My partner and I created a very successful business in the UK out of selling mushroom grow kits and microscopy spores.
We didn’t think there would be any market here because there weren’t any UK shops doing it. Then a couple of years later it took off and growing mushrooms became cool.
In this time we learned how to run a webshop and navigate an industry where every payment processor dropped us - to the point where we only accept cash, bank transfer and crypto.
Our Woocommerce shop was built on pure passion for mushrooms and a crazy late night idea. The kinds you usually just leave as an idea. Now it has consumed our lives and we have multiple employees.
Our business continues to grow with recent months bringing in around £60K/month in revenue.
I had never known what it was like going to a supermarket and not having to add the cost of everything in my head. But with the money, I learned the most valuable lesson - it could all go tomorrow and I would be totally fine with it.
This is one of those business ideas that I must have had around the same time, but never pursued because I was studying; figured engineering would make me more more than selling mushroom growing kits and spores ever would.
I had a large setup in my shed for a few years. Lots of labor getting the substrate boiled and bagged, but once that was done it was easy. Figured that surely there was legs to selling the means of production directly to consumers instead. Who could have guessed it would take off like it has. Now you can even find the grow kits in TK Max and the like as Christmas presents. The market seems pretty saturated now so I'm sure the boat has long sail for me. I'm glad it's worked out for you, if not a little envious.
Maybe. When Shopify blocked us, the representative kept insinuating that the microscopy spore syringes we sell could be injected into the arm. This was in 2019. It’s absolutely absurd but that was what we were up against.
It’s a high risk industry, no doubt there have been plenty of scammers out there but the fact we sell magic mushroom spores for the microscope is enough to be alienated by every card processor and their insurers.
It’s fine though, we make it work - it hasn’t stopped our growth and we’ve amassed enough trust from customers to pay via the other methods!
*Edid: Shopify, not PayPal said that about spores into the arm, not Stripe!
We sell products which are related to all things mushrooms. There’s equipment, supplies you name it. Our grow kits are for growing shiitake, lion’s mane, king oyster or just about any gourmet mushroom which is legal to grow. Our microscopy spores are a product which are strictly sold for microscopy use. We love mushrooms and all things about them. But illegality is a red line, whether immoral or not.
We spent a long time analysing the terms and conditions and we couldn’t find anything that applied to our business. Asking directly where we broke terms was no hope, because none of which they cited applied to us either.
We wouldn’t go back to card payments if we could. We save a fortune by paying 0% processing fees, have more control and are protected by a regulated UK bank instead of companies like Stripe or PayPal. We are very lucky!
Bro, you're selling drugs on a "for science only!!!!" basis that is purely a fig leaf. IDK the controlled substance laws around Psilocybin but this is definitely a gray area at least.
Well, I googled the phrase "microscopy spores" and the first hit was a webpage that first defines the term to mean "observe under a microscope" then warns customers that the cultivation of psychoactive mushrooms is illegal in many places in the world. So at the very least, your competitors are pretty much implying that one _could_ use "microscopy spores" for cultivation, and I imagine the majority of customers are expecting to do so.
And hey, maybe you in particular have cracked the code in how to ship spores in syringes that only inject into slides and not say, a prepared cultivation point. But I am 0 percent surprised payment processors noped out.
Since forever. There are a few reasons why - one is cultural the other is risk. On the cultural side industries that are "controversial" tend to be avoided. Payment processors don't like to be associated with porn, gambling, drugs etc. because of potential negative PR. If you're a payment processor and trying to land big conservative clients, having press about how you support the porn industry doesn't do you any favors.
The other side is risk, meaning industries that have an above average chargeback (fraud) rate. Many times these industries overlap - porn for instance. Lots of stolen credit card numbers are used to by porn, but also legitimate purchases can easily end up as a chargeback. The classic example is that someone buys porn on their credit card and then their partner finds out. Instead of admitting they bought porn, they claim someone must have stolen their credit card to save face.
I’d upvote this if I could. Chargebacks aren’t impossible after paying via bank transfer - it might be called another name, but it has been done before to us by a scammer (but we can dispute and fight it). And one time after a customer added an extra 0 to their transfer and immediately tried to get their bank to claw it back without contacting us.
But we basically never had issues with chargebacks. Even when we used PayPal and Stripe for two years, we only had two chargebacks and we disputed one of them and won through PayPal as we proved it was fraudulent.
Ah, for a second there I thought psilocybin mushrooms were legal in UK (as they are/were in NL) and I would have really wanted to buy one of your kits. Maybe if the laws change feel free to let us know ;)
If the laws change, feel free to let us know too - we would love making ten-fold the sales by producing and selling magic mushroom grow kits! ;)
But in all seriousness, psilocybin was banned in 2005 in the UK. We have only sold products which were to be used to help cultivate psilocybin mushrooms to one single customer - an organisation with a special license to do so provided by the Home Office in the UK.
No, that’s not us. We teach customers from the ground up how to cultivate using sterile spawn, whereas they sell pre-colonised substrate where much of the process has already been done :)
We didn’t think there would be any market here because there weren’t any UK shops doing it. Then a couple of years later it took off and growing mushrooms became cool.
In this time we learned how to run a webshop and navigate an industry where every payment processor dropped us - to the point where we only accept cash, bank transfer and crypto.
Our Woocommerce shop was built on pure passion for mushrooms and a crazy late night idea. The kinds you usually just leave as an idea. Now it has consumed our lives and we have multiple employees.
Our business continues to grow with recent months bringing in around £60K/month in revenue.
I had never known what it was like going to a supermarket and not having to add the cost of everything in my head. But with the money, I learned the most valuable lesson - it could all go tomorrow and I would be totally fine with it.