Atlantic Highlands Teen Runs Thriving Online Clothing Business

ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, NJ ― A high school senior at Trinity Hall and her friends started a crochet business that has become so successful they now have 40,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. They also ship their halter tops internationally and sell them at local street fairs.

Trinity Hall is the Catholic all-girls' school in Tinton Falls, and the business is called Mauna Made.

The Trinity Hall student is Riley Raymond, who lives in Atlantic Highlands. She started Mauna Made with her friends, Jaimie and Renee Alessi, sisters who live in Hillsdale in Bergen County.

The three young women sell handmade custom-order crochet tops under the Instagram account @maunamade. Mauna means mountain or mountaintop in Hawaiian.

The tops are all hand-knit and crocheted by hand by these three teenage New Jersey girls. Check out their video on what it's like in a "day in the life of a teenage business owner:" https://www.tiktok.com/@maunam...

As true innovative entrepreneurs, they also now make crocheted face masks to match the tops.

Raymond apparently came up with the idea while sitting in her Red Bank dentist’s chair when she was all of 7 years old. She saw a commercial for a toy knitting loom.

"I could do a lot with that," she thought.

Proving that commercials in pediatric dentist chairs work, Raymond asked her parents to buy her the loom. Fast forward ten years, and that toy loom has now morphed into a thriving business.

Raymond first started weaving scarves and hats as gifts for friends and family. She and the Alessi sisters ski at Hunter Mountain (Raymond is actually a competitive ski racer), and one winter, they got permission from the ski mountain to open a pop-up shop in the ski lodge, selling the scarves and hats to skiers looking to warm up.

"As a ski racer, I many afternoons in the lodge and saw a greatest business opportunity," said Raymond. "The first customers were mainly ski coaches and family friends. But one cold New Year’s Eve, I set up a table by one of the lodge entrances. Before the evening’s fireworks show had even started, everything sold out. It was a productive winter!"

However, eventually the hat business started to slow, said Raymond.

So she and her friends decided to branch into summertime clothing. They are now thriving making the popular crocheted halter tops seen on their social media pages. Raymond did say it took a lot of practice to learn how to crochet the halter tops correctly. (Warning: You likely have to have the figure of a teenage girl to pull off these halter tops!)

Over the past several years the young woman have sold their tops, hats and scarves at craft shows and street fairs, including at the annual Red Bank street fair.

More recently, with the time constraints of their busy high school schedules, they have moved to an online format. Business boomed online, said Raymond, and over the past two years they started shipping orders to most U.S. states and several other countries. Being on Instagram and TikTok allows them to reach a true teenage market, and customers place their orders through direct message and pay through Venmo.

This fall, they are working on several new designs.

You can find Mauna Made on both Instagram and TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@maunam...
https://www.instagram.com/maun...

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