Blog
Our new farm aka industrial unit
An overview of what's been happening the past few months, exciting things ahead for us and the reason why we have to close the shop to accepting new orders for a few weeks - starting on Sunday 28th June until Tuesday 28th July.
Innovation break
You may remember we went on an innovation break on 14th March (9 days before the UK went on lockdown).. During this time, we were already booked up to go to Mycelia's 'Group training on substrate and mushroom production' course in Belgium.
We were rather excited about this 5 day training course (understatement) but Covid-19 got in the way for us and we couldn't risk travelling and having borders being shut on us. Yeah, deflating..
We were meant to be reopening again on 27th March, but we realised we couldn't manage to stick to that opening date because we were having trouble sourcing much of our needed supplies / stock (..we all know about the toilet paper fiasco!).
Instead of making promises to open the site up a week later just to let you all down again, we decided to come back on the 28th April.
Opening day (28th April)
Whenever we reopen after being closed, we are always busy but the magnitude and scale of this was very different and far from ordinary.. minute after minute there was an order from the USA, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, etc.. It just wouldn't stop. Mylocybe was being flooded with orders to the point we had to eventually put restrictions in place for how many kits people could buy.
It seemed a LOT of people chose to hang on and wait for us to reopen rather than going elsewhere, which is fantastic and appreciated but wow did it take its toll on us.
Dispatch delays
It's a horrible feeling realising that no matter how hard you try, the lack of hours in the day make it impossible to stick to dispatch timescales we had previously promised prior to Covid-19. 18 hour days, 7 days a week became the new normal for us to be able to catch up.
Most customers were appreciative of the delays due to Covid-19 and how busy we were, but we would be lying if we tried to sugar coat this..
We don't know what's going on in this new world, but there's a lot of people who need to take a step back from their phone screens sometimes and evaluate first what they are about to send. Be better than that!
..It usually goes the same way too - customer gets angry because they haven't received a quick reply, then the 2nd irate email saying we are scammers then another email an hour later and before we know it we have a dozen emails sitting there which get nastier and nastier when we finally get a chance to read emails! C'mon folks..
Positive New Stuff
We had a list as long as our arm for all the things we changed during our (Covid-extended) innovation break. But we're only going to tell you about the most exciting ones which immediately spring to mind.
Fighting Contamination
You can probably guess that fighting contamination has always been a major priority for us; we know that the first growing experience can be make or break for people - failure can mean abandoning the hobby entirely whilst success can mean the start of an exciting new lifelong journey for people.
Our aim is to make indoor mushroom cultivation a reality in even the most mouldy of homes and clumsy of people and with SteriBag and other things we have planned soon, we are taking those crucial steps.
SteriBag is simply an autoclavable bag which your MycoBoxes etc are placed in prior to sterilisation. It's more work for us, but for you it means you can feel confident knowing the kit literally cannot be any more clean.
It also means no wiping injection ports anymore! And as long as you follow our simple inoculation technique, you will have the best chance against contamination we have yet seen out there. Groundbreaking seems an overstatement, but it has to be close.
We'll call this another unique thing we came up with just like Inject-Thru π But if you know otherwise, please get in touch so we can correct this and give credit where it's due!
Improved Payment System
We have changed so many things on our site and continue to do so on an almost daily basis. Basically, we overhauled our entire payment system and made it much easier to do. As a result we've had an 80% drop in the number of customers making mistakes when paying us (ie. forgetting to use the correct payment references when sending payment through their banks).
Communication Improvements
We have had to learn how to adapt to a changing landscape in microscopy study and gourmet mushroom growing, so whilst facing a mountain of orders on a daily basis we realised how much time we were losing to an inefficient communication system. So we decided to fix it.
All of our automated emails have been redone, plus there are more emails keeping customers in the loop throughout their entire order process.
We're sure you've already seen it π Hope you all like it.
Syringe Processing and Packaging
Our syringes are processed better and are packed cleaner than ever, with more enhancements coming very soon (see Cleanroom*)
Cylocybe History
As some of you may remember, Cylocybe was born in a 1 bedroom flat in Glasgow. Suffice to say, we quickly ran out of space!
Our next upgrade was to a 5 bedroom house in the countryside with large outbuildings and outdoor space / storage.. but even this was too small for the business..
So we rented a shipping container. Then another. And another. Then we started storing stuff in our transit van until we finally said enough was enough..
Industrial Unit
The business is moving into new premises and we will be reclaiming our home for the first time π
The exciting evolution of our business and how far we've come.. It's a proud moment for us and probably will be for many of our customers who've been with us since the start.
Closing Shop for a Few Weeks
The new unit needs a good bit of work, which is why we are closing the shop to new orders all of July. Time to get our DIY hats on.
Any important questions or issues throughout this period, we'll still be here for you of course.
New Equipment
Our industrial unit gives us many more options with the space we have.
We have purchased a very large ISO Class 5 Cleanroom Tent which will be installed within the next couple of weeks.
If you are unsure about cleanrooms, the lower the ISO Class the better and a Class 5 has particularly high end air cleanliness.
Cleanroom (ISO Class 5) - Clean Tent Model 1700 / Removes 99.995% of Airborne Particles 0.3 Micrometers (ΞΌm) in Size.
This is a temporary solution until we have fitted an even larger rigid walled cleanroom.
Clean Tent Model 1700
Laminar Flowhood (ISO Class 4) - HLF1800 / Removes 99.9998% of Airborne Particles 0.12 Micrometers (ΞΌm) in Size.
Within our already incredible clean room, we are installing a brand new 1.8m horizontal laminar flow hood which has much better filtration than a typical ISO Class 5 laminar flow hood commonly used in mycology.
It cost us a fortune, but it's important for us to keep improving our products to the point of world class quality. Customers who've known us from the start know that we're genuinely all about high quality.
Good riddance DHL
Issue after issue left unresolved, refunds for damaged parcels not being provided to us, customer parcels not being collected from us, the list goes on..
Finally a courier we can rely on to do their bit right!
We've sent a tonne of parcels so far with not a single issue. Plus, we have our very own DPD manager so if something goes wrong it will be sorted swiftly. Perfect.
Other Things
Fixed many bugs within the login system, change of password etc.
We disabled non-account holders from purchasing on our site a few weeks back, this was to slow the number of orders coming in because it's been chaotic to say the least.
So if our competitors are reading this and wondering why more customers are ordering from them; you're welcome π
You may have noticed we've had a banner on our site looking for artists. As we are moving into a new chapter for our business, we wanted to reach out to customers to help add a bit of life to our new digs.
Plenty of opportunity to be creative, murals etc. We have had a few very talented artists get in touch with so far, but we need many more as it's a very large space we are moving into. Travelling in July to us in Ayrshire, Scotland is a must for this project.
Get in touch on project@cylocybe.com
As you can tell, we've been hard at work for months and have so much more to do to get where we want.
Thank you for supporting us through and through over the years. Without your trust in us, we would never have made it this far and we wouldn't be about to break new grounds in the future of Cylocybe. We have had a lot of people supporting our cause because they believe in what we are doing. We want to thank every one of you from the bottom of our hearts.
Cylocybe Team x