In 10 years, Fort Smith’s Aurora Heat has grown into a company with continental horizons.
Brenda Dragon says the e-commerce side of her business is driving interest across North America in Aurora Heat’s wild beaver fur handwarmers and related products.
The company has thousands of followers on Facebook and Instagram, while Dragon says online advertising is carefully targeted to reach audiences in various parts of Canada and the United States.
“Particularly this year,” she said during a bitterly cold week for many people in the Northwest Territories. “This is a cold year across Canada and the US. We sell a lot into the US. They are looking for warmth and they’re not disappointed when they turn to fur.”
While cold weather certainly drives Aurora Heat’s sales, Dragon said, temperatures of -45C like those experienced in parts of the NWT this week don’t help as much as you’d think.
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“When it’s 40 below, nobody’s outside. It actually is not the time you would expect for sales to boom,” she said.
In the latest Cabin Talks podcast, Dragon talks about Aurora Heat’s marketing strategy, how the company is preparing for Canada’s renegotiation of its US trade deal, and how she is using social media to take on the stigma still associated with fur.
In 2026, Dragon said her company is examining how to get its product into more stores across Canada.
“One of the most common questions of late is, ‘Are you selling it in our area? Is there a place I can pick them up in Ottawa, in Calgary, in Vancouver?’ People are looking for it from a retail perspective,” she said.
“So that might be something that we’re going to pay more attention to.”
