We are not really Orangutans, sorry to break it to you. We’re not even a we, it’s more an ‘I’. I’m not even a normal monkey. Sometimes now I wear a monkey costume! It’s just lies upon lies. I am but a man. I appreciate that may be a lot to take in, and I can only imagine the pain you’re feeling right now.
This is how it went: I had been buying magic mushroom spores for a while from various places on the internet (to look at under a microscope, just like everyone else), and to be quite honest I wasn’t mad impressed with what I was receiving. I’m not gonna name names, but across multiple companies, the spores were sometimes alright, sometimes not, the grow kits were the same completely variable quality, it took two weeks once with one company between receiving my payment to them actually posting my spores, then I got a shitty email back when I asked what was going on telling me that was normal and I should back off – basically, customer service was non-existent and quality varied wildly. I kept thinking “it should be better than this” every time I received a package, and then one day I just thought “ah, fuck it, I’ll just do it better myself” and then taught myself how to put a website together.
The name Orangutan Trading Co came about because I was selling some APE swabs I had found and definitely hadn’t made myself (you know how it is, you’re just out for a walk and you come across a load of swabs, perfectly plausible, Officer). So I had a lot of drinks, and then decided that as Orangutans are Great Apes, and my APE swabs were also Great Apes, it’d work. I do love a pun. Now I sell Great Syringes too, but there isn’t a kind of monkey called a Great Syringe so I though I’d stick with the same name. I just wanted to make the best spore syringes we could and give the best possible customer service for mushroom spores because most other companies at that time were dropping the ball like they had bananas for fingers.
I love looking at pictures of Orangutans (they are probably my favourite primate, partly due to Terry Pratchett), and I like making goofy Orangutan-based art. I also like looking at premium quality spores under microscopes, so I figured “why not combine the three things, there’s gotta be someone else out there who’s into this too”.
I have grown to think of this business as an act of rebellion in a world that I think really needs to change. It’s cheeky, sure, but it’s legal, and it’s helping spread something that I think is hugely valuable for mental health. Microphones! No, wait, microscopes? I think it’s microscopes anyway, it’s something to do with microscopes. Much like no-one gives a legal shit about weed anymore (when I was a kid you’d get nicked and charged for an eighth all day long), soon enough no-one will give a fuck about magic mushrooms, and everyone can just get on with doing something that is virtually harmless.
And there we are! Thanks for reading.
You can email me at [email protected], find me on Reddit at u/OrangutanTradingCo, on Facebook at OrangutanTradingCo, or on Instagram as itsorangutantradingco (they banned my first account because I’m not allowed to say that Boris Johnson Can Suck A Fart Out Of My Ass, and then my second because they misunderstood what I was selling) where I would be super happy to get a review, a like, a follow or anything that helps to spread the word that We Are A Good Place To Buy Stuff From!