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Hello Hullonians

Mother Cupcake:
A Mother's Day interview with Lorraine Earle
Mother of Linsay and John
(a.k.a. Johnny Cupcake)

By Cindy Beth Bittker

This Mother's Day, Lorraine Earle finally has what she has wanted so badly for over 20 years -- to be home with her family. In August of 2006 after 23 years working full-time managing a law firm in downtown Boston, she left her job to work full time from home managing her son John's company, Johnny Cupcakes.

Wired, tired and fired up, her time at home is non-stop multi-tasking to keep up with the momentum of her son's success. Keeping up with the rocketing growth of Johnny Cupcakes is a family affair. Lorraine manages the financial end of the business. John, of course, creates the designs and handles marketing. Daughter Linsay, who is a 20 year old sophomore at Bryant College comes home on weekends to help fulfill orders. Husband and father, Michael is a finish carpenter and cabinetmaker who also has been working for Johnny Cupcakes expanding the warehouse space in Hull, building out the Newbury Street store and now renovating a Victorian home in Hull that John has recently bought. 

When I spoke with John in the Johnny Cupcakes store in Hull he said to me that the very best part of his company's success is that his mom is the happiest he has ever seen her in his life.

Says Lorraine, "I hated leaving my kids every day. I hated it. It wasn't so much the work. I could do the work very well after 23 years. It was tiring, but I wanted to make my shell art and I wanted to be home with my kids."  

Lorraine managed the law firm of Sally & Fitch LLP. "I was with them from the day they open the doors when there was just three of them and me until this past August when they had 30 employees. I would take the kids over to my babysitter's house at seven in the morning and I would come home 12 hours later. It took me an hour and a half each way to go to work on the commuter boat. So my day never could be less than a 12 hour day. My head would be full of law firm money and business stuff. My kids would have already eaten dinner and so I couldn't even sit down with them. It was awful. Their whole lives, I was at work. I've never been home. Ever. When John was born, I had three months maternity leave and when Linsay was born I took five months. I was laid off for six months at one point in 1991. I tried to retire one so I could do my shell work, but financially, it didn't work out so I had to go back. I left in August of 2006. It hasn't even been a year, and I have not even enjoyed the first summer of my life yet. Or a spring!!"

If there is one thing that Lorraine would like to have, it would be a few more hours in her day to create her artwork. "Linsay is 20 and John is 24, and that's why I think it's important for me to get back into my passion. I think I should have the time. And I don't have the time." 

Lorraine creates decorative functional art work made from seashells. She started making her seashell art about 15 years ago and for the last seven years has been involved with the Hull Artist Studio Connection. A wreath she made for an interior designer in Martha's Vineyard was recently featured in Traditional Homes Magazine. She also used to create smaller, more affordable gift size works such as treasure boxes, barrettes, jewelry and Christmas ornaments. But now, with the time demands of managing Johnny Cupcakes, she only sells at the Christmas Art Show in Hull and creates pieces on commission.

Lorraine grew up on Martha's Vineyard and has been collecting seashells since she was a little girl. "I never threw out any piece of sea glass or seashell since I was little and I brought them all with me. I kept them in jars and dusted them every year or so. One day, I just kind of dumped them all out and would pick up a particular shell and be so excited to remember where I picked that one up." She decided to make art out of her seashells, and it has been a passion ever since.

She collects some shells from Nantasket Beach, jingle shells from the Cape, and the more colorful shells she finds in Barbados and Florida. She still collects seashells everywhere she goes, but also orders some from the Internet, especially the white shells which are very hard to find. "You can't just pick those up on the beach."

"I probably have probably 5 tons of shells and I need to use them. Frank McDuff was our town moderator for many, many years before he passed away seven or eight years ago. Mr. McDuff sold lobster on the avenue for years and years. I would go over there and buy lobster. One day he gave Linsay one of these sand dollars and said that he was a shell collector. I said to him, "Oh! I am a shellaholic!" So we became really good friends and one day he offered me his whole collection. It took me about six carloads to get them all home. It was his whole collection, his whole life, and he spent a lot of money buying shells. So I merged it with my collection, and that's why I pumped out so many things for so many years. I just had this humongous pile of shells that I could not believe I owned!"

There has always been a lot of creativity in the Earle House. "I've always been into things like knitting. I've always made my own Christmas gifts. This year I've come up with a dried flowers thing because everybody has my seashell designs already."

John, too, was a collector even from a young age. I asked Lorraine if she had an inkling when her son was little that he was going to go in this direction. "Always. Always. He had a stamp collection when he was seven and had every person he knew in the world cutting stamps off of envelopes and giving them to him. He had me sending away on those matchbooks for all the stamp collections! He collected Garbage Pail Kids stickers for years until a couple of kids stole them from him and sold them. John was really into magic. He used to rent himself out for birthdays. He used to walk the beach and sell glow sticks on Fourth of July weekend. He still loves his magic. He is a trickster. He likes to keep people amused."

For the past five years Lorraine has been working her full-time job at the law firm and also helping John with his business. "Every morning I would get up and print all the orders and the labels so they could be stuffed while I was at work. When I came home I had to do it again and do all the billing. All the merchandise was in our attic at home. So not only did I print the orders, but I'd have to climb up the attic stairs and then crawl around to fill the orders and ship them out because John was on tour with his band for a year and a half. I was unhappy because I was working two hours before work and then coming home and working two hours. My shell work just went by the wayside. I was helping Linsay with college applications and financial aid applications and I just became totally overwhelmed. It was just too much. My kids would see how stressed and tired I was and John would say "I'm never gone to work for anybody else. This stinks."

Asked at what point it became clear that John's business was really taking off and something had to give and Lorraine answered, "It was when my husband had to built the attic out twice here in our house to hold everything. Two years in a row for Christmas that was John's present. We couldn't wrap it, but that was as his present! It became too much for the house and I was getting so tired. First he had to quit the band. I told him, "Either you make five dollars a day with the band or you come home and make something of this. This can it be huge if you come home and put your effort into it."

"That was in 2002. He quit his band in 2003. We opened the Hull store in 2004 because we just had no more room in our house. The dining room was full. Boxes were being delivered constantly because we had to order quantity of each size. He was coming out with so many designs that we were ordering nine sizes of each design and it became this monster. So he quit the band in July of 2003 and opened the Hull store in May of 2004. In January of 2005 John said that he wanted to open a store on Newbury Street, and I said, "Well if you do, I have to quit my job."

Asked if the family is still floored every day, Lorraine answered, "We are floored. We are floored every day."

Formerly the synthesizer player with the band On Broken Wings, John's strength is in marketing his company through the medium of youth - popular bands and myspace.com.

"He gives a lot of bands his T-shirts so they will wear them on stage. Gym Class Heroes is a really popular, up-and-coming band who began wearing his T-shirts on stage. The lyrics to their song, 7 weeks, contains a reference to John."

And now it's back in a van with four of my mans
Until we catchin' a tan on the Florida sands
I feel like tourin' this land's made me more of a man
From killa California to the shores of Japan
Good times stayin' up late in Austin
Coast to coast V8 to Chicago
To gettin' up with Johnny Cupcakes in Boston

Gym Class Heroes, "7 Weeks"

"Last week John went on tour with Gym Class Heroes and he did every show with them in California. When the kids got wind that he was on the show, they all came wearing Johnny Cupcakes T-shirts. When the band sang the song, "7 Weeks," the band would point to John and the fans would go crazy. Then the orders started pouring in. Just the other night, the band performed on Jay Leno and John met Jay and gave him a catalog! He's flying out on Sunday to meet the band in Vegas because they're doing a video of that song and they want John in that spot."

"Last night he was on the WBZ news. He has been on Chronicle, CNBC and had a half page story in the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday orders came from Taiwan, Singapore and the Czech Republic. It's unbelievable."

This summer, you can expect to see a lot of Johnny Cupcakes on the billboard in Hull, which he plans to use all summer long. "This will get people off the beach to come up half a mile to the store. Every day people are coming from towns all over the place to go to Johnny Cupcakes that otherwise would have no reason to step foot in Hull. A lot of people just want to come see the original store, even though they can go to the one on Newbury Street."

Asked if John's sister ever feels left out, Lorraine says, "We're all so excited. My daughter doesn't feel left out, she feels very much a part of this. Linsay has the option to work for Johnny when she gets out of school, but she wants to run a car dealership. She's wanted to do this since she's been little. We have a very good friend who owns a Toyota dealership and I think that's where she got this whole inspiration from. She's taking courses here towards communication and finance and business management and so if she does decide to do the Johnny Cupcake thing, she will be prepared either way."

Everyone who works for Johnny Cupcakes are friends or family. "They're all his friends. There is trust. It's family and its community. 17 people work for John, most of whom are friends of his. John went to the Charter School in Hull and I swear to you the reason he is doing so well is because of that school. At the time when he needed it the Charter School was there for him. He learned life skills. And he learned how to be nice. He'd come home saying " I just love that school!" None of the kids lose touch with each other. They're in all his catalogs. His catalogs are all his friends. He didn't pay one person to be in his catalog."

This Mother's Day, Lorraine can celebrate the success of Johnny Cupcakes which has allowed Lorraine to make her dream to be home come true.

"For John to be able to support me from ever having to go back to that rat race is unbelievable. It's so incredible."

"I am so proud of my kids and I'm always saying how proud I am of them. But I should be saying that I'm so proud of myself and my husband." And indeed, she should!

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