By Olga Kharif

Kathy Walsh was just 16 years old when her hair began falling out. Within a year, she had lost the bulk of it -- at a time (the '60s) when beehives and big hair were all the rage. Ashamed, Walsh tried to keep her hair loss from her parents. Had she told them, she would have learned that androgenetic alopecia, a condition causing baldness in men, ran in the family. Instead, Walsh hit the wig shops.

Walsh would design her own falls, strips of hair attached to the back of the head to create appearance of long locks. She'd fashion her own beehive wigs and decorate them with strings of pearls. In black and white photographs from back then, her hair looks a foot tall. Still, she says, "I used to panic sometimes that someone would know. I felt I could have looked better." After years of struggling with the problem herself, she finally decided to open up her own wig shop to help others suffering from hair loss.

"BACK TO MY OWN SELF".  While there's no shortage of hair-replacement offerings for men (just check your e-mail inbox), PK Walsh is one of few specialty hair salons in the country dealing with hair loss in women. Revenue jumped 19% last year, and the company seems poised to do even better: Hair loss among women is actually quite common and said to afflict some 25 million Americans. It can result from genetic disorders, cancer treatments, thyroid disease, pregnancy, menopause, crash diets -- even extreme stress.

Kathy Walsh now runs the 11-employee salon with her daughter Nikki, 35, who also has androgenetic alopecia. Located in Needham, Mass., a suburb west of Boston, PK Walsh boasts more than 2,200 regular clients, some of whom come to appointments from as far as Bermuda and Ireland. A regular of 18 years, Joan, 75, drives three to four hours to get to the salon from her home in Portland, Me. She typically has to stay at a nearby hotel overnight to make her annual appointments. But she doesn't mind.

Back in 1987, Joan had melanoma surgically removed from her scalp. The procedure left a scar, showing through Joan's fine hair. "I didn't know how long I had to enjoy life, but I wanted to present myself the best way possible," says Joan, whose cancer, fortunately, hasn't returned. With a hair piece from Walsh, "I immediately went back to my own self," says Joan, who wears her white hair in a short cut with bangs. No one has ever guessed it's a wig.

BUDDY PROGRAM.  Most of PK Walsh's clients would like to keep it that way, and that's why the salon is designed like no other. Picture a large circular space, surrounded by half a dozen private rooms, each filled with a styling chair and a mirror and bathed in special lighting designed to replicate natural sunlight. The salon's stylists work on hair products -- coloring extensions and styling wigs -- in that middle circle, while clients receive consultations and wait for their wigs in the private rooms.

"We try to make it look as much like a traditional salon as possible, because it normalizes everything," Walsh says. "The difference is, there's a door."

That's key because hair loss in women still carries a stigma. While balding men hardly attract a stare, women do. So for the past 10 years, the salon has been running a buddy program. A group of 12 client-volunteers offer hair-related advice to wig newbies. They might suggest what to do when it's windy, how to tell a man you've been dating that you wear a wig, and how a particular procedure (the salon also offers laser hair treatments, designed to strengthen a woman's natural hair) or a hair piece worked for them.

IDENTIFYING WITH CLIENTS.  For those unfamiliar with intricacies of the business, there's a surprising variety of hair-styling techniques and types of hair available. They run the gamut from synthetic hair (low end) to so-called European hair, which is natural, untreated hair. That doesn't come cheap: A full head of medium-length natural hair extensions costs around $2,000. Integrating a hair piece for the top of the head with a woman's natural hair starts at $1,600.

The cost -- and the wait of up to 12 weeks for a hair piece to be made -- doesn't seem to stop PK Walsh's clients, who particularly like that the salon's owner and successor-in-waiting can relate to their struggles.

"They understand what it's like, they can identify with me," says 50-year-old Nancy, a Boston resident whose hair began thinning more than 15 years ago. Indeed, "I guess I was meant to be placed in this hair world," Kathy Walsh says.

"I LOOKED PRETTY".  Walsh, then a vice-president of sales at an international moving company, started the business in 1983 with her sister, Pat Wrixon, who was working as a hairdresser. The two decided to offer their services to men, women, and children going through cancer treatments. Their hometown of Worcester, Mass., offered too shallow a pool of potential clients, so the two moved to Boston. Cancer centers there clamored for their service.

Along with cancer patients, Kathy Walsh became one of her outfit's first clients. Her sister gave her a new do, designed to supplement her natural hair. When Walsh got that hair piece, she says, she cried. "I always thought I looked bad -- until that hair addition," she says. "With it, I looked pretty, more feminine."

But after a few years of catering to cancer patients, life dealt the two businesswomen a severe blow: Hospitals began opening nonprofit hair boutiques for their patients, and PK Walsh couldn't compete with them on price. It was then, soon after Pat left the business in 1994 to open a traditional hair salon, that Kathy Walsh decided to start focusing on women with hair loss -- women like herself.

THE NEXT GENERATION.  Her niche business has bloomed. Continually outgrowing its locations, PK Walsh been forced to move into a bigger space several times, most recently in April. The salon has continued to expand its services, now including laser treatment, which helped make 2004 a record year. Although Walsh declines to provide specific figures, she says revenue has increased every year since the company's founding more than two decades ago.

Kathy Walsh is now preparing to hand over the reins to Nikki, who serves as the salon's general manager, in the next three to five years. Unlike her mom, Nikki is a trained hairdresser and has been working at the salon all her life. "I had to go to the Kathy school of hard knocks," Nikki jokes.

Already, there's a good chance this family business will make it to a third generation. Nikki Walsh boasts that her four-year-old son loves coming to the salon, getting his own hair styled, and putting rollers into customers' hair. You might say this whole family is on a roll.