【Los Angeles,】How Viral Jewellery Label Heaven Mayhem Became a $10 Million Business

In 2022, influencer Pia Mance used $900 of her own money to set up a website, buy some vintage pendants from a flea market in Los Angeles, and make a set of 20 necklaces to sell online under the label Heaven Mayhem. Three years on, she’s built a $10 million demi-fine jewellery and accessories business, known in particular for its viral knot earrings. This month, the brand launched a pop-up in London’s Selfridges that runs until November, aiming to boost brand awareness and demonstrate the breadth of its offering.

The luxury jewellery market as a whole has been more resilient than fashion in recent years, but in the demi-fine jewellery space, which relies on increasingly discerning aspirational shoppers, growth has slowed after a post-pandemic boom. Heaven Mayhem has also faced some headwinds, with production delays on some of its launches this year. The LA wildfires in January had a small impact, too, as the brand manufactures its belts locally. Mance says her initial ambition of doubling revenues to $20 million in 2025 now seems out of reach, but she remains optimistic:

Mance started her career as a model in her native Australia, before moving to London in 2017 with her husband, Cody, co-founder of footwear label Naked Wolfe. During Covid, Mance pivoted from modelling to influencing, creating fashion and lifestyle content on Instagram and TikTok, amassing 45,000 followers. But when the couple moved to LA in 2022, for Cody to work on his brand, Mance decided to launch her own.

She didn’t want to put “a tonne of money” into Heaven Mayhem, so she used a retro Sony digicam to capture lo-fi product content for the website. At first, she had no clear plan for the business, though knew she ultimately wanted to design her own pieces and produce on a bigger scale. Mance’s first four drops were small, limited by the amount of pendants she could get hold of. But then the vintage store she was sourcing from found 180 pendants hidden away in a box.

She sold them for $80 each, racking up $14,400 in revenue, which enabled her to travel to China to find a jewellery manufacturer — unlocking her ability to sell her own designs. Today, Heaven Mayhem manufactures between Dongguan and Guangzhou in China, alongside LA. Some 80 per cent of sales are direct-to-consumer (DTC) via its website, while 20 per cent are wholesale. In addition to Selfridges, stockists include Neiman Marcus, Moda Operandi and Ounass in the UAE.
Earrings (retailing for around £80) are now the “bread and butter” of the business, says Mance, representing 50 per cent of sales, while watches (priced at around £200) represent 20 per cent. The rest of the business is split across eyewear (which the brand launched in February this year) and other accessories like belts, jewellery storage boxes and laptop cases.
Naturally, Mance’s influencer status helped get Heaven Mayhem off the ground. But she also admits she bent the rules of influencing in the early days.

Ahead of Coachella 2023, Mance gifted earrings to the likes of Summer Fridays co-founder Marianna Hewitt and It-girl Emily Ratajkowski, among other influencer friends. Another factor in her early success was cheap Facebook ads.

And then came Hailey Bieber.
Bieber’s friend, American singer-songwriter Justine Skye, was actually first to discover the earrings. Then, after a chance meeting with the pair in LA, Mance offered to send some to Bieber, too. The next afternoon, an assistant to Bieber’s stylist DM’ed the brand requesting some earrings for a fitting — three hours later.

It paid off.
Bieber was first spotted wearing Heaven Mayhem’s now-signature knot earrings in public in August 2023, and has worn the style several times throughout the last two years. She didn’t tag the brand, but the uplift in site visits and press coverage was almost immediate, Mance says. Every time Bieber wears the earrings, Heaven Mayhem is covered by scores of titles, from Vogue and Teen Vogue to Elle, Cosmopolitan and Women’s Health.