stated holdIf you book move-ups by the calendar, Big Kizzy publishes a duration on every tab line we opened, from 5 or more weeks up to 6 to 8 or more. The Hair Shop publishes none on any tape SKU. Both are claims rather than tests, but only one of them exists.
3. Check whether anyone needs the ingredient listA client with a diagnosed sensitivity needs a published formula. The Hair Shop prints all seven ingredients of its remover on the page. Big Kizzy publishes none for Remover 1, and a partial list only on Remover 3.
4. Work out which appointment you are runningIf you re-tab in the same visit, an oil-free solvent removes the residue question rather than asking you to trust a claim about it. If the client leaves and comes back, the mineral oil fraction costs you nothing and buys dwell time on a hard-cured bond.
5. Do the arithmetic on your own volume, then check stockMultiply heads per year by 60 pieces by your per-tab price. A hundred heads is about $600 at $0.10, about $1,140 at $0.19 and about $1,320 at $0.22. Then confirm the product is buyable today, because on 31 August 2026 half of this comparison was not.

Where we fit, and where we do not

This section is short and near the end on purpose. Running it through the comparison above would have made the comparison an advertisement, and leaving it out would be its own kind of dishonesty since we sell against both companies. Both of them beat us on price on every consumable, and it is not close. Both publish something about their products that we do not: Big Kizzy a tab footprint, a hold duration, a latex statement and a country of manufacture, The Hair Shop a full remover formula at a quarter of what we charge for ours.

What runs our way is narrow and worth stating precisely so it can be checked. Our tab and our solvent were built against each other rather than against a whole category or a hair line, which is the only thing that could justify a premium, and it is worth nothing on anybody else's tape. We publish a yield, about 30 removals from 4.0 fl oz at $25, about $0.83 each with the division shown, and neither company here publishes an equivalent figure. That is the whole list. If none of it describes your situation, buy from one of the two brands above.

How to check everything on this page

We sell products that compete with both companies here, which is exactly the situation in which a reader should not take a page's word for anything. Every price, size, count, dimension and ingredient list attributed to Big Kizzy or The Hair Shop comes from a page on their own store that we opened on 31 August 2026, and each source below states which claim it supports. No figure has been estimated to fill a gap. If a figure here does not match their page today, their page is right and we are out of date.

What this comparison is based on, and what it is not

This comparison rests on the prices, sizes, counts, dimensions, ingredient lists, hold claims and directions published on bigkizzyhair.com and thehairshop.com, every page opened by us on 31 August 2026 and listed below with the claim it supports, plus our own published prices. Per-unit figures on all three sides are our arithmetic on those numbers. Where a page did not render a price for a size or count option, we have said so rather than publishing a figure from anywhere else.

We have run no laboratory test of adhesion, residue, wear duration or skin response on any product named here. Every hold duration, every residue statement, the latex-free and made in the USA lines, the oil-free description of Remover 1, and the statement that The Hair Shop's remover requires no cleaning before re-taping are all manufacturer claims reproduced as claims. Our observation that a matched tab and solvent open more bonds on the first application comes from our own chair in Orem, Utah, not from a measurement.

We sell a tape tab and a remover that compete with both companies and we earn money when ours sell. Both beat us on price on every consumable, and each publishes something about its products that we do not. Those conclusions appear in the tables, in each brand's entry, in our own entry and in a section of their own rather than being left implicit. We hold no affiliate arrangement with either company, have received no product, payment or commission from either, and earn nothing from any link on this page except our own.

Questions we get asked