Hudreds of cupcake lovers waited for hours outside Steven G. Mihaylo Hall to hear Johnny Earle, creator and founder of Johnny Cupcakes and BusinessWeek’s number one entrepreneur of 2008, speak.
“Does anybody think I really sell cupcakes?” Earle asked the people in the crowded Charton Family Lecture Hall.
Johnny Cupcakes is a successful clothing brand known for its cupcake and crossbones logo. The Society for the Advancement of Management (SAM) hosted Earle, who travels across the country lecturing students on starting a brand.
Earle’s lecture, which was given through PowerPoint slides, focused around life lessons he learned while starting up his business. Key topics included: the importance of branding, starting a business with little or no start-up money, entrepreneurship, management, product development and much more.
“Johnny Cupcakes has been an inspiration to me since day one,” Michael Custodio, a business major said. “He has taught me that anything is possible as long as you’re persistent. His whole lecture is a learning experience.”
Johnny Cupcakes started his company by selling buttons and T-shirts out of the trunk of his car in Massachusetts. He now has three storefronts, a cult following and more than $1 million in profits.
“My brand is for… every type of person,” said Earle, describing the diversity of his customers.
He builds a community around his product and recognizes the importance of customer service by adding special packaging and inserting gifts when shipping his T-shirts, stickers and pins.
“Every order shipped out gets a surprise,” Earle said.
Sometimes it could be $20, a free shirt, a doll’s head, a battery or stale cereal. He surprised all the students by hiding little cupcake-covered gift bags between the seats. People got pins, candy, business cards and classic ‘90s television trading cards.
“I’m here to hear Johnny and become inspired,” said Earl Rocha,19, undeclared major . “My friends from other schools told me about his lectures, so I had to experience it first hand.”
A lot of people in the crowd wore Johnny Cupcakes T-shirts, but no two T-shirts were alike. The Johnny Cupcakes brand prides itself on brand longevity by creating limited numbers of each T-shirt or products.
“My T-shirts have created a sort of ‘Tee Harmony,’” Earle said. “A lot of people have made friends with random strangers just because they have one of my shirts on.”
He stressed the importance of reinventing oneself, reminding the crowd that everything has been done before and that it is their responsibility to do things differently.
“The more time you spend making business decisions, the better your ideas get. It’s best not to rush,” said Earle while talking about his elaborate store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
The store is set up like a bakery, keeping consistent with the designs of his East Coast storefronts. Over-sized oven doors function as doors that lead to a hidden office and stock room, while a stovetop acts as a cashier’s counter. Customers pick out T-shirts from refrigerators, which are then packaged from bakery boxes.
“(Johnny Cupcake’s) products are very unique and fresh, I like them a lot,” said Megan De Guzman, a kinesiology major.
With no investors and no chain stores, Johnny Cupcakes proves that people can make millions and have fun in the process.
“It’s not about the money,” Earle said. “It’s about being happy and doing what you love.”
Written with Erin Bradley.
Originally published in the Daily Titan on October 19, 2010.
