My Story

Hi, I’m Cole. I’m 16 years old and the founder of Mantis Universe, a small business I started during the pandemic out of my passion for insects.

I’ve been obsessed with bugs for as long as I can remember. When I was little and my parents couldn’t find me, I was usually outside with a net chasing whatever I could catch. My room has always been more like a lab than a bedroom- usually filled with mantids in deli cups, silkworms, pinned specimens, caterpillars, carnivorous plants, test tube ant colonies, and jars of sprouting seeds. I’ve never been into video games; I’d rather be outside in nature or pinning insects.

Although I’d been breeding mantids for years, Mantis Universe really began in 2020 during COVID- when I was home during 6th grade. While many families were getting puppies, my customers were discovering that mantids make great, low-maintenance pets. One day, after a big hatch of Jeweled Flower Mantises, my mom said I had too many mantids in my room. So I used a flyer template on my computer to make an ad and asked my mom to share it in a local Facebook group. The response blew me away- I sold out within two hours, and a line of moms and kids showed up at our house to pick up their new pets. From there, I started posting each new hatch, with many families coming back again and again for different species. That’s when I realized this wasn’t just a hobby anymore- it was a real business.

As it turns out, one of my customers was a reporter for Spectrum News 1 and she did a story on me that also aired on MSN. Which then led to CBSLA contacting me. They included me in a story series about cool and unusual careers in STEM that also aired on KCAL9. I also took Instagram pretty seriously and built up a following of over 51k followers by posting videos of my mantids doing funny or interesting poses.

Pretty quickly, my business and website orders took off and customers started mentioning Mantis Universe on forums like Reddit- and it all just snowballed into what it has become today. It’s wild. I still can’t believe it. The business has gotten so big, I’ve had to take on a partner to help with the demand. I’ve shipped over 1600 orders so far, with about 40 orders each week being the norm.

I still breed and raise exotic mantids, but now my work has grown to include education. I give insect presentations for schools, scout troops, and community groups, showing kids and adults live mantids, pinned specimens, and insect life cycles. I love giving people a chance to observe insects up close, ask questions, and even hold one themselves.

Over the years, I’ve also had the chance to:

• Present to elementary and middle schools, both in person and on Zoom.

• Exhibit with the Lorquin Entomological Society at the NHMLA Bug Fair.

• Be a vendor at Repticon in Costa Mesa.

• Build and display a monarch sanctuary for my old kindergarten class.

• Have my mantids featured on the Disney+ series A Real Bug’s Life.

I hope you enjoy this website. I built it myself on Squarespace and the photos you see are ones that I took with my dad (he’s a professional photographer). I try to keep the inventory as updated as possible, so if you see it on the site, it’s in stock.

Thanks for being here and supporting my small business.

Cole