James Yurichuk didn't set out to build a defence company. In 2012, then a linebacker with the Toronto Argonauts, he made a winter coat for his girlfriend, who was facing her first Canadian winter and considering flying home to Brazil rather than face it. She stayed. They married. The coat became the basis for Wuxly, the outerwear brand he launched through a Kickstarter campaign in 2015.

What began as a luxury parka company has since grown into a Canadian defence textile business supplying gear to Ukrainian forces and NATO allies, with an expanding relationship with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Rangers. Along the way, Wuxly pivoted into PPE production during the COVID-19 pandemic and has become an outspoken voice on Canadian defence procurement policy.

Vanguard Defence spoke with Yurichuk about the company's origins, its shift into military textiles, and what he sees as the structural problems holding back Canadian-made defence apparel.

How did Wuxly get started?

It started with a coat. My girlfriend at the time was from Brazil and was about to face her first Canadian winter. I could see she was getting fed up with the weather, and she didn't have a proper coat. I thought it would be romantic to make her one myself, so I sourced military-grade fabric and worked with a tailor over the off-season. I surprised her with it that Christmas. She cancelled her flight home to Brazil, stuck around that winter, wore the coat, and we got married. We launched Wuxly through a Kickstarter campaign not long after, with about $5,000 to make some prototypes.

When did the company start moving into defence work?

That came out of 2020. We'd built a strong Canadian manufacturing network, and when COVID hit and personal protective equipment was suddenly scarce, we pivoted to making isolation gowns for frontline health workers. We made millions of them over two years. That period really opened our eyes to how much manufacturing capability exists in Canada. But once imported supply became available again in 2022, a lot of that government interest faded, and we had to find another use for the team and infrastructure we'd built.

What pushed you specifically toward military textiles?

The war in Ukraine, honestly. I'm a fourth-generation Ukrainian-Canadian, so it was personal for me. We started sending jackets and sleeping bags, then tank covers, then eventually female combat uniforms. If you could believe it, Canada, one of the top defence nations in the world, doesn't even supply female uniforms to its own military. Ukraine had the same problem, so we designed and made uniforms for them, made entirely here in Canada.

Where does that relationship stand with the Canadian Armed Forces today?

We started building our presence at CANSEC in 2022, and we've been developing relationships since then, including with the Canadian Rangers. We've presented a concept for a full Arctic clothing system, head to boot, all made in Canada, for people operating in extreme cold for days or weeks at a time. We're also working to get in front of special operations forces, who currently source a lot of their cold-weather gear from the U.S. We're not building rocket ships. We can definitely make clothing.

You've been outspoken about Canadian defence procurement. What's the core problem, as you see it?

We've built a procurement environment where we don't prioritize our own industry enough. Most Canadian military clothing contracts flow through a small number of prime contractors, and a lot of that manufacturing gets sent overseas anyway. Meanwhile, Canada currently imports the large majority of its apparel, a complete reversal from a few decades ago, when most of it was made here. We're also effectively locked out of the U.S. defence market by American procurement law, so we're stuck competing at home against lower-cost imports while shut out of our biggest neighbour's market entirely.

You've pointed to the frostbite incident earlier this year as an example of the stakes. Can you speak to that?

It's great to have drones and HIMARS deployed in the North, but people still have to load them up and operate them, and if they're not wearing the proper gear, that's a real risk. More than 30 Canadian Armed Forces soldiers were hospitalized with frostbite during a cold-weather exercise in Alaska in February. Soldiers who spoke publicly pointed to inadequate gear. That's the kind of basic capability gap we think we can help close.

Wuxly has stayed privately held and self-funded. Why?

I'm the primary investor, going back to that first $5,000 from the Kickstarter. We've bootstrapped our way through the whole thing. It hasn't always been easy, but we've always found a way to figure it out, the same way we figured out how to make that first jacket. We think there's real value in staying Canadian and staying independent, especially in an industry where a lot of companies are chasing big outside investment.

What's next for the company?

We're pushing further into defence relationships, including a trip to Poland's national defence show in the coming weeks as part of the Canadian delegation, which is expected to be the largest national presence there. At the same time, our consumer brand is still active. We're getting a retail container this year and expanding into physical retail this fall, with the outerwear line increasingly informed by what we've learned building gear for defence.