Lasclay: The Milkweed Company

09/03/2026

HUGE news coming up, a major milestone for our company, the milkw**d industry and the monarch butterflies!

Stay tuned 😌

03/05/2026

We're launching a national milkw**d planting campaign! 🌱🦋
For the endangered monarch butterflies. For the pollinators. For the suburban ecosystems that need a breather.

Together, we can reverse the course. Help us bring biodiversity back, right in your backyard where you can protect it.

To get you started, 15% off when you order 4 or more packets of our farm-grown milkw**d seeds, shipping included.

Use code MONARCH at checkout. 👉 lasclay.com/milkw**d-seeds

Millions of small pollinator gardens. One big difference.

Native milkw**d seeds for your pollinator garden. Several species (Asclepias Syriaca, Tuberosa, Incarnata, Speciosa). Also known as: Common, Swamp, Butterfly, Showy milkw**d. Attract monarch butterflies and bees to your backyard with beautiful, colorful and fragrant wild flowers.

03/05/2026

I started my business from a chemo chair.

At 26 years old, I was diagnosed with a stage 4 Hodgkin's lymphoma, a blood cancer. I survived, but it changed everything. It gave me an urgency to live that never left.

I had discovered milkw**d a few years earlier. This stunning native North American plant caught my eye during a foraging outing.

It produces the most efficient and eco-friendly duvet on earth: 20% warmer than goose down, naturally waterproof and antibacterial.

I also learned with pleasant surprise that a few pioneering farmers had launched an ambitious project: they stopped fighting this so-called "noxious w**d" and were growing it without fertilizers or pesticides, creating habitats for endangered monarch butterflies.

In fall 2019, two months before my diagnosis, my body was falling apart. Night sweats. Bone pain. Unexplained fevers.

I kept pushing through, until a doctor called me in a panic: "The PET scan is alarming. Biopsy, immediately."

Two days later, it was confirmed: Hodgkin's Lymphoma, stage 4B. 65% 5-year survival odds. Chemo started one week later.

I wanted to die after the first one. It was so, so painful. But then I started getting better, showing signs of remission, rediscovering energy I had long forgotten. People fear chemo, but trust me, cancer is worse my friends.

One day, during treatment, milkw**d came back to me.

I was reminded of the passion, the pleasure, the fascination I had felt years earlier when I first discovered it. Reading about it. Dreaming about everything I could make with it.

An obsession was born. I read everything. I sketched dozens of products, fantastic machines. I explored old textile and agricultural patents. Even on my worst days, just after chemo, I did it with joy. Strangely. I had found hope again. I had found myself.

I wanted to build something with milkw**d. A project. A business. Anything.

So when treatment ended, I didn't look for a job. I wrote a manifesto, loud and clear about my love for this plant and my dream of making products with it, starting with the warmest winter mittens on Earth.

It went viral.

Thousands signed up to our newsletter overnight. I started working 90h/week. But it never felt like work.

Thank you so much to everyone who has followed and supported us for over 5 years. You put us on the map.

You helped me find myself. And survive.

Thank you ❤️

02/25/2026

74 hours straight without sleeping or going home.
That’s what our founder Gabriel did in 2021. 😬

We had just been told by our manufacturer that producing our mittens was too complicated because of the issues caused by milkw**d, our flagship material.

164 minutes to make a single pair.
We had paid $20 per pair for the first 1,000, and it was about to jump to $82.

The two most complex and time-consuming steps using traditional textile manufacturing methods were stuffing (55 minutes) and quilting (50 minutes).

So we had 3 options:

1. Shut down.

2. Sell our mittens for $250 (which made no sense, since our mission is to democratize milkw**d).

3. Bring key production steps in-house to optimize. Become manufacturers in our twenties, with no experience.

We chose option 3.

We drove a truck to the middle of nowhere to pick up a used automated quilting machine we found on Marketplace.

$15,000.
A huge risk at the time.
We were rolling the dice on the future of the milkw**d industry and our company.

We installed it in our small, poorly lit 150 sq. ft. space, modified it to fit our processes, and started quilting mittens.

Maximum speed. No caution. No maintenance. We had pre-sold 2,000 pairs of mittens and 500 scarves before even knowing if it would work. FULL COWBOY MODE.

Within a week, everything broke. Milkw**d silk, being extremely lightweight and volatile, had gotten everywhere inside the machine. And since it absorbs 10 times its weight in oil, it stripped lubrication from all the mechanisms, causing them to overheat and crack.

In a panic, we called the manufacturer Grace Company, who told us:

“What? That part never breaks, sir. We don’t have any in stock, maybe in two months…”

We tried fixing it ourselves. Gabriel ended up in tears one Friday night, his hands covered in blood after hurting himself 12 times with needles. We finally found a distributor nearer to us. We left our machine there for repairs and rented their demo unit.

We broke it in two days. We had to buy it. Another -$25K. We were losing it.

We told ourselves, “F*** no, this can’t end like this.”

Innovation is the overused buzzword everyone chases and funds with millions of dollars.

But it’s also being broke, thinking you’re going to lose everything, and then finding the determination within to keep pushing through, because you have no other choice.

Gabriel put a sleeping bag on the floor and swore he wouldn’t go home until it worked. Three days straight. YouTube. Forums. Facebook groups. Tests.

We developed a fully automated quilting protocol that was functional, high-performing, and adapted to milkw**d. The machines never broke again, or almost never. We eventually bought two more and built a modular 4-machine system, more productive and flexible than anything else in the world to produce milkw**d items.

We are extremely proud of this achievement, but it was messy, difficult, and far from glamorous.

For us, though, it was essential. This is how much we love milkw**d and how far we’re willing to go to make sure this project succeeds. For the future, for our children and for monarch butterflies❤️🦋

02/24/2026

We are officially launching a nationwide milkw**d planting campaign to help monarch butterflies and native pollinators.
To encourage everyone to start pollinator gardens, we offer a 15% discount on the purchase of 4 or more packets of our farm-grade milkw**d seeds, shipping included! To purchase, just follow the link below and enter the code MONARCH during checkout.

👉 lasclay.com/milkw**d-seeds 👈

Here is a simple, powerful and easy way to bring back beautiful indigenous plants, monarch butterflies and wild pollinators right where they belong in our ecosystems. 🌱🐝🦋

02/09/2026

Our end-of-season sale is live.
Free shipping on ALL orders + up to 20% off! 🔥

Discover our products:
👉 https://lasclay.com/presale

Stay warm through the rest of this winter and the next ones with our milkw**d-insulated products, made with a high-performance, plant-based fiber that’s both eco-friendly and Canadian-grown! 🍁

After a record-breaking season, we sold tens of thousands of mittens, jackets, neck warmers, scarves, insoles, and over 30 other products… but there’s still a little left.⏰😉

Thank you, as always, for believing in our mission: making milkw**d accessible and helping protect endangered monarch butterflies that depend on this plant for their survival. 🧡🦋

Le catalogue complet des produits Lasclay. Mitaines, manteaux, semelles, cache-cou, sacs à lunch. graines d'asclépiade, bombes de fleurs indigènes.

02/09/2026

Our end-of-winter sale has begun. Free shipping on ALL orders + up to 20% discounts! 🔥

Stay warm for the rest of winter and many winters to come with our products insulated with milkw**d silk: a high-performance, eco-friendly plant fiber grown right here at home. 🍁

Shop now: https://lasclay.com/presale

After 5 years of relentless effort and innovation, we just had our biggest season ever, TRIPLING last year's sales. And this is only the beginning! 😉

Jackets, mittens, neck warmers, scarves, and insoles flew off the shelves this year, but we still have a few left... Don't wait too long!

Thank you so much, once again, for believing in our mission: to popularize milkw**d and help save the endangered monarch butterflies that depend on it for their survival. 🧡🦋

01/29/2026

Milkw**d isn't only good for the monarchs! It's also good for keeping you warm on freezing cold winter days. ❄️

We officially unveil the first-ever winter coat to use milkw**d fibre as insulation.

It took us years of research and testing to create the final product: an affordable winter jacket, filled with Canadian-grown plant-based insulation, that is 20% warmer than goose down. 🍁🔥

The bonus of our project is that milkw**d is now GROWN here is Canada, giving much-needed help to the monarch butterflies who eat it. In fact, we avoid harvesting the plant until after the monarchs migrate, to make sure they get their fill. 🦋

Collection of Milkw**d-Insulated Jackets and Vests Warm, lightweight, water-resistant, and built to last—tested in the Arctic winter.

01/27/2026

Milkw**d silk in the Canadian Armed Forces winter gear!❄️🪖

An indigenous canadian plant, milkw**d has excellent insulating properties and repels moisture, in addition to being extremely lightweight.

"We managed to reduce the weight of military parkas by 30%, with equal or even better insulation, at temperatures down to -80°C with the wind chill factor," says the head of operational uniforms.💪

To enjoy the incomparable warmth of milkw**d for yourself, click here 👉 lasclay.com/en

Ethical brand of outdoor accessories and everyday products insulated with milkw**d fiber—a natural, warm, lightweight, water-resistant and plant-based material, grown responsibly to help save endangered monarch butterflies.

11/14/2025

Our milkw**d-insulated mittens have been successfully tested in the Extreme Arctic, where the cold shows no mercy.

The Alert Research Station, on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, is the northernmost inhabited location on the planet. A team of eight Canadian biologists has been studying Arctic wildlife there for nine years. This year, they did it with milkw**d mittens on their hands!

“They kept us warm! We’ll be proud to showcase your brand during our public appearances and educational presentations, as a reliable and essential partner for the demands of the Canadian North,” confirmed the team leader.

From the boreal forest to the icy deserts of the Arctic, the phenomenal insulating power of milkw**d fibers will protect your hands from the cold.

👉 Gear up like the pros of the Far North, right here: lasclay.com/mittens