Rapid Response: A prescription for healthy growth, with FIGS Co-CEO Heather Hasson

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Mm. So last spring The world really Changed. And immediately I thought, oh my god.

What does this mean for us? What does it mean for figs? And then I started to get a lot of phone calls from a lot of my healthcare professionals. All my friends literally calling me, texting me, Hey Heather, do you have Extra P PE, do you have any masks? Do you have any gowns? Do you have anything? I'm thinking, Oh my god. We Don't.

How do we not have this? So we really shifted We gave him K ninety five mass actually. Hasmat suits. We donated over seventy thousand units of fig, so jackets, lab coats, isolation gowns.

There was no limit on this. Because this company doesn't exist without healthcare professionals. We won't have a business if we don't have healthcare professionals. And there's no amount of money that was too much to donate. And no amount of

Isolation gas, it was too much. We did what we could afford. We did what was right. And we're gonna keep giving, and we're gonna keep giving them everything we possibly can so they are always protected and always celebrated and always feel empowered.

That's Heather Hassan, co founder and co CEO of Figs, an emerging lifestyle brand for medical professionals that built its name around premium scrubs. In twenty twenty. Figsaw's revenue climbed past two hundred and fifty million dollars. But the company also leaned into giving gear away to support frontline workers in need.

I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group, and host of Master Scale Rapid Response. I wanted to talk to Heather because many startups struggle to handle key inflection points. At Figs, amid both rising demand and rising attention this year, Heather and co CEO Trina Spear used the moment to reinforce their relationship with their customers. Haston identified early on that medical professionals were like star athletes, under high pressure for hours on end, with huge stakes in the balance. By treating them with special care and championing their contributions.

Figgs has built a brand allegiance that many enterprises would envy. Among a community that until Covid hit was often overlooked. I'm Bob Safian and I'm here with Heather Hassan, co-founder and co-CEO of Figs, the purveyor of stylish and comfortable scrubs and other medical apparel for healthcare workers.

Heather's coming to us from the Fig's offices in Los Angeles as I ask my questions from my home. in Brooklyn, New York. Heather, thanks for joining us. Bob, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. So

Over the past year, as COVID nineteen has washed across the world, we've seen a renewed appreciation for. doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers who find themselves on the front lines. Figs. came into being to serve that community. Well before that, back in two thousand thirteen, you were inspired by a friend who was a nurse.

to create scrubs that were better fitting and better looking. But you're not a healthcare worker. If I'm correct. What made you focus on This group

And their needs. Well, Bob, I actually was in premed if that counts for anything. Like a little bit of credit, so It counts. Sure. But to answer your question about Why focus? In twenty thirteen on healthcare professionals.

I'm just gonna take you back to how this company started. So I was having coffee with a friend of mine, nurse practitioner. And she was wearing these big Boxy Scrubs with

The size on the back of her neck and it was bright orange. Literally like the size, right? And I was just thinking how is it still possible? That people are Still wearing these types of scrubs.

And then I said, Why do you think the entire world is Focused on. The athlete or The weekend warrior. The Nike's the Lou Lemons, all the multi billion dollar companies, they're all focused on the athlete, which is athletes are amazing and I'm

So respectful of them. I didn't understand why nobody was focused on millions of people who save lives every single day. Didn't get that. And I even asked her, I said, How come nobody's focused on you? Where's your technical product so you can go to work? And she's like, Heather, this is what we have. So I literally said to her, I said

I'm probably One of the best shoppers in the world. And I We'll find something. And she's like, Okay. So she sent me to a store in Westwood Boulevard and I walked into the store.

And I'll never forget this. There were literally bed pans on the wall. There are boxes, all the scrubs were squished together. And the store closed at five o'clock and I'm thinking, Okay, R T's walking here. Dentists, NPs.

Neurologists, oncologists, the whole gamut of healthcare professionals. And I was like, okay, everybody has master's degrees, they're walking in this depressing experience, and it closed at five. What is this? And I go back to it, I was like I'm gonna make the best. Product. Possible.

For you. And that's kind of when the light bulb went off. We wanted one make the most exceptional product for the most exceptional people in the world. And two, let's get them product. So they can order it.

At two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, so they can have a uniform the next day. What were you doing at that time? You had been pre med. You were a designer? So I didn't do very well in premed. I respect people who actually Go through it.

In the beginning though. Making these scrubs work. A lot of fun. I change the silhouettes. I was in a hospital for about at least a year.

Watching every movement. Watching how they Drank coffee, I was in the cafeterias of hospitals, right? I watched every single movement on how they use their cellphones, where they put things, where they put their iPods, where they put their rings. And that's how the first designs came about. Your business was blossoming before twenty twenty. Revenue reportedly over a hundred million dollars annually.

But like everyone else, I suspect your plans were disrupted. By the pandemic. How did that transition emerge for your business And for you personally.

Yeah, so last spring. The world really Changed. So I was hearing a little bit about it, but then on March twelfth, everything closed in Los Angeles. And it was a real shock, I would say, to the world.

And immediately I thought, Oh my God. What does this mean for us? What does it mean for figs? And then I started to get a lot of phone calls from a lot of my healthcare professionals, all my friends, right? Literally calling me, texting me, Hey Heather, do you have Extra PPE. Do you have any masks? Do you have

Any gowns, do you have anything? I'm thinking, Oh my God. We Don't How do we not have this? And we're prepared for everything.

We really are. Except Obviously we didn't have masks and isolation gowns and PPE. I thought we have to protect our people. We have to get them the proper gear. And we are up all hours of the night. Trying to shift our supply chain. And make isolation gowns, make masks.

And hospitals. They weren't giving out the PPE. So I said, we have to distribute these to our healthcare professionals, what do we do? So we put him online. And we were just giving them for free. So they would just add to cart and then they would

have a mask and they were so thankful Of course, we all have masks now today. But at the time They did not have proper protection and they would just carry one in a plastic bag like it was gold. It was because that's all they had. But it was unfathomable for me to think.

That's The people that we support. Had to face Covid head on with no protection. So yeah, we really shifted. I mean it was very

emotional for our team for our community and I think We got it together. We gave him K ninety five mass actually. Hasmat suits. We donated over seventy thousand units of fig, so jackets, lab coats, isolation gowns.

So you donated thousands of gowns and scrubs and masks to medical institutions. You partnered with an initiative To help hospital serving hard hit. Black communities, you donate a hundred thousand dollars to the frontline responder fund. How did you decide

What to do? How much to do. So that's when I call my business partner. And I say, Hey Trina. We're gonna do all these things.

We're gonna spend all this money'cause we gotta protect our healthcare professionals. And she's like okay, let's do it. I think there is no limit on this. Because this company doesn't exist without healthcare professionals. So

There is no amount of money that was too much. And for a business, I know that sounds oh that's That's crazy because you need to take into consideration your shareholders and stakeholder value and all that business stuff.

But We won't have a business if we don't have healthcare professionals. And there's no amount of money that was too much to donate. And no amount of Isolation guns, it was too much.

We did what we could afford. We did what was right. And we're gonna keep giving we're gonna keep giving them everything we possibly can so they are Always protected and always celebrated and always feel empowered.

And we are the company that is there for them. For a lot of entrepreneurs, the past twelve months have been tough on the business. But I can imagine that in the market you serve Demand in business. Has been good.

Has it been a good year? For the business? It has been a good year for the business, but in terms of our trajectory in terms of growth. It was all planned, right? So we've been growing sustainably year over year since inception.

So The healthcare and medical industries are some of the largest in the world. Our pre-COVID twenty twenty growth plans were locked in several months in advance of the first report of case in the United States. So meaning our core product inventory decisions, as well as our new 2020 styles and color unit counts, everything was determined at such an early time. Relative to the pandemic. And a lot of digitally native consumer brands And their respective and perspective investors are struggling with this whole concept of covet bomb.

Which largely was a shift From retail to e commerce driven by the choice or lack of choice. But before COVID, figs was already rolling. We had significant and consistent growth year over year since we started in 2013. But I would say COVID really shined a light. on one of the things that makes figs truly differentiated and very special, which is our e commerce business model. We had long felt that e-commerce was a much better way to serve healthcare professionals. In our view, those benefits are more important in our business than virtually anyone else's. It's great if for people like myself or you, Bob. We can go and buy cloth online rather than a store, but it's just a matter for convenience for us, right? It's just easy.

But for healthcare professionals, this is a matter of necessity. our community, they're working twelve hour shifts. their with their families if they're not working. And they're not able to go on a hunt to go find medical apparel at odd hours or

at odd retail locations that are very far away from their offices or hospitals. And more than anyone else that I can think of, the buying process needs to be streamlined, convenient, and tailored to their specific needs. It was a very similar trajectory than what we had planned. From a revenue standpoint, obviously from a product standpoint, we did create different gear than what we would have created if COVID did not exist.

We have these high death face shields that are anti fog, all this stuff that we would not have done. But yeah, our trajectory. It stayed the same. And you mentioned this ergonomic face shield that you came out recently. Lightweight, anti fog. It must be different designing

Masks and shields and PPE than it is apparel. How Is that transition. How is that different? So we brought in industrial designers to help us refine all the details and to really focus on

The polymers really focus on All the little pieces that will make the best possible failed. out there. And we started this actually in March.

And we just launched it today because it takes a very long time to perfect. But I do believe it is best in the world. I mean you can wear all the masks and Glasses and you're fine. But the whole vision behind it was to protect our healthcare professionals. So you started with scrubs.

You expand into outerwear and accessories and socks, and there's a partnership with new balance for footwear. Did you know at the outset that this was gonna be a lifestyle brand for a community? Yes, that was the intention. So day one. You see healthcare professionals, you see they have Really terrible scrubs. So that was number one to fix.

But if you look at what they're wearing. The two and the from. We got a design for that. We have to make clothes specifically For that person, so yes, it's outerwear.

But it's outer where that can hold different types of pagers and stethoscopes and Anything they need. that a normal lay person doesn't necessarily need to hold to go to work. So yes, from the beginning of time, it was always a lifestyle brand. And how do we outfit the customer from head to toe? And how do we give them everything they need?

And how do we design from a technic and a functional lens and something beautiful as well,'cause I think design has to also be Beautiful. My son is in medical school. Everybody wants figs. It's what all the cool kids wear, even though it is a premium price. Product.

I know your monthly drops of new items routinely sell out in forty eight hours. How do you build and nurture this community? Is it just the product or Are you engaging with the community to Build that feeling of connection. In order to build connection.

Yes, one it is product. Two community is everything to us. We have an ambassador program, but In order for us to understand our community, we have to connect. to them.

So we connect with them every single day. Whether it's focus groups We have pre COVID we had Retreats. Health and wellness retreats.

And before us, I would say it's very segmented, so like dentist would stick together. Oncologists would stick together. And We've built kind of a um guess a forum, if you will, for everybody to just come and talk and talk about their experiences and I think

It's just another way how we support them. We also do actually something very cool pre Covid as well. We used to go on these giving trips. So we take maybe ten healthcare professionals and we go to resource poor country, we solve for something. Whether it's cleft palate, whether it's

Women issues, but That also brings our healthcare community together. Because they don't even know each other. We just Put together this group. to go solve some on the ground issue that this one community

doesn't have access to health care. So I think we've done a lot of great things to bring our community together. You use this phrase awesome humans on your site. Can you explain what that is? Where it came from.

Awesome humans. Are extraordinary people and healthcare professionals are extraordinary. They're the most awesome people in the world. They are working sixteen hour shifts. They're creating covet vaccines that nobody's ever heard of this disease before, right? They're pushing the limits of what a human is. I mean

When you're in residency, you're working thirty two hour shifts sometimes. This is almost the impossible, but these people are so dedicated, they're so dedicated to making an impact on this world. They're so dedicated. to saving lives that they're awesome. There's nobody better than healthcare professionals. Like, I can't even think of a better human than these people.

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Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative plating dot com slash masters of scale. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered.

I'm Rana El Calyubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely for

From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. You've expanded into new international markets in Canada, in the UK, in Australia. And I can see there being kind of a strategic choice about

Expanding geography as a focus. Or expanding the product line, the reach and definition of the lifestyle part of the brand. How do you balance those two choices? Sure. So I think going into these specific countries first was from

They're English speaking countries. Right. So from a business standpoint that's The easiest to do in terms of expansion. But it's also We saw a lot of demand coming from those countries. So we thought we have to open up in those countries, especially during Covid. Even if we're not really ready, we still have to do that because we have to supply uniforms.

So we did our best. To get out to these specific countries. during COVID. And in terms of product. Yeah, there is different product for different

countries. And we do think about that. We do think about The seasonality. The colours. you know, what they need in the UK.

The styling is different than what we were here in the United States. But yeah, to your point, it is different. We're gonna go really deep this year in expanding our product. to these countries, even more so than we do today. It sounds to me a little bit like you're in some ways you're responding to demand you're seeing.

I think it's about listening to our Customers. I mean face shields are face shields, right? So they're like we need face shields. Amazon makes these really Cheap. Not price wise, but

the actual plastic and the way it feels in your head and your bridge of your nose. We see them wearing all these. We hear that we need face masks, we need face shields, facial, facial. It's like okay, we heard you. But now

Let's up your expectations. Let's make it better. Let's make it more premium. Let's make it More conducive to your environment and make something that you didn't even know you really Wanted. So I think it's a Combination.

You mentioned combination, you mentioned earlier your partner, your co founder and co CEO. Trina Speer. I know this in one of the playful videos on your website in the credits You're listed as creative mastermind and she's listed as motivational speaker. How does it work between you as co CEOs?

Many startups have co founders, not as many of them have co CEOs. How does that partnership work? Well, I think at the end of the day if you share the same values and you have the same vision. 'Cause we wanna both win, we both have the same vision.

we come at it a little differently. But at the end of the day, if you just share that. We're gonna get to the same place. I would say How I think about things

I handle Most of the creative I would say I'm about kind of the hyper growth. And she's our Ibada. So I think when you're

So focused on these two areas. You have two heads, two brains. The results are What we have today. I mean organizations end up with one person because

Sometimes when you have two people, they don't agree. And how do you reconcile things? When they don't agree and At the end of the day. This is the theory, someone has to make the decision.

What happens when you guys don't Agree. I think that it's important to both be heard. But at the end of the day Like I said, we have the same outcome and she trusts me, like I trust her and her decisions and her part of the org and she trusts me in my part of the org. So I think it's

Being pragmatic, listening to one another. I think it's being both level headed human beings that we can hear each other's perspective and we come to a decision. As intelligent human beings. And then we also in terms of our team too, our team We listen to them as well.

So it's not just us two. You mentioned Early on. Visiting a store, a physical store Where the experience was terrible.

How do you guys think about physical space as opposed to digital channels and whether that is something that Should be part of the things. Brand and lifestyle or Whether it should always be

Digital. I believe in physical space. I really do. I think people need to touch and feel and smell Things they do. Because we don't

Live in a And Eventually we will have retail stores. I do think it's important. It's very, very important.

We were actually about to do a little bit of retail in twenty twenty, but COVID, you know, we shifted gears and we really just focus completely on digital just so we can have a little more impact than retail stores. Have you worked on what prototypes that in person experience looks like

Well, we did have we had a couple pop ups back in twenty nineteen. We had one in Los Angeles and we had one in New York City. They were always A half a mile away from a hospital. That is our rule. We have to be within

Walking distance of a hospital, so It's easy and convenient for our healthcare professionals. It was so much fun. We had lines out the door actually here in Los Angeles. And it was so special and so cool to see'cause it was our first retail experience. And we were right next to Cedar Sinai.

We actually had these bicycles that would pick people up from Cedar Sinai and bring'em to the store. Like these little taxi cabs. I noticed that you launched a program in New York, it's come together program, ads on city buses featuring real life health professionals. Why was now the time to do that kind of outreach, that kind of advertising? To come together but stay six feet apart. Yeah. I think it was extremely important

For this time because of Covid. More than ever. Healthcare professionals are having really hard days. And We need to be there to support them and then to be able to support each other. So it was a message of

Let's all come together. Meaning healthcare professionals Lay people. Let's support each other. We're all human beings. We're on this planet. Together let's all come together.

And fight this battle of Covid. And I guess it was kind of an inflection point for your brand too, right? Giving your brand that Public exposure.

Well on New York City buses. So normally we go underground. So we cover The subways. This is our first year that we decided to be Above ground.

When we do advertise we will Cover everything'cause that's how we roll. We don't do little pieces here and there. We literally will saturate everything so we actually covered over Seventy three percent of New York City buses. Because we wanted lay people and also other healthcare professionals to always be clapping for our people for our awesome humans.

And to recognize them. And we do it in a very cool way. It's not your standard Add. But yeah, this is our first year going above ground. So

CEOs at big brands have increasingly been pressed to take positions on social issues, even political issues. How much do you think newer brands like figs.

Need to engage. At that level. Do you have those dialogues? I think that if you don't take a stance as a brand You'll be lost in the shuffle. I think it's very important for brands to take a stance.

The number one thing that we do believe is taking care of our healthcare professionals are awesome humans, so we will do anything in our power. to make their lives easier. Whether it's donation for tuition, whether it's donation for underprivileged students that can't afford medical school or nursing school. So I think that's how we take a stance.

What's at stake in this moment? For you for figs. What is not at stake? Right. Everything's at stake. I mean Every day you're thinking about how to be better.

How to be more innovative, how to make your team happy, how to Inspire your team, how to keep them motivated. I think everything is always at stake, and you can't live like it's not. You have to live like Something's at stake or you can't be complacent in life. You really have to always live on the edge a little bit. As far as the business, I think that

We're gonna continue to take risks. We're gonna continue to face challenging times, you're gonna continue to be there for our healthcare professionals. We're gonna continue to Design thoughtful innovative technical product. We have a very cool innovation lab here.

That's actually where the Facial came from. And we're gonna continue to as a business just knock it out of the park. And do it with heart too. Well.

This has been great. So Thank you so much for doing this, Heather. I really appreciate it. Bob, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Masters of Scale Rapid Response is a wait what original.

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