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. “After six months I was like, ‘I’m working every night till 10pm on boring shit and waiting for furniture to be delivered, so let’s build something.’”
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. “I bought them all, but then got to my house and they are all the wrong size, way smaller. At that point I couldn’t waste $1, so I was like let’s just try — and that [smaller size] ended up being a bestseller.”
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.
How it blew up
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. “I would wear [Heaven Mayhem] and tag it, but I never said ‘this is my brand’. Then, people would like a photo on Heaven Mayhem and then I would DM them like, ‘Hey, you interested?’” she says. 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. “I was getting them for like $3 [per 1,000 impressions], now they’re $35.”