A passion that becomes a profession...
First of all, I would like to welcome you on my site, in my little world, and I would like to thank you for your interest in my work! I'll start with the presentations... My name is Julien Hendrickx, I was born in 1982 in Beloeil, a small village in Belgium.
As a child, I was already more interested in the animals and plants that surrounded me than in my fellow human beings... My playground: the nearby forest, my favorite toys: a penknife, a magnifying glass, some string and a lighter... I spent a lot of time observing nature, building huts, dams... and if the weather was not suitable, I would escape by reading books on animals, ecology, botany, by watching documentaries or by talking for hours with my grandfather, an agricultural engineer passionate about science and history!
These interests have never left me, and today I am still a big consumer of this kind of information... Social insects have always inspired me a certain respect and a deep admiration! It is in my adolescence, in a book of E.O.Wilson and B. Holdobbler, that I discovered that it was possible to maintain colonies of ants in captivity in a sustainable way! And I did my first experiments with the means at hand...
At this period too, there was a big change: the arrival of the internet at home, the beginning of forums on all possible and imaginable subjects, including myrmecology! I then started to exchange with other enthusiasts, in Belgium and in France at the beginning, and then quickly, a little everywhere in the world! At the beginning, it was mainly about home-made "do-it-yourself" and exchange of experiences... With the evolution of social networks and different channels, like YouTube for example, the subject started to interest more and more people around the world, and some businesses started to appear!
On my side, after a somewhat chaotic school career, I grew up and at 19 years old, I started to work in the family business: a garden center, in which I will occupy all the functions for 16 years, while remaining a passionate amateur of myrmecology; my collection grew...
Unfortunately, an accident seriously damaged my back and, after having gritted my teeth for a few years, I decided that it was time for me to spare my back and to change direction, so I decided to leave the family garden center and create my own business...
In the meantime, I also broke my piggy bank to buy a work tool worthy of the name: after long interrogations and nights of research, I chose a CNC (computer numerical control) milling machine. The tool seems to me to be good, efficient, versatile, modular... But I have never seen one! And even less used ! Too bad, I buy ... A few months later, here I am at home with a huge machine to install, cables everywhere, parts whose function I do not know, a design program which I do not know anything and a program to control the machine with hundreds of various functions.... it promises ...
After many sleepless nights alone or with the help of my cousin John Hansen (an expert in 3D design and computer science), a training of CNC machinist-programmer at the FOREM (Walloon Office of Vocational Training and Employment), I started little by little to make custom work, design and mass produce my own products!
My first website Origin-ants.com is born, and I start to sell also on the exchanges and specialized fairs in Belgium, in France and in the Netherlands; the customers and the curious ones are with the appointment, I start to make me known and the sales increase nicely... until the beginning of 2020 all evolves slowly but surely... Then, a world catastrophe... The COVID... all the shows, all the exchanges, all the gatherings are progressively cancelled one after the other to become forbidden, the import of the colonies of leaf cutters is suspended because of the sanitary restrictions... like everybody else I tell myself that it will pass....
But we have to face the facts, the world has changed: if I want to survive, I have to adapt and sell online essentially, as all this is becoming difficult to manage, I decide to work with an agency: AAA Etac to help me manage the website and the social network pages! We decide to abandon the old website and its many bugs to make a brand new one, Origin-ants.world ... which will grow over the weeks!