Hello and welcome to our world - the world of butterflies. We founded Nature Depot, Inc. with two main purposes in mind. Our primary goal is to educate the world on the magnitude of beauty and diversity within the butterfly kingdom. Our second goal is to help preserve this kingdom to ensure that all of these butterflies will survive and thrive so that our children and grandchildren will still be able to marvel at them and study them in their natural splendor.

Nature Depot, Inc. was founded by Mike Soukup - known as "Souky" - and his wife Cindy in 2003. Souky has always been a "Nature Boy" - catching his first snake (A Black Rat Snake) when he was still in diapers. By the age of 12, he already had a large butterfly and moth collection, aquariums with snakes, turtles, lizards and fish, lapidary equipment for working with rocks and minerals - and his own greenhouse to grow plants - especially cacti!

After graduating from College as a computer programmer, Souky turned most of his attention towards his new career path of computers. He met and married his first wife, Rachel M. Lepp in 1996. One year after their wedding, Rachel was diagnosed with A.L.S. - Amytrophic lateral sclerosis. When Rachel died in 1999, Souky quit his job as a programmer and started traveling and collecting insects (and whitewater kayaking - but that's another story!)- renewing his passion for the insect world.

In 2002, Souky met his future wife and business partner Cindy. While sitting in the house one day, Cindy gazed absently around at the approximately 50,000 butterflies and moths around the house and said "Why don't you DO something with all these butterflies"? Confusion. "Like what"?? "Like a pair of earrings" - and so The Nature Depot was born.

We are now celebrating our 4th year and our first catalog. Since its inception, Nature Depot has been working to bring butterflies to the world - while helping to preserve the delicate and ever shrinking habitat butterflies call home. To this end, we have always used 100% farm raised butterflies. No butterflies or moths are taken from the wild and all butterflies live their entire life cycle. As a bonus, most farms end up increasing local populations of butterflies due to the plantings of nectar and food sources required for the farming operation. Even more important is that Nature Depot deals directly through the Internet with local farms in several impoverished, tropical areas of the world to help the local indigenous people generate renewable, sustainable, ecologically friendly income. By farming butterflies - instead of the pigs, goats, sheep and cows normally raised, the people avoid clear-cutting acres and acres of tropical forest and jungle to make grazing areas. Instead, they use the locally available trees and plants to raise butterflies and moths on - which Nature Depot buys to make its jewelry. An average of three dollars of every item goes directly into farming operations worldwide. We currently wholesale 5 lines of jewelry and accessories: NeckWings, EarWings, HairWings, WingPins and TieWings - with plans for many more products in the future.

All of our products are made from real farm-raised butterflies that have been encased in resin to make them extremely durable - while keeping their natural colors, shapes, sizes and patterns intact. Souky uses 14k gold, sterling silver and all natural gemstones to try to represent and enhance the beauty of the butterfly - as it would be seen in the wild.

Nature Depot, Inc. products are 100% individually hand-crafted in the U.S.A. Please feel free to ask us any questions.