LVIV, Ukraine — Yuriy Zakharchuk once invented battle costumes for the stage and designed everything from medieval armor to space battle suits.
But after February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. Zakharchuk to take his business from the realm of fiction to the real war world and take it to his home city of Kiev.
His company’s transition to making body armor and helmets makes sense, he noted with a wry smile. “We have always provided protection for every need,” he said, “from the days of the Roman Empire to the fantasies of the future.”
More seriously, he added, his company, Steel Mastery, has experience developing gear that is light and capable of long hours of wear. “We know how to make things comfortable,” he said.
Mr. Zakharchuk, whose 70-employee company once supplied suits for thousands of customers in Europe and the United States, is not alone in moving towards militarization. Across Ukraine, many companies are adapting to life in war by making it part of their business.
In the southern city of Odessa, a local fashion brand had all its departments, even its lingerie seamstresses, sewing cloth vests to fit body armor.
In Lviv, some of the companies that flocked to this safer western region of Ukraine are installing armor on existing vehicles, military uniforms and, more secretly, ammunition.
“We have a lot of companies requalifying themselves to help the military,” said Volodymyr Korud, the vice president of the Lviv Chamber of Commerce. “Some are even involved in weapons, but we can’t discuss that,” he said, fearing they could become military targets.
Many companies work on a charitable basis to support the Ukrainian armed forces. But increasingly, companies are looking for profitable models that they can sustain through the conflict — and perhaps even once it’s over, with exports in mind.
The war between Russia and Ukraine and the world economy
A far-reaching conflict. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a ripple effect around the world, contributing to the misery in the stock market† The conflict has led to dizzying spikes in gas prices and product shortages, and has prompted Europe to reconsider its dependence on Russian energy resources.
Oksana Cherepanych, 36, said it was not just self-interest that fueled her decision to turn her business from making hotel and restaurant uniforms to a manufacturer of Ukrainian regimental outfits.
“It’s also about saving jobs for our workforce,” she said. “We need to motivate people to stay in our country by making sure they can find work here. In this way we support the economy of our country.”
Her plan worked. Her company, Gregory Textile, based in Lviv, now has contracts to make uniforms for the Ukrainian army. She was able to save the jobs of the 40 seamstresses she employed and even added 10 positions. She offered those jobs to women fleeing fighting in eastern Ukraine.
And while the company only earns 60 percent of what it made before the war, she says it’s still making a profit.
Others, such as Mr. Zakharchuk, use this moment of reinvention for missions bordering on the quixotic. He produces ceramic-coated body armor — a feat that involved smuggling a Soviet-era furnace and enlisting the help of octogenarian scientists.
Body armor usually consists of a vest made of bulletproof fabric with armor on the front and back. The simplest approach is to make the plates out of metal, a skill that would be easy to transfer to a company that specializes in costume armor. Instead, he decided to start a new venture, YTO Group, to produce ceramic body armor.
Ceramic plates are much lighter and preferred by many armed forces because of the greater mobility they allow. But they need advanced technology and equipment to produce – which Mr. Zakharchuk did not have.
“I don’t know many things,” he said. “But if I need something, I’ll find it. That is my special ability.”
He first had to research how such plates were made – and then how to get the necessary machines. He scoured job websites to find people with skills he thought might be relevant, then called them unsolicited for advice.
He eventually discovered that he needed a vacuum kiln, which in Ukraine was mainly used for the production of special ceramics for Soviet-era nuclear power plants.
He called factory after factory, faced with a series of rejections. Some businesses were already closed; others apologetically told him that their facilities had been destroyed in the fighting.
After two months of searching, he found a nuclear power station with a furnace, built in the 1980s and in disrepair. He took out a bank loan and bought it for $10,000.
The oven, which fits on the back of a small trailer, weighs over 1,500 pounds. It consumes the same amount of energy that could power 3000 apartments. But none of that was the problem.
The problem was the location: The furnace was in a city in southern Ukraine occupied by Russia in March. Still, Mr. Zakharchuk was not deterred.
“We bribed all the Russian officers at the checkpoints there and they helped us get it out. You could call it my own “super-special operation,” he joked — a reference to Russia calling its invasion a “military special operation.”
But even with the oven, Mr. Zakharchuk needed the know-how. So he turned to a circle of Ukrainian academics between the ages of 75 and 90, Soviet-era specialists in physics and extra-hard metals.
“They have more than 50 years of experience,” he said, but their advanced age means that “it is sometimes difficult to communicate.”
Nevertheless, the initiative may bear fruit. His YTO Group has now produced test samples. If the company can scale, Mr. Zakharchuk wants to sell the armor for about $220 to $250 each, about half of what it costs elsewhere, he said.
In Lviv, Roman Khristin, 31, also got into the body armor sector. The invasion destroyed his consulting firm, which advised on logistics and crisis management, after many companies fled the country.
Initially, he tried to aid the war effort by delivering supplies, including pasta, medicine and fuel, to frontline areas. But he quickly burned through his means and enthusiasm.
“Then I realized: I should be involved in the economic battlefield, not the physical war. I’m not a fighter, I’m not a soldier. But I can network, I can import and export. And I know how to start a business.”
That was when Mr. Khristin turned to body armor. “At the beginning of the war, there was a need for 400,000 pieces of body armor. Now it’s double. And in terms of availability, it’s not even half that,” he said.
He bought a huge stock of fabric needed to produce materials for body armor. His team also tested and established their own formula to produce metal sheets inside.
Mr Khristin hopes not only to contribute to sustaining the Ukrainian economy during the war, but also to give himself an opportunity that can continue to exist afterwards. “Right now we are starting a sales team to start working on exports abroad,” he said.
Ms. Cherepanych also hopes to maintain her new military uniforms business and eventually divest her hotel and restaurant uniforms business that she hopes to resume after the war.
On the sewing room floor of her trendy brick-exposed offices, bright, colorful fabrics have been pushed aside in favor of olive green, beige and navy blue.
But she insisted they still keep an emphasis on style: “We want our military in something practical and comfortable — but also looks cool.”
As for Mr. Zakharchuk, he is now trying to raise $1.5 million from investors to help him repair his kiln and use it to ramp up production to reach his goal of 10,000 sets of ceramic plates per month. He has received 20 rejections so far.
As usual, that didn’t stop him.
“We get 100, even 500 denials,” he said. “But eventually we’ll get the money because we’ll show them we have it.”