FIGS: Trina Spear and Heather Hasson. The $2.5 Billion Scrubs Brand That Investors Said Would Never Work
with Heather Hasson and Trina Spear
Executive Summary
Heather Hasson and Trina Spear describe building FIGS by focusing on healthcare workers’ experience of buying and wearing scrubs, selling directly and learning through in-person conversations. The story includes investor rejections, Thomas Tull’s historical pre-IPO investment, product development and the move to a public company. Litigation, competitor behavior, costs, market size and share-price movements are the founders’ account or historical interview figures, not independent legal findings or a current valuation. Their closing reflection separates business or market outcomes from personal worth.
Key Takeaways
Takeaway 1
The founders believed an overlooked workwear market could support a differentiated product. Their historical workforce and market-size estimates explain the pitch but are not current forecasts. Not every healthcare worker has the same purchasing rules, job security or uniform requirement. Test the actual customer segment and buying conditions.
Takeaway 2
Customer conversations and an early alteration helped reveal dissatisfaction in the founders’ account. The useful signal was specific feedback about fit, comfort and practical use. One enthusiastic wearer is not full demand validation, but can guide the next test. Avoid assuming a frustrated founder always sees an unmet market correctly.
Takeaway 3
Direct distribution changed the costs and responsibilities of the business. The founders compare historical retailer and licensing economics with their own product spending. Those figures are their account, not a universal margin model. Include acquisition, returns, service and operations before concluding that removing a middleman necessarily improves value.
Takeaway 4
The founders describe direct conversations with wearers as more useful than some institutional approaches. They sold and gathered feedback near work sites, then saw peer referrals. Healthcare access and solicitation rules still apply. The story does not prove that business-to-business selling cannot work or that word of mouth replaces all marketing.
Takeaway 5
Fundraising involved many refusals and smaller checks over time. The founders describe preferring clear decisions and moving on from stalled discussions. Their fundraising totals and response counts are historical claims. Silence is not an authenticated rejection, and no pitch quota guarantees capital; track actual next steps and household runway.
Takeaway 6
Thomas Tull’s historical investment and cap-table consolidation changed the company’s ownership. The founders describe board rights as important to retaining influence. These are their recollections, including claims about other investors’ intentions, not current ownership verification or findings about those investors. Have counsel review the actual voting, veto and financing provisions.
Takeaway 7
The founders recount a costly dispute with a competitor and their choice to contest it. Their characterization of the litigation, jury reactions, motives and costs remains attributed, not an independent legal finding. The story does not recommend refusing settlement, disregarding counsel or using anger in court; litigation choices need case-specific professional advice.
The Conversation Breakdown
Heather's detours: organic chemistry, Levi's, a lost partner and Kenya
Hasson wanted to be a reconstructive surgeon - art and science in one career - until organic chemistry ended that. She worked at Levi's in New York, designed coats in Italy during college, and started a leather handbag company with Steven, an Italian serial entrepreneur who funded and believed in her. When he died of lung cancer at 36, the business collapsed; heartbroken and broke, she went to northern Kenya to clear her head. There she saw children kept out of school for lack of uniforms - and an operating theater where career nurses and doctors had no scrubs at all.
Ties, ten thousand school uniforms and the first forest-green scrubs
Back in LA, earning $9 an hour at a Malibu retail store, Hasson sold silk and wool ties, bow ties and scarves - the name FIGS (officially 'fashion inspired global sophistication', actually her love of the fruit) - to fund school uniforms in Kenya, eventually putting about 10,000 kids in school. In 2010 she bought fabric off the shelf, cut a pattern, hired a sewer, made about 30 forest-green scrubs with bright yellow FIGS labels and sent them to clinics - 'it feels good to look good' - without yet seeing a business.
'What are you wearing?': the coffee that started FIGS
Meeting a nurse-practitioner friend for coffee, Hasson erupted: 'what are you wearing? You're a nurse practitioner. This is garbage.' She drove to strip-mall scrub stores - cardboard boxes, bedpans, crutches - found nothing better, tailored her friend's scrubs, and fielded friends-of-friends requests. The fury that people saving lives wore 'boxy, ill-fitting, scratchy clothing' became a vow: 'I'm going to make the best damn scrubs out there.' A manufacturer fronted a small first run (about 15,000 units); she hired models off Craigslist and started selling out of her car at emergency rooms.
Trina's due diligence - and the 401(k) cashed out
Introduced by a mutual friend, Spear met Hasson in July 2012 (and got 'smoked' at tennis). Before committing, she rebuilt the financial model and researched the industry: uniforms are mandated, replenishment-driven, non-seasonal, non-cyclical and recession-resistant; 85% of healthcare professionals buy their own, yet the industry sold through distributors - 'fundamentally broken.' After six months of weekend trips selling scrubs from the car at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. shift changes (with free Starbucks coffee and hot cocoa), she quit Blackstone in January 2013, liquidated her $140,000 401(k) - 'a horrible tax decision' - and put in about $70,000. Everyone asked: 'what are you doing? And what's a scrub?'
The apartment warehouse and product-first invention
The co-founders shared a two-bedroom apartment, living room cleared for stacks of FIGS in sliding polybags, shipping orders themselves via Shopify - well under $20-30,000 a month. Hasson spent long stretches in Vietnam's dye houses, factories and yarn mills creating proprietary fabric ('technical comfort'), with a stint back in LA to perfect fit and quality. Design bets everyone mocked became top sellers: a slim pant, the sleeveless 'Rafaela' top ('forgiving, flowy, feminine'), the invented underscrub layering piece, and heather-graphite colors borrowed from business attire. A $2 million friends round came from 40-50 people in $5,000-$10,000 checks - no family money, to avoid the extra pressure.
400 nos, fast nos, and the word-of-mouth machine
Institutional fundraising brought 300-400 rejections: nobody cares what healthcare workers look like, and the TAM isn't big enough. FIGS' answer - create the TAM - convinced a few contrarians. Meanwhile the direct model compounded: competitors weren't doing digital marketing at all, and because healthcare professionals work in densely packed institutions wearing the product all day, word of mouth became the biggest acquisition driver. The thing that can't be copied, they argue, is a community 'die-hard obsessed' with the brand - a tribe FIGS joined early and inextricably.
The $800 million lawsuit, COVID, the IPO - and $50 to $5
Thomas Tull invested in seed and Series A, then in 2017 bought out the whole cap table (~$65 million, majority owner) - including Campfire Capital, which had tried to kick the founders out - while Heather and Trina kept two of three board seats. In 2019 Strategic Partners (Cherokee, Dickies) sued for about $800 million; FIGS fought three years, won at trial, and paid $40 million-plus in legal costs. During COVID they shifted supply chains to donate isolation gowns and PPE and sold masks; in May 2021 FIGS went public, flying 150 healthcare professionals to ring the NYSE bell. The stock hit $50 within a month and $5 a year later - Forbes list on, Forbes list off - crystallizing the lesson they now preach: your net worth is not your self worth. Today: about 3 million active customers, 140 million healthcare professionals worldwide to reach, a foundation that built a hospital in Kenya, and no plans to leave the category.
Core Frameworks & Ideas
Market-sizing hypothesis [editorial synthesis]
Compare existing spending with evidence that a differentiated offer can serve additional demand. The founders’ historical market estimates and premium-apparel analogy are hypotheses and interview figures, not current forecasts.
Channel economics comparison [editorial synthesis]
Model product, distribution, marketing, returns and service costs for direct and wholesale channels. Removing an intermediary changes responsibilities as well as margin; it does not automatically create an unbeatable value advantage.
Visible-use referral loop [editorial synthesis]
Test whether users naturally discuss a visible work product with peers. Track referrals, satisfaction and repeat purchase rather than assuming an uncopyable community advantage.
Fundraising next-step discipline [editorial synthesis]
Ask investors for clear next steps and decision timing, and keep a realistic pipeline. Silence is uncertain, not an explicit rejection; hundreds of pitches are one historical experience rather than a required target.
Actionable Next Steps
- ✓Go sit where your future customers work and watch what frustrates them - then ask what they hate about the tools and gear they already use.
- ✓Meet prospective customers at a suitable time and permitted location, ask about their work and test whether the product helps. Healthcare facilities may restrict solicitation, food or access.
- ✓Review household runway, fallback options, taxes and withdrawal penalties with appropriate advice before risking retirement savings or leaving employment.
- ✓Maintain a manageable fundraising pipeline, ask for clear next steps and deadlines, and distinguish an explicit refusal from an unanswered message.
- ✓When a major investor proposes restructuring ownership, have qualified counsel explain board rights, voting, vetoes and future financing. A two-of-three board arrangement is a historical example, not a universal safeguard.
Notable Quotes
“what are you wearing? You're a nurse practitioner. This is garbage.”
“I'm going to make the best damn scrubs out there.”
“what about the people saving lives? Who's building for them? Who's creating for them?”
“You need to create the TAM. If you create TAM, that's a whole another ball game.”
“healthcare professionals are walking billboards wearing Figs.”
“their whole strategy is litigation not innovation”
“We're an $8 billion company now. We're a $400 million company, $600 million company. Now we're at 2 billion. Like it none of it it's so transient and you can't get really tied emotionally to any of it.”
The One Thing to Remember
The incumbents' economics are the opportunity: when distributors and license holders take 60-70% of the retail price, nobody can afford to make a great product - selling direct let FIGS spend double on the garment while charging only 15-20% more.