About The Yorkshire Mushroom Company

The Yorkshire Mushroom Company is a small-batch producer of medicinal mushroom tinctures, founded by Shaun Purcell and based in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. Shaun grew up in Knaresborough, where his dad ran a pub, and says it taught him that how you serve something matters as much as what you're serving. Years later, looking for gentle, natural ways to support his own and his family's wellbeing, he spent over three years teaching himself to grow mushrooms and refine a dual-extraction process, before Yorkshire Mushroom Company existed as a business at all. The range now runs to seven varieties: Lion's Mane, Shiitake, Chaga, Maitake, Reishi, Cordyceps and Turkey Tail, each grown, dried and double-extracted using organic ethanol.

The need

Shaun came to us with a business that was still taking shape. The recipe, the labels and the packaging were all being finalised at the same time as the site, so the build needed to stay flexible right up to launch. He needed a full online shop from a standing start, seven separate products that each needed their own page and their own explanation, and a site that could carry the trust a first-time supplement brand doesn't automatically get, without straying into the kind of health claims a wellness product legally can't make.

The insight

Most first-time supplement brands write their homepage like a shop and hope the "about" page does the trust-building later, if anyone bothers to click through. That order doesn't work when the product itself is unfamiliar. Before someone spends £28.99 on a tincture from a producer they've never heard of, they need to understand what "dual extraction" and "organic ethanol" actually mean and why they matter, not find that explanation three clicks deep. So the process had to sit level with the shop in the main navigation, not buried under About, and the founder's own story had to do more of the persuading than any product description could.

What we built

A full WooCommerce shop covering all seven tinctures, Lion's Mane, Shiitake, Chaga, Maitake, Reishi, Cordyceps and Turkey Tail, each with its own product page, its own copy and a working add-to-basket and checkout. An Our Process page breaks the method into plain, followable steps: cultivation, drying, dual extraction and bottling, written so a first-time visitor can follow it without a science background.

The About page carries Shaun's own account of learning to grow and extract mushrooms in Yorkshire, in his words rather than a rewritten "our story" paragraph, because that's what actually gives an unfamiliar brand credibility. An FAQ page answers the questions people actually ask before buying a tincture, like what dual extraction does and how long a bottle lasts, and a full set of policy pages, shipping, returns, privacy and cookie policy, terms and conditions, and a disclaimer, were built in alongside, since a wellness product can't trade properly without them.

Because the physical product was still being finalised while the site was being built, ingredient lists, ABV percentages and process copy were kept in step with what was actually going on the bottle right up to the point of launch.

Mobile

Most people browsing a wellness brand for the first time are doing it on their phone, in a spare five minutes rather than sat at a desk researching. The product pages, process explanation and checkout were all built and tested mobile-first, so someone scrolling on a phone gets the same clear path from "what is this" to "add to basket" as someone on a laptop.

The outcome

The site launched with all seven tinctures live for sale, timed alongside the launch of the physical products themselves. This was a build and handover project: OTM built the site, the shop and the full set of product and policy pages, then handed it over complete. Shaun now runs The Yorkshire Mushroom Company site and shop himself, without ongoing support from us.