FIGS: Trina Spear and Heather Hasson. The $2.5 Billion Scrubs Brand That Investors Said Would Never Work

Heather Hasson says she originally wanted to become a reconstructive surgeon, combining art and science, but struggled with organic chemistry and did not get into medical school. She moved into fashion, briefly worked for Levi’s in New York, and around 2005 started a handbag company with an Italian business partner named Stephen. They made leather handbags but had not yet built a sales operation when Stephen died of lung cancer at age 36. He had funded the business and believed in her, so his death left Heather heartbroken and without a functioning company. Heather went to northern Kenya to clear her head. While visiting schools, she learned that some children were not attending because their families could not afford school uniforms. She began selling silk and wool bow ties, neckties, and scarves in Los Angeles—working for $9 an hour at a Malibu retail store and using that income to buy materials—so she could fund uniforms. Through that effort, she says, she eventually helped put about 10,000 children in school. At a clinic in Kenya, she also saw doctors and nurses operating without proper scrubs. She sent herself back to Los Angeles with the idea that uniforms could give people dignity and confidence, an idea that later became central to FIGS.

In 2010, Heather bought fabric in Los Angeles, hired a patternmaker and a sewer, produced roughly 30 scrub sets, and sent them to several Kenyan clinics. She placed a bright-yellow FIGS label on them. At first she says she was simply trying to help, not launch a major business. But while sitting in hospitals and talking with a nurse practitioner friend at Cedars, she became angry about the clothes healthcare professionals wore: boxy, one-size-fits-all, scratchy scrubs that had barely changed since Heather’s own college clinical work. Heather first tried to shop for better products and discovered that scrub stores were usually cluttered medical-supply retailers selling cardboard boxes, bedpans, and crutches alongside clothing. Her nurse friend asked her to tailor another pair, and a friend of that nurse asked for tailoring too. That was when Heather decided, in her words, to make “the best damn scrubs out there.” She found a manufacturer willing to support a small initial run of about 15,000 pieces, recruited people from Craigslist for a photo shoot, put the products online, and began selling them out of her car in hospital emergency rooms. She designed for both men and women, emphasizing “technical comfort”: stretch, softness, useful pockets, and more flattering silhouettes.

Trina Spear met Heather through a mutual friend while working in finance at Blackstone in New York. Trina had an MBA from Harvard Business School but felt less passionate about finance than the people around her. During a July 4th weekend in Los Angeles in 2012, she played tennis with Heather, got “smoked,” and heard Heather’s argument that companies such as Nike, Lululemon, and Under Armour built technical clothing for athletes but nobody was building it for people saving lives. Before joining, Trina rebuilt Heather’s financial model and researched the market. She found 24 million healthcare professionals in the United States, about 140 million worldwide, and a U.S. healthcare-apparel market of roughly $10 billion at the time. About 85% of healthcare professionals bought their own uniforms, which created a recurring, nonseasonal, recession-resistant market. Yet existing companies sold mainly through distributors, surrendering much of the economics and investing little in product innovation. Trina continued working at Blackstone for about six months, then left in January 2013. She liquidated her 401(k), a decision she calls a terrible tax choice, and put $70,000 into FIGS. The founders agreed on an equity split giving Heather more because she had built the initial business, but both believed partnering was less risky than failing to act.

After Trina moved to Los Angeles, the founders shared a two-bedroom apartment whose living room became FIGS’ warehouse. They used Shopify to fulfill orders and sold tops and pants at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. outside emergency rooms, when shifts changed. They offered free coffee and hot chocolate to people coming off night shifts, using those conversations to learn what healthcare professionals liked, disliked, and needed in their uniforms. Heather focused on fabrics, fit, and design while Trina handled operations and fundraising. The product challenged expectations. FIGS introduced a slim pant when customers said scrubs were supposed to be baggy, and created a sleeveless, ruffled top that people initially called a muscle shirt and predicted would fail. It became the company’s top-selling top, especially when paired with FIGS’ layering pieces, which the founders called “underscrubs.” The founders considered selling directly to hospitals, but hospital administrators were not the end users and showed little interest. That rejection pushed FIGS toward direct-to-consumer sales and a one-to-one relationship with healthcare workers. Investors were even more skeptical. Heather and Trina estimate they received 300 to 400 rejections. Investors said healthcare workers did not care how they looked, that the total addressable market was too small, or that the category was not investable. The founders’ response was that a company could create a larger market by making people want a better product.

FIGS initially raised about $2 million from roughly 40 to 50 people, generally through $5,000 and $10,000 checks, without relying heavily on family money. The founders later raised a $1 million bridge round, another $2 million, and then $5 million, bringing total early fundraising to about $10 million. Trina says the money was necessary because apparel is cash-intensive and the company had to pay for inventory before it could sell it. The founders also spent years refining production. They tested Los Angeles, China, and Vietnam, then returned some work to Los Angeles to perfect fit and quality before moving production overseas again. Heather spent time with factories, dyehouses, yarn mills, and fabric suppliers, insisting on creating their own technical fabrics rather than buying whatever was available. Meanwhile, Trina ran operations and continued raising capital. In 2014 or 2015, an investor introduced them to Thomas Tull, founder of the movie studio Legendary Entertainment. The initial idea was simply to get FIGS scrubs into films, but Tull understood their broader attempt to modernize an outdated industry. In 2017, he bought out the other investors and put roughly $65 million into the company. The arrangement preserved the founders’ control: Heather and Trina held two of the three board seats. They say this mattered because another investor, Campfire Capital, had previously tried to remove them as operators. FIGS grew from about $1 million in sales in 2015 to $4 million in 2016, $55 million in 2018, and $110 million in 2019.

As FIGS grew, Strategic Partners, whose brands included Dickies and Cherokee, sued the company in 2019. The suit alleged that FIGS had made false claims and taken trade secrets; the founders characterized it as an attempt by an incumbent to stop an innovative competitor. After a roughly three-year legal battle, a jury ruled for FIGS in early 2022. The case cost about $40 million, and the company had been facing claims of approximately $800 million. Trina says lawyers sometimes urged them to settle, but the board supported going to trial. She and Heather believed settling would encourage the competitor’s litigation strategy and wanted to demonstrate that FIGS would not be pushed out. The trial was emotionally exhausting: they lived in a hotel in Santa Ana, dealt with depositions and discovery, and had to continue running the company while fighting the case. Heather’s visible anger ultimately felt more authentic than trying to perform calmness for the jury. After the verdict, jurors met the founders and apologized for what they had endured, an experience Trina calls one of the most meaningful moments of the process. COVID created a different emergency. FIGS shifted its supply chain to produce N95 and cloth masks and donated isolation gowns and other protective equipment, though it did not sell the gowns and hazmat suits. Demand overwhelmed supply, shipping costs surged, and products repeatedly sold out. The founders relied on manufacturing partners they had worked with for seven or eight years.

FIGS went public in May 2021. The founders say the IPO was not simply an attempt to capitalize on pandemic-era demand: they believed the company had become a genuine public business with scale, revenue, and profitability, and one investor eventually needed liquidity. They brought 150 healthcare professionals to the New York Stock Exchange to ring the bell, treating the event as a celebration of the community rather than just of management. The public markets also made the separation between wealth and self-worth impossible to ignore. FIGS’ stock rose from about $50 after the IPO and later fell to roughly $5. Heather and Trina appeared on a Forbes list of wealthy women, then were described as the women who had fallen off it the following year. They describe the company’s valuation moving from $8 billion to $400 million, $600 million, and then back toward $2 billion. The fluctuations taught them that net worth and market value are transient and should not determine identity. They have taken money off the table and can support their families, but say their motivation remains building the business. Heather stepped down as co-CEO in 2022 and became executive chair, while Trina became CEO. FIGS has about 3 million active customers, but the founders see a long runway among the 140 million healthcare professionals worldwide. They are not planning a major move into athleisure yet; Trina says the company has barely reached the second or third item on its original vision board. They have also created a foundation, built a hospital in Kenya, and established an advocacy platform that brings them to Washington to work with people across political parties.