How FIGS built fierce loyalty among healthcare workers

Executive overview

Most apparel brands chase athletes. FIGS co-founder Heather Hasson looked at healthcare professionals — millions of people working 12-hour shifts in ill-fitting, low-quality scrubs — and saw an enormous, ignored market.

FIGS built a direct-to-consumer lifestyle brand by treating medical professionals as elite performers deserving premium product, 24/7 access, and genuine community investment. When COVID hit, the company leaned into giving — donating over 70,000 units of gear — and emerged with stronger brand loyalty and over $250M in revenue.

The insight: treating your customer as a hero, not just a buyer, is itself a growth strategy.

Spotting the gap and designing for it

• Hasson's inspiration: a nurse friend wearing oversized, badly fitted scrubs with a size tag on the back of her neck
• Existing retail was a failure — closing at 5pm, depressing store experience, no premium offering
• Healthcare professionals have master's degrees and work punishing hours; nobody had designed for them
• Hasson spent a year inside hospitals watching how staff moved, used phones, carried equipment — the designs came from observation
• Core mission from day one: make the best product for the most exceptional people, available at 2am for next-day delivery

E-commerce as a strategic moat

• Convenience is nice-to-have for most shoppers; for healthcare workers on 12-hour shifts, it's a necessity
• FIGS was already growing consistently year over year before COVID; e-commerce was core to the model since 2013
• COVID did not create the business — it validated the digital-first model and shone a spotlight on it
• Product inventory and 2020 styles were locked in months before the pandemic hit; trajectory held
• New COVID-specific products (face shields, isolation gowns) were additions, not pivots

Donating gear as brand investment

• When COVID hit, healthcare workers called Hasson directly asking for PPE — FIGS had none
• Team worked around the clock to shift supply chain: made masks, gowns, hazmat suits
• Gave gear away free online — add to cart, no charge
• Donated over 70,000 units; also gave $100,000 to the frontline responder fund and partnered with hospitals serving hard-hit Black communities
• Hasson's framing: "This company doesn't exist without healthcare professionals — there is no amount of money that was too much"

Building community, not just a customer base

• Monthly product drops routinely sell out in 48 hours
• Ambassador program combined with focus groups, wellness retreats, and international giving trips
• Giving trips: took 10 healthcare professionals to under-resourced countries to solve on-the-ground health problems — cross-specialty bonding as a side effect
• "Awesome humans" brand language signals that the community, not the product, is the identity
• Advertising: saturated 73% of NYC buses with real healthcare workers — first above-ground campaign, intentional mass presence

Expanding the lifestyle brand

• Day-one vision was always head-to-toe: scrubs were just the start
• Outerwear designed with pockets for pagers, stethoscopes — technical, functional, beautiful
• International expansion went to English-speaking markets first (Canada, UK, Australia) — demand-led, not strategy-led
• Pop-up stores located within half a mile of a hospital; one in LA had bicycles shuttling staff from Cedars-Sinai
• Physical retail planned — Hasson believes people need to "touch, feel, and smell" — but deprioritised during COVID

Co-CEO partnership

• Hasson handles creative and hypergrowth; co-CEO Trina Spear owns EBITDA and financial discipline
• Disagreements resolved by shared values and shared outcome — each trusts the other in their domain
• Team input is part of the decision loop, not just the two founders
• Lesson: co-CEO structures work when both people want the same destination, even if they take different routes