BOSTON — On Friday, Oct. 13, T-shirt designer Johnny Earle arrived at his Johnny Cupcakes store at dusk, wearing zombie bandages and chauffeured in a hearse, to unveil his limited-edition Halloween T-shirts.
Hundreds of fans, some of whom had spent a chilly night wrapped in sleeping bags outside the Newbury Street store, spent $13,000 in three hours. Earle posed for photographs and signed cell phones, while a camera crew filmed the mayhem for a documentary he is making.
Johnny Cupcakes’ Goth-cutesy look has captivated teens in the same nutty way Paul Frank’s Julius monkey did. Instead of a cheery monkey, Earle has claimed the cupcake as his icon (the logo is a cupcake and crossbones), and he’s dreamed up a world of designs, including a Statue of Liberty bearing a cupcake instead of a torch and a kangaroo with a cupcake in its pouch, as well as the slogan “Make Cupcakes, Not War.”
With a single store open seven months, a Web site (johnnycupcakes.com) and a handful of wholesale accounts, Johnny Cupcakes will surpass $1.2 million in sales this year.
Earle himself is a slight, soft-spoken 24-year-old sporting sparse lamb-chop sideburns and Ksubi jeans with a hole in the back pocket. He is supported by a tight cadre of friends and family who do everything from register his trademarks to model in his look book. Until recently, his mother, Lorraine, baked the cupcakes that were given out at the store on weekends; now, a professional handles the pastry.
Those cupcakes are a must since the store mimics a bakery, with T-shirts displayed on cookie sheets in lighted catering cases or laid out on rolling bakery storage racks. The windows have huge, black-and-white nutrition information labels. There’s even the vague scent of baking, thanks to a creative use of vanilla air freshener. Instead of a shopping bag, the store uses a black cardboard donut box embossed with a silver cupcake-and-crossbones logo.
The majority of revenues come from T-shirts, $35 to $50 at retail, though Earle also sells a few hoodies, belt buckles and sterling silver pendants. For spring he’s designing slip-on sneakers à la Vans, and for fall is tentatively planning jeans with oven-mitt-shaped back pockets. Cast members on “Project Runway” have worn Johnny Cupcakes shirts, as has the band AFI.
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Earle also envisions a few more stores — the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Calif., and somewhere in London. He’s vague. But one thing he is intent on — almost maniacal about — is keeping distribution extremely limited because he believes it’s crucial to the brand’s desirability.
After attending an industry trade show and noting merchandise sameness everywhere, he tore up wholesale orders.
He hand-numbers his limited-edition shirts, noting the individual number and the total production run, as is the custom in fine-art lithographs. The packaging also is numbered and is as much a part of the purchase experience as the T-shirt. His Halloween shirts, for example, come in cake-mix boxes detailed with monster trivia and iconic Boston images, like the Citgo sign. Inside, there are flour and confectioner’s sprinkles (the shirt is protected in a plastic bag).
“I pulled three all-nighters before the Halloween event, packaging shirts, and my wrist is still killing me from numbering,” he says. “I keep wanting to do the little things to get people excited.”