OUR MISSION

The Bug Club was founded to modernise Entomology, informed by a scientific & ethical approach, we design & handcraft our work to promote the beauty of the natural world.

 
 

The Bug Club was founded in the summer of 2020, just over a year ago and in the first week of the Covid lockdown our Creative Director Josh suddenly found himself with a lot of unexpected free time. Throughout a successful career in design, Josh maintained a lifelong interest in entomology. It was during these long months on hiatus that he decided to use his professional experience to turn his hobby into a business.

 

Educate & promote conservation

Soon after establishing the brand Josh found that, not only did The Bug Club help to promote the beauty and diversity of insects, it also provided him with the opportunity to take direct action in combating some of the major threats to endangered insects and help protect biodiversity as a whole. You can read more about how The Bug Club is doing this on our Ethos Page!

 
 

Educate & promote conservation

Sadly, despite insects being the structural and functional base of many of the world's ecosystems and one of the most beneficial groups of animals to both the environment and to ourselves as humans, public interest, research & conservation funding isn’t as high for invertebrate species as it is for other endangered animals. The Bug Club aims to show more people that the world of insects is fascinating, diverse, and vitally important to every living thing on this earth.

Meet The Bug Club Team

  • Creative Director

    Josh, the creative director and the mastermind behind The Bug Club, is leading our mission to bring entomology into the 21st century! Josh is a lifelong insect hobbyist, whose personal collection of self-mounted insects eventually outgrew his bedroom and developed into The Bug Club as we know it today!

  • Entomologist

    With a masters degree in entomology, Scarlett is responsible for research, fact checking and maintaining the scientific accuracy of our information. She also looks after The Bug Club’s growing insect zoo, which includes stag beetles, elephant beetles, sun beetles, tiger beetles, jungle nymphs, stick insects, leaf insects and three different mantis species!

  • Illustration

    Holly, our in-house illustrator, creates spectacular hand drawn designs for our clothing, prints and gift cards.

    For more of her incredible work, and to test your own creative skills, check out our brand new colouring book!

  • Surface Pattern & Textiles

    Emily, our award winning screen printing expert, then turns Holly’s designs into high quality prints that you yourself can wear!

  • Customer Engagement

    Amanda, our customer engagement guru is on hand to support with customer enquires, and also plays a key part in ensuring orders are shipped effectively.

  • Production

    Amber & Gintare our production team, personally design and handcraft almost every single item in our collection. From beautiful iridescent blue morpho butterflies, to ancient arrowheads, our team have skilled and steady hands and a keen eye for detail.

 

Ethics and fairtrade

We understand how in the past, and still today, collecting insects has come with certain ethical & environmental issues, i.e. in cases of collectors overexploiting localised species in the wild. We ensure that all of our products are responsibly and ethically sourced, with fair trade arrangements designed to help local people in growing countries receive a sustainable and equitable income. We have great personal relationships with all of our suppliers, who own conservation farms all over the world, and we are united in our passion for nature and a desire to promote and protect insects.

 
 

The Bug Club has always had a design led approach - utilising the creative backgrounds and artistic ability of our team members, combined with our fascination with insects, to update the aesthetic and approach to entomology. As the company has expanded and developed we have experimented a lot with the design process to refine our products and our message.

However, there are certain aspects of traditional entomological study that we are keen to preserve! Harkening back to the days of illustrative insect descriptions, which rose to popularity in Europe in the 18th century, we use visually stimulating and scientifically accurate hand drawn illustrations to support our information about the anatomy, physiology and behaviour of insects.

Base of Operations

From the first stages of design through to handcrafting the final product, every step is created and constructed by a member of our multidisciplinary team within our studio based in Cheshire, UK.