I Scaled From Handmaking Each Piece to $10 Million in 3 Years

0:00When I feel like a mess, that's mayhem. When I add jewelry, it's heaven.

0:08Pia Mance:Heaven Mayhem is turning heads in the fashion world. In just three years, Pia Mance has grown from hand-making jewelry to building a$10 million accessories empire. We're designing for the people that are buying the brand, so why not listen to them to inform our next designs? With celebrity fans like Hailey Bieber and Sydney Sweeney, Heaven Mayhem's community isn't just loyal, they're diehard devotees. Influencers would buy it. We went on retailers. We had a couple of good press articles. Every tiny bit helped a lot, but I wouldn't say one single thing was our silver bullet. Each time Heaven Mayhem launches a new collection or hosts a pop-up, lines overflow with eager fans and their social media lights up with viral excitement.

0:45Pia Mance:The success is thanks to Pia's talent for building an immersive brand experience that connects deeply with her fan base. Today, we're going to unpack it all and learn how Pia built a brand that's truly beloved by a new generation of consumers. I'm your host, Adam Leventer, and this is your companion for starting and building a business. Welcome to Shopify Masters, Pia. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. So take me back three plus years ago when you have this idea. This isn't just about the product, right? You have this whole vision for a brand, for a whole world, really. I grew up modeling and I was always on set with founders, creative directors, all of that.

1:22I also grew up, me and my husband have been together since a really young age, and he had a business. So I would sit at his family table, dining room table, listening to them talk about business and all of these things. And I would constantly have these thoughts like that's what I want to do for myself. And this is how things I would do differently. And I wanted to create this world where you would step into and you're not just getting a product, but you're getting an experience. It feels like something you belong to. And I know the word community is thrown around like a buzzword and everyone has to say it these days.

1:48But it truly feels like a community that you're a part of and belong to. And you get access to events and content and styling advice and friends and all of it. So that's kind of what I wanted to build. And I always wanted to have this brand and world of my own. And then ultimately, I started having me.

2:03Pia Mance:Do you think about specific pillars when you think about the brand overall? So there's product, of course. There's the community. Then do you have these other pillars that you think about when you're sort of like putting this on the back of a napkin? When you put it like that, when you say pillars, no, I don't. But then when you actually dive into it, yes, of course, we have pillars. Content for us is huge. Events for us is also huge. And then community, I think, like I said, it's thrown around, but we really try and dive into like, what can we provide for our community? How can we give back to them?

2:34If they're liking and commenting on our content, if they're purchasing our product, what more can we give them? So I think that our real pillars is product, content, community, and events.

2:45Pia Mance:What makes the brand so distinct? Everyone knows that these earrings, for example, are heaven mayhem. Yeah, but there's no logos. Okay. There's a tiny little logo on my watch, but often people will be like, oh, Heather Mayhem. People will DM me and say, oh, I met a girl in a Pilates class yesterday because she was wearing, they know the name, the baby knot earrings. And I brought it up to her. So I think it's just our content and our distinct brand. We've really carved out this distinct way that we take content. And I couldn't even put it into words for you or replicate it myself. Like if I was to start another brand tomorrow, I don't know how I would replicate that, but it's just that distinct brand identity that we have that we just don't veer from and people just know it's us.

3:27Pia Mance:Where does the brand name Heaven Mayhem come from? So when I was starting this brand, I was thinking of a million different things. And I think often people get really stumped with starting a brand name. I always say, once it's a name, it's a name. If you told me you wanted to start a brand called Peaches, I'd be like, I don't know about Peaches, but Apple's the biggest company in the world. So I was really open to any words that I liked. and I was writing down a bunch of things. And then obviously you have to make sure it's available. So I found a couple of combinations that I liked. And the reason I liked Heaven Mayhem is because I personally felt when I feel like a mess, when my hair's messy, I just like feel not great.

4:03That's mayhem. When I add jewelry, it's heaven. I felt like adding jewelry was my final step to feeling ready for the day. And even like your wife probably and people listening would understand this. You're not wearing a big necklace and big earrings around the house to lay on the couch. Like you're just not. It's like not super comfortable, but you add that final piece when you're ready for the day. It's like heaven and you're ready to go. It really shows the world you're showing up for yourself. So that was the meaning behind the name and it's an oxymoron. I think it works really well and like represents the brand.

4:31Pia Mance:And you started with earrings? We started with necklaces. Okay. So necklaces was our first product. That's what I was hand making. I went all across LA, went to flea markets, went downtown, found some on eBay and I was hand making these vintage pendants that I was kind of like recreating using pliers a little bit and then hand tying suede cord and then packing all of the orders myself. And I did drop one, two, three, maybe even drop four with 20 unique pendants. They were all one-offs. And then finally for drop five, I got my hands on some dead stock product, which was one circular pendant. And then that ended up taking off as a bestseller.

5:05And from all of the revenue that I made on that product, I was able to put it into a PO overseas. And then we started on earrings and And now we have like a whole plethora of products.

5:15Pia Mance:How did the first cohort of consumers, specifically, let's say online consumers, how did they first become aware of this brand? Do you remember like the first month, the first two months of this business, what that looked like? So I was posting it myself on my personal socials. I think I had around 45 ,000 followers. And then I'd made a Heaven Mayhem brand account, but I didn't even follow myself. I didn't want anyone to know it was my brand. So I think that's a good lesson for people listening. like you don't necessarily need to have a following. And I was just wearing it and promoting it. Yes, with my following, but my following wasn't like a diehard, like converting following.

5:51They were just interested in these one-off necklaces. And as soon as someone clicked on the thing and liked a post, I would DM them straight away. Like, Hey, so you liked it. Are you interested in purchasing it? I was after every sale, like really wanting to connect with every single person. And then that's how it slowly grew.

6:07Pia Mance:Do they begin to talk about it with their friends? Do they post on socials? Is that important to get some of that word of mouth going? Yes, that is beyond important. So I launched the brand in June. It started, you know, slowly picking up a little, a little. And what I found was myself as an influencer for the brand didn't necessarily drive sales straight away, but it drove other people to become interested in the brand. And so of course I had a couple of people who were then interested in purchasing it straight away, but I also had other influencers and creators who would message the brand and say, oh, I love it.

6:40May I have one for free? And then I'll post. So I would gift them out as well. And then that is how I was able to get a network of people to start organically posting and talking about the brand, which helped unbelievably.

6:51Pia Mance:Going back to what you were talking about at the very beginning, when you were thinking about the brand, the world, the community, the content, the product, for you, what was your strength? Are you a design person? Do you design first? Are you content first? Like how do you think of yourself as an entrepreneur? My strength of an entrepreneur is, and I hate to toot my own horn, but ideas. Like if you tell me, oh, I want to start this business, I would love to sit with you for an hour and think of a million ideas and what you should do. And that is my strength. Content is my strength and branding is my strength.

7:25Right now in my business, I have to do everything. So I do do majority of the design, majority of the content, marketing, branding. But if I had it my way, and I think in a perfect world in a couple of years, I will fully just focus on branding and the ideas.

7:41Pia Mance:Talk to me more about community. So as the brand grows, the community grows. And to your point, yeah, that term has become a little bit buzzy. But still, I think an important pillar of one's brand strategy. So for you, how do you think about community now and the next phase of it for Heaven Mayhem? And what do you think is important for founders to learn when they're thinking about building a community under their own brand? Yeah. I think community is everything because community is essentially just the people around the brand and that's who's engaging with the brand and the customers who are buying it.

8:14If you don't have these people, you don't have a brand because no one's buying it. So I think it's really important to listen from customer service feedback to social media comments to everything. And we've just taken it a step further in that we invite our community to our office to try on the product first. We do a little coffee catch-ups and match-ups so that we can connect with them. They can meet me as a founder. They can meet other girls on the team and we can all just kind of like be friends and they can feel closer to the brand. And we like to kind of provide them this experience with free coffee or matcha or we've done girls nights out where we invited, I think 150 community.

8:46We had some influencers, some customers, and we just had a huge girls night. Like drinks were on us. We had pizzas, we had fries, we had loads of content opportunities. We had a photographer, we had like cute little details so they could do their lip gloss and take photos. And it was just such a cute vibe, but that's purely just like to give love to our community. We don't ever sell a product, but then in turn, they then hopefully in the future want to buy our products, but then help us choose what to release next. Help us choose like, Hey guys, do you like this shape of sunglasses? Do you want more earrings like this?

9:17Like we're designing for the people that are buying the brand. So why not listen to them to inform our next designs? So I think it's like a very two-way street. And while we're trying to provide the best experience for our community, they're actually also helping us a ton as well so that we can provide a good experience.

9:31Pia Mance:So you're in a way using these events or these live moments as almost like customer feedback opportunities to inform product development or process. Process and content and what influences should we work with? Or for example, when we launch specific products, we'll do a lead up, like a runway of teasers and launch. So we might do some teasers for five days. We might announce it on the 20th. Hey, the drop is watches and everyone goes, oh my God, I can't believe it. And then on the 30th, we release the product. But then we talk to our community like, hey guys, what'd you think of that runway? Like, was it too long?

10:04Because some people just want to see it and buy it or other people want to plan their purchase because they wanted to know exactly how much it is and they want to get paid. And so we get really helpful insights across all these different aspects of the business and then we can apply it. And we also do, as well as our community events, we do a monthly concept that we call conversations in heaven. We always, going back to the world, we always like to relate things to heaven. So we'll say like angels or we'll use angel numbers like 222 and every single tiny piece of content or even the mugs in our office are branded in a way that you kind of are stepping into this world.

10:35That's what we mean by world. But we do conversations in heaven once a month. We sign up, they sign up and they come to this Zoom. We go through our recent launches or what's coming up and kind of show them like special information. And then we ask for feedback, Like, what can we do better? We always say, whenever I ask for feedback, I say, what can I do better? Rather than, what did you think? Because I find like, if you say, what did you think? People aren't willing to offer up constructive feedback as much as if you say, what can I do better? And we always ask so that we can improve.

11:05Pia Mance:These ideas for these community events, these activations, is it coming from you specifically? Is there like a defined process now or blueprint for putting on these types of events? There is a blueprint now, but I am always changing the blueprint as well. And I would say 99 % of it comes from me. And that's what I'm saying. That's my superpower of like, let's do this, let's do that. And it really like, I know what to do. But, you know, sometimes when we run into operational issues, that's where I'm like, please, can someone help? But these ideas is where I love to play. The blueprint is we do event concepts.

11:42So we'll do Heaven Bar and that's popped up in London, Australia, Melbourne, Sydney, Austin, New York, LA, a couple of different places, Dallas. So we take this one concept to a lot of places. So now, for example, if we're planning one next week in LA, I don't really need to be involved. We have all of the products. We have branded coasters and mints and matches and a sign and all of these things that can all be handled without me. and it's like a rinse and repeat process. But now we want to change up the blueprint and make it even better. So then that's when I would step back in.

12:14Pia Mance:Gotcha. Okay, let's shift to the design and quality of the product, which to this point, I mean, it's obvious that you spend so much time thinking about design and design quality and manufacturing. And you had your hands, literally had your hands on this product for so long. And then the business grows to a certain point where it doesn't make sense to have you as the founder continue to sort of like tie the necklaces or the bracelets or whatever you're doing by hand, you've got to outsource. Talk to me about that evolution, that process, and how you've been able to maintain the quality of the product as the business has scaled.

12:49So it wasn't really a problem of maintaining the quality. The original pieces were vintage inspired, and so they were kind of secondhand in nature. So, you know, with that can come some tarnishing or something. So then when I was to move to a factory, I wasn't really worried about the quality, you know, changing at all. I also lived in China for a couple of months. At one point, I'm aware that the factories there are really good. It's their specialty. They can do it better than me. So I wasn't really worried about that, but I was worried about, you know, my ability to continue the product line myself.

13:21Like there was no way I was going to be able to weld earrings and do that. So it was just time to switch to a factory. And it was like the best decision ever because I could start putting these ideas in my head into actual products.

13:31Pia Mance:Do you source from one specific manufacturer? We did at the start. We have one and now we have maybe 10, but we have so many different product categories. Like for example, our earrings and our watch factories, completely different. It probably could be the same, but then we have book boxes and laptop cases. So all of these product categories have one or two core factories. And then we also have a couple of other different factories we'll play around with. What's the story about the laptop case and this influencer named Becca Bloom? Was it? Yes. Do you know Becca? I mean, I don't personally. I'm just doing a little bit of research.

14:06Pia Mance:She's a famous TikToker or something like that. Because you live on LinkedIn. So let me tell you about Becca. Becca blew up last year or the year before. She lives in San Francisco. She's the sweetest girl and she is one of the wealthiest people on TikTok. So she'll do day in my life of what my cat is eating. First up, caviar. For the cat. For the cat. or for example, let's open my new China or look what my chef's prepared. But she's the sweetest girl. So people aren't going like, what the hell is this crazy world you live in? People love it. People absolutely adore her. And she did a TikTok saying, hey guys, I wanted the Heaven Mayhem laptop case so bad, but it didn't fit my laptop.

14:44So I had to buy a new laptop and it went viral. She grew so fast. I think she maybe had half a million followers at that time and it went so viral. So then obviously we jumped on it and we said to her, let's do a giveaway. She replied and then we did a giveaway. So from that and also our laptop cases were already taking off, but it just like blew them up and we honestly still can't keep them in stock.

15:06Pia Mance:Wow. But she was not the first celebrity or influencer that got involved with your brand. We've had so many amazing celebrities wear. One like, I guess, famous story, but I feel bad because everyone always mentions it. And Hailey's not the only person that's worn it. But Hailey Bieber wore the brand early on. I actually saw her at a coffee shop and her friend had bought a pair. So I went and said hi. And then I said to Haley, like, have you ever won anything? And so she ended up wearing the brand, which was amazing. She was wearing the earrings I'm wearing, but the bigger size. We've just had so many people like Emily Ratajkowski, Sydney Sweeney, loads of celebrity stylists, loads of huge influences.

15:40Alex Earl wears it all the time, like in loads of her dancing in the stars vlog, she's wearing our sunglasses. So we see celebrities wear it again and again and again. And it's so exciting.

15:50Pia Mance:What do you think is the role today of celebrity influence on one's brand trajectory? And I ask you the question because I think a lot of founders out there think that, look, I've got this brand, I've got this product. And if only I have this big celebrity to, I don't know, do a post or help see the product or whatever, then I can 10X my business. And so they're almost thinking about it as like a necessary requirement for scale or for growth versus something that happens organically. Like in your case, I don't think you were thinking about like, I must have Hailey Bieber wearing my product for this to be successful.

16:31Pia Mance:You're just thinking about the brand, the products, the experience of the community. And if it happens, it happens. 100%. I definitely wasn't thinking I have to get on Hailey Bieber to be successful, but I did think I'm sure Hailey will love these because the earrings are perfectly suited to her style and they're super cute. I think often people think getting your brand on a celebrity is your golden ticket and it will change everything. But I can tell you even today, the biggest celebrities in the world wear our product and we don't even see one extra unit sell that day. You know, we have some units online that are slow movers and we might sell like five a week and the celebrity wears it and we still sell five a week.

17:05So nothing is that crazy about celebrity. I think it's a really nice halo effect. Same as press, same as influencer. And I think if you're doing everything all at once, which we did, we had it on celebrities organically. we ceded to influencers. Influencers bought it. Our price point's a really sweet price point where if you love the product, you can buy it. It's not like$2 ,000. It's under$100 for most products. So influencers would buy it. They would link it. We signed up to affiliate networks. So influencers would get commission. That helped a lot. We went on retailers like Revolve. That helped a lot.

17:37We had a couple of good press articles that helped. And then every tiny bit helped a lot, but I wouldn't say one single thing was our silver bullet.

17:45Pia Mance:There's so much there. Let me try and nitpick out a couple of points. So the first is press. So you guys have been in Vogue, you've been in Forbes, a ton of earned media. Do you think of media as just like a happy bonus or are you pursuing these outlets and trying to get press that way or how's it working? We pursue them for a product launch. Like, hey guys, we'd just like a quick blast. Like, here's our new product launch and hopefully it's in some shopping roundups. That's a way a lot of these publications make money is by linking a product and earning commission. So it's in their best interest to link a product that is going to sell well.