On today’s episode, Meghan sits down with Heather Hasson, the founder of FIGS, a company that has completely revolutionized the medical apparel industry. What began with Heather selling scrubs outside hospitals for cash has since grown into a billion-dollar brand that’s reshaping how healthcare professionals think and feel about their workwear. In this conversation, the pair share the challenges and triumphs of building a company from the ground up, the steep learning curve of entrepreneurship, and why staying close to the day-to-day details still matters.

Follow Meghan @Meghan and Heather @heatherhasson on Instagram. Stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Main Theme: “Crabbuckit” words and music by Kevin Deron Brereton (c) Universal Songs of Polygram Int., Inc. on behalf of Universal Music Publishing Canada (BMI) / 100% interest for the Territory.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Next Guest, Speaker 1, Heather Hasson, Megan

Heather Hasson  01:35

Honestly, I still do think I’m in the minutia, and I think that is the key to success. Sometimes I think you have to ebb and flow from zero feet, right boots on the ground, all the way to 60,000 feet. It’s a really hard skill set to master, but I think it’s key for success.

 

Megan  01:55

I’m Megan, and this is Confessions Of A Female Founder, a show where I chat with female entrepreneurs and friends about the sleepless nights, the lessons learned and the laser focus that got them to where they are today. So as I’ve been building as ever. Oh, let me tell you, it is just a constant state of recalibration. There’s joy in that. But we are always in motion. And if you’re a founder yourself, you know exactly what I mean, because we’re moving at warp speed, problem solving, filling gaps in real time, scratching a million tiny, tiny things off of your to do list, but not in that fun way, like a lotto ticket. And then all of a sudden you’re switching gears, and you’re thinking about the big picture strategy and where you want to be in five or 10 years. And oftentimes, all of this, every single beat of that happens in the same day, sometimes in the same hour. But I guess that’s where the magic is, right? Because it can get messy, and the best founders are not afraid to get their hands dirty. And I don’t mean play dirty. I mean when it’s clean up on aisle five time you are the first person there with a mop.

 

Heather Hasson  03:12

I’m chasing mail trucks. I’m sitting in hospitals. I’m selling out of hospitals. That’s how we sold. I sat there and I sold right in front of a hospital, in front of an ER at seven in the morning and seven at night.

 

Megan  03:22

Heather Hasson turned that hustle into something so much bigger. She built figs alongside her co founder Trina spear, and together they turned healthcare apparel into a billion dollar business. In 2021 figs made history as one of the first female led companies to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, and by 2023 they were generating over $318 million in revenue on Scrubs. They created scrubs that are stylish, colorful, comfortable, and they’re made with their customers. Top of Mind, figs is the ultimate if you know you know brand, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. They’re everywhere. I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation with Heather, let’s dive in.

 

Megan  04:10

How are we doing?

 

Heather Hasson  04:12

We’re doing great. How are you?

 

Megan  04:14

Really good, I’m so happy to meet you. When I had met Trina at g9 she may have mentioned it to you. I don’t know. She was very surprised when I knew what figs was. She said, I have a company called figs, and I know figs. She goes, do you actually, it was almost like a test.

 

Heather Hasson  04:29

How do you know? Yeah, Megan, how do you know figs?

 

Megan  04:31

God, well, you guys been around for a while, but anytime that you see somebody either for I think it transcends beyond hospitals. In someone’s home, they have on figs uniforms. But also I work with Children’s Hospital, LA, and I see a lot of the people wearing that. And you just saw that something shifted from when I was young and you’d be in any sort of medical setting, and you saw very ill fitting scrubs that were probably not comfortable to things are looking a little more tailored. And. And I remember going, wow, that looks so different, and just knowing it and clocking it, and seeing the little figs logo on there. So I I just know your brand.

 

Heather Hasson  05:07

Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, I love that. You know who we are, honestly, like, I think what you’ve created is so amazing. I was just watching your show the other day too. Oh, thank you, because I’m, I’m a terrible cook. I can’t cook anything, but I will. I’ll bring you lemonade or something like in the juice world, I could do that, great, but you can teach me something probably.

 

Megan  05:26

Yes, you’ll have to come over, come to the garden, and we’ll, like, whip something up. It’s very easy. I think the whole point for me, and you’ll probably speak to this too, is when you see something that is an easy solve in the everyday, that’s not complicated, it’s not fussy. How do you get your hands involved and change the way of thinking surrounding it so it doesn’t feel daunting? You know, I see vegetables and I see take out because I don’t have time to cook every day. And I go, all right, but how do I still make this flattering and beautiful and present well, and something that people are find appetizing, and for you go, hold on, this is something that you’re doing every day. You’re wearing this uniform, every day you’re eating every day. How do we elevate that in a way that you feel really good about what you’re doing, and you feel proud about what you’re wearing, and you’re able to have some functionality with it in some ways, they’re actually a different version of the same thing.

 

Heather Hasson  06:18

No, I totally agree. I think you know, when you take something that’s so simple in your everyday life and you and you elevate it, and you make it elegant, I think that’s what makes it so special. I mean, that’s what even, like Andy Warhol did, right in terms of, like, commercialization with, you know, the Campbell Soup, he took something so simple that you see every single day, but he, he elevated it, right? He made it into art. And now it’s like, you know, I don’t know, $50 million on your wall, but, but yeah, yeah, in terms of figs, that’s exactly, you know, what we did over 13 years ago, because we took something that was like a commodity and like, de commoditized it.

 

Megan  06:55

Yes, and also that it wasn’t necessarily what you had been planning to do. You know, you were in medical school, then you had to pivot to fashion and a handbag line, which is already in and of itself. Really fascinating. How does that happen?

 

Heather Hasson  07:10

Well, I think so. My since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a surgeon.

 

Megan  07:15

Okay? And what attracted you to that?

 

Heather Hasson  07:18

I just thought I would be really good at it, because I’m so precise and I pay attention to detail. And I just thought that I would be, I’d be an incredible surgeon. But when I was in in school, I did poorly. I mean, obviously Organic chemistry is impossible. Anatomy was my favorite course, and I just, I just didn’t do well. I got all D’s, like, I just didn’t do well. So I said, Okay, you know what? I guess this is not going to be my career path. I’m just not going to be doctor. Some I gave up, and when I graduated University Wisconsin, I started my first company. I don’t even think I was that employable, even at the time, like, I just didn’t think I was, like, an employable person. Like, I try really hard, but I don’t know. I don’t know why.

 

Megan  08:06

But how were you able to start your own company? How could you invest in yourself even then?

 

Heather Hasson  08:10

I didn’t have any money. I didn’t come from money. So I, I didn’t really, I mean, in the sense of, I had like, three jobs, I raised some capital. I was 21 and then I started my bad company, backup.

 

Megan  08:22

For the people who are listening, going, I’m 21 What do you mean? You raised capital. How do you raise capital?

 

Heather Hasson  08:28

Honestly, it was at the time I didn’t even know what VC was. I wasn’t really in tune with anything with finance, like 000, I think it was just kind of innate. I just went to friends, family, people I didn’t even know I was in New York at the time, asked around, and then met some folks, and they gave me a little bit of cash, and I took that little bit of cash and I started this tiny company, moved to Italy, and then it didn’t do very well. The bags were beautiful. They were gorgeous. What kind of bags were they? They were, like, just giant handbags. They were big, oversized handbags, beautiful.

 

Megan  09:05

And by the way, if you were so drawn to precision, and the dissection of something, the manufacturing of a very detailed bag or piece of clothing, has that same level of almost surgical precision, if you’re talking about the craftsmanship of it.

 

Heather Hasson  09:18

Yeah, exactly. And I was like, well, at least if I can’t, you know, be in surgery, at least I can do this, right? But then it was actually my I had a business partner at the time, and he passed away from lung cancer.

 

Megan  09:32

Oh, I’m so sorry.

 

Heather Hasson  09:33

That’s It’s okay. I mean, I was super young, and he was little older, and he was a wonderful human and after that, I just folded the company, and went straight to Kenya. So I was just going there because I, you know, my business partner passed away. I was in the hospital for a really long time with them, and, you know, I just needed a break. And so then I went over to Kenya. And then I started going these clinics, and I saw everybody not wearing scrubs. And I’m like, what’s going on? You know? How come nobody’s wearing scrubs? This, you know, this one nurse, she’s was a nurse for 25 years, never had a set of Scrubs. The surgeon didn’t have a set of Scrubs. So then I came back to Los Angeles, and I’m like, You know what? Let me donate some scrubs. Let me just give some scrubs to people who, the people that I met out there, they’d never had a set of Scrubs before, and so I manufactured, like, I don’t know, 10, and sent them out.

 

Megan  10:26

So you didn’t just go and buy them. You manufactured 10 sets of Scrubs?

 

Heather Hasson  10:29

Yeah, I just made, literally, 10 sets of Scrubs in Los Angeles. They weren’t stylish or anything. I just, you know, put them together. Hired a tailor because I can’t sew, a terrible sewer.

 

Megan  10:39

I can sew, but not well enough to mend something. I mean, yeah, yeah, no, sewing is tough. It’s very difficult. Yeah, you know, so funny. I went to college as a theater major, and part of the program was you couldn’t just do the acting. You had to do soup to nuts, every part of what a production would entail, which I actually think is incredible training for when you’re running a team, because you appreciate what the sound person does and what the lighting person does, but wardrobe department and sewing was part of it, too. So good. So I am comfortable with a sewing machine, but no, I couldn’t sew 10 sets of Scrubs without a pattern. I don’t think, right, it’s hard. No, it’s hard. It’s okay. So you enlist someone to go and do that, and you say, I’m going to make these 10. I’m going to send them over.

 

Heather Hasson  11:18

Yep. And so the feedback from these, the surgeons, the nurses there was, they were just like, I can’t believe you did this. We’ve never felt like we were on, you know, part of a team before. And that’s when the idea of figs came about. I then I started to sit in hospitals like you can go and I just had a cup of coffee, and I would watch, like, almost like a method actor, right?

 

Megan  11:43

Okay, so wait so this moment where you send the 10 out at the onset, it’s just, oh, you see a need. You want to fulfill it for them, but because of their reaction, you realize, I want to dig deeper into this. And that’s what makes you go and sit in hospitals and observe what’s happening there in terms of their uniforms.

 

Heather Hasson  12:01

Yeah, it was how important was to them, that uniform. And I was like, Oh, my god, wow. That is, that is incredible. I mean, I did also make uniforms for children as well, when I was in Africa, before even the scrubs to put kids in school. So uniforms is, like, I think, been part of my DNA. And when I was even in pre med, I wore these huge mass of Scrubs, right? I’m over a cadaver, and I’m tying my I had a belt on top of it because, you know, they gave us extra large scrubs. It was like a one size fits all. Oh my gosh, in my mind, I just thought the smartest people in the entire world, if there’s not a company that supports them, we are all going to die, like we’re all going to die, in the sense of not because they don’t have scrubs, but because we need to make them feel great, right? We need to make them care for the people that are caring for us. That’s right, so we could have better patient outcomes, right?

 

Megan  12:52

It’s really interesting that that becomes the catalyst for you. I love that because it’s emotional, not economic.

 

Heather Hasson  12:58

Oh, I’m not even driven by that, and I should, maybe should be a little bit more, but when I started figs, right? I think, you know, when I was sitting in hospitals and understanding the landscape of uniforms, right, of Scrubs, and I’m sat there for hours and days and months just studying what, what they were wearing, and why they were wearing it. Then, before I actually did go into this, I’m like, Okay, what’s the landscape look like? Because I’m just not going to go into something where it’s a, you know, if hospitals buy your scrubs for you and but then I realized it was direct to consumer so nurses and doctors, right? All healthcare professionals, they were purchasing their own scrubs. So then I’m like, okay, if they’re buying their own scrubs.

 

Megan  13:39

Why are they buying bad scrubs, right?

 

Heather Hasson  13:44

It’s like, okay, they’re spending money on their own pocket, right? They’re hard earned money. Yeah, let’s give them something that’s better than anything that’s out there, for sure. So that was how it all started. And then I met Trina.

 

Megan  13:57

Because she’d been on Wall Street, right? She was, and she’s still does more of the op side and the business side, and you’re more of the creative. I would guess.

 

Heather Hasson  14:04

I think actually, Trina is very creative. I think she undersells herself, but she is very creative. She’s, honestly, she’s my best buddy and real fantastic business partner. It’s because we come from two totally different places in the world that we see things very differently, and we always have very healthy conversations, but she’s way more dynamic than you know then, okay, the business person, the ops person, because she is very creative. And I would say that probably the same thing for myself, because when you are running a company at that scale, you have to be both, right? It’s, you have to be you can’t just be like, Okay, I’m gonna do the numbers, or I’m gonna do this. Right? You have to be able to do everything.

 

Megan  14:46

Well, especially at a startup phase, you’re wearing so many hats. You have to think about the customer experience. You have to think about your P and L, you have to think about what your long term trajectory is. I don’t know if, as you guys were conceiving this, and even, you know, to my understanding when you met. It wasn’t with the intention of bringing on a business partner you met, you know, she was savvy, and then within a couple weeks, you guys realized you should be partners and do this together. How did that happen?

 

Heather Hasson  15:09

Oh, she’s relentless. She was, you know, this came from blacks in private equity Harvard Business School, right? Yeah. And she said to me, and I’ll never forget, I’ll never ever forget this. She said to me, she goes, Heather, I will do everything you don’t want to do, hmm. And I said, everything. And she goes, everything, wow. And I said, we should we were playing tennis, and we shook hands, and that was it. I said, let’s go.

 

Megan  15:39

Wow, and you believed her. You knew it was true.

 

Heather Hasson  15:42

Yeah, and it was true. And I thought it was really cool that she was, you know, quitting this high paying job on Wall Street, you know, coming to work on Scrubs. That was, we were a little tiny company. She just believed in the vision. She’s like, I see it.

 

Megan  15:57

Why do you think she believed in that of all the things, of all the investments and all the opportunities, and all the decks that get sent and all the possibilities, and all the friends of a friend that say, oh, you should go and do this. Why was it this?

 

Heather Hasson  16:12

You know, I have asked her that a few times, right? And I think it was, I think she believed in me and the vision, and I think she knew that I was absolutely relentless, and I knew this was, you know, that you can essentially create the world you want to live in. And she’s like, I want to, I want to join this, and I want to create the world I want to live in. And let’s, let’s do this together. I said right.

 

Speaker 1  17:02

So you and Trina decide to be partners. She leaves Blackstone. You’re getting your ducks in a row, you were getting feedback on some of the items, and they were saying they’re just not fitting quite right.

 

Heather Hasson  19:06

Oh yeah.

 

Megan  19:08

What was  that moment at the beginning? Because as a founder, we all have that, oh my gosh, I’ve crossed every T and dotted every i, and how on earth did I miss that?

 

Heather Hasson  19:19

Yes, that was actually it was really funny. So funny now it’s funny now, it was then, because we didn’t have any money, so it was not funny. Yeah, so our first production run, so it took, it took me about a couple years to actually design our fabric, and then, you know, I did our first production run, and at the time, right? I’m chasing mail trucks, I’m sitting in hospitals. I’m selling out of hospitals, right? That’s how I that’s how we sold right in front of it. That’s I sat there and I sold right in front of a hospital, in front of an ER, seven in the morning and seven at night.

 

Megan  19:50

Oh, so that’s really interesting. So you were there at a shift change.

 

Heather Hasson  19:53

At a shift change, yeah.

 

Megan  19:54

You knew when they’d be coming in and out of their cars, and you could be there with your what were people using to do? Were they buying with cash, or did you have this swipe? What was how were they? How were you doing sales?

 

Heather Hasson  20:04

So in the beginning, we didn’t have square so that didn’t exist yet, right? So we just had cash.

 

Megan  20:10

No one was tapping their phone?

 

Heather Hasson  20:11

No tapping. We didn’t have any of the tapping. I wish we did, but it was just cash. And I hired folks from Craigslist just to stand next to me so I can be like, here’s the male, right, and here’s the female, right? And I would also bring, like, hot chocolate, like a little thing of hot chocolate, or coffee from, you know, Starbucks says those, yeah, the jug like, the carriers, yeah, the jugs, yeah. Just take that. Like, it was scrappy, very, very but people were just handing me cash, wow. And we started getting, and I didn’t actually know at the time, but we started getting inquiries saying, these pants don’t fit, right? And I’m like, Okay, that was one email, then another email, then another email. I think this, you know, something about a package. And then they started sending photographs of the pants these men. And I’m like, Okay. And I’m like, wait a second, what’s going on? Oh, no, I require men sending, you know, pictures of their front of their pants, like, what’s happening here? So then I go look, and I check production, and we sewed the women’s front panel onto the men’s back panel, so the inseam is tiny, very short, not comfortable for a dude at all, right? And so that was a massive production miss.

 

Megan  21:27

How much did that end up costing you? What did you do with all of it?

 

Heather Hasson  21:31

I had a on. We didn’t have any money, so I had to unsew everything. No, yeah, yeah. I’m like, Okay, we have to redo it. So we I literally unso, yeah, unstitched it all and reconstructed them, unstitch every single thing and whatever we can salvage, we salvaged. But, you know, at that time, I really thought this was like our demise, because I’m like, I screwed up royally, you know? And it was actually, it was a funny thing, but it was, it made us really pay attention, obviously, to production ever since that incident, our production is our lifeline, is our North Star. Our quality control is now probably the best in the world. We have so many checks in all our facilities, it’s state of the art. So I’m glad it happened when we were.

 

Megan  22:16

At the beginning. Well, all that stuff happens at the beginning. I mean, the types of minutia that at a certain point, as a founder, at the onset, you kind of have to be across every single granular detail. For me, I don’t know how to not have love in the details, but at what point do you go, Okay, those were your beginning learns, and then you’ve grown to a company of how many employees?

 

Heather Hasson  22:40

I want to say 350 at headquarters.

 

Megan  22:43

Yes, you have 350 people headquarters that you have to entrust to oversee, as you said, the quality control, other elements. What has that been like for you in the growth to make you go, okay? I’m in trust that they’re going to solve it, that it’s going to be okay, that you’re not in the minutia in the same way as you were at the onset.

 

Heather Hasson  23:03

Honestly, I still, I still am in the minutiae. I mean, I’m so I’ve not co anymore figs, I stepped aside about two and a half years ago. But I still do think I’m in the minutia. And I think that’s the key to success. Sometimes I think you have to ebb and flow from zero, feet, right, boots on the ground all the way to 60,000 feet. And you have to be able to do that in the same day, sometimes in the same hour. And even when I hire folks, I like to see if they’re capable of doing that, because it’s really it’s a really hard skill set to master, but I think it’s key for success

 

Megan  23:40

And bring in a plus people that you can trust to do and delegate and speak on your behalf, but look at it through the same lens that that you would. I mean, okay, so let’s just go from year one to now at year 13. So you’re year one, you have this not blind faith, but this faith in what you guys are creating, and even as you have little moments, as we were talking about with that manufacturing hiccup, or I wonder, without a fashion background outside of your handbag line that you had started, what was the inspiration for changing the colors the fit? Was it trend driven? Was it just trying to make things more tailored. And also, were you and do you continue to meet with the trends on how that should look? Or do you just say these are evergreen? These are the styles that we do, the colors pop in a different way. I’m just curious how you did that. And equally, the second part of that question would be, when you talk about sizing, and you’re incredible in what figs does in terms of accommodating so many different body types and shapes and sizes. What that does for you from an inventory standpoint? Because I think a lot of small businesses, certainly at the onset, are so scared of having inventory just sitting on their shelves because they don’t know which units are going to move first.

 

Heather Hasson  24:55

So I think we are fortunate in the position that we are in a uniform business, right? So we could have a long shelf life if we need to, right? So it doesn’t go out of style. We’re not going to go out of style.

 

Megan  25:06

So more timeless designs then are key. So it doesn’t feel like you’re not going to have a puff shoulder, cool like on trend, scrub style. You’re keeping something that will work no matter what.

 

Heather Hasson  25:17

And if we do, we buy a smaller run. So something is on trend, we buy, you know, obviously a smaller run of that. And we buy specific to something, if we believe, for example, wide leg, right? If we know that in Texas, wide legs going to be more popular, we just kind of focus, focus on, on that region, for that specific style. But I think going back to the colors, that has to be innate, and it has to come from within. Like I had a real issue with the colors in hospitals. So what was a hospital standard of color really bothered me? Why I didn’t like the mix. I think something should be, let’s say we have a graphite man. Our graphite is heathered. Heathered is dying 50% of the yarns and not dying the other 50% so it gives a softer gray look.

 

Megan  26:07

And it feels more textured. And, yeah, exactly, multi dimensional.

 

Heather Hasson  26:11

Yeah, so I think in order to elevate healthcare professionals, they can’t have something that’s flat, right? And that’s just boring standard gray that blends in, you know, it just drab, yeah? So that was a big issue for me, and the hospitals pushed back for many, many, many years, and I said, Okay, it’s not going to come from the top down, but it will come from the bottoms up. And that’s how we built our business, from from the bottoms up, right? So the health care professionals are saying, we want the graphite, we want the graphite, right? And so eventually, then we get the call from the hospital saying, cool, we’re gonna we’re gonna work with you, and we want the graphite, right? Our healthcare professionals will allow them to wear a graphite instead of our standard gray.

 

Megan  26:51

It really is cutting through a lot of red tape, in a way that you probably wouldn’t have thought about beforehand, even if you’re just talking about color considerations in hospitals, but you’ve made a choice to really connect with your customer in a way that feels personal, and because you were goal oriented on something that was helping in a tremendous way globally and having a ripple effect, that’s, I think, why it ended up yielding so much interest and success. Because I want to hear about for you when you decided to do your first round or have series A or B. What was that like? The first time you went from friends and family, investing in your handbag company to then bootstrapping, you know what you you guys were doing at the beginning, to realizing you needed to scale. How were you going to scale without capital? And what that was like, who you went to and how you ended up doing that first raise.

 

Heather Hasson  27:39

That first race was very, very, very difficult. I think we had over 200 people say, what the heck are you doing? It was not even just like a nice note. It was like, Absolutely not. You know, it was like, no way.

 

Megan  27:55

They couldn’t buy into the story, the vision. Yeah, no apps. It was like, Absolutely not ever these in person or over the phone? Both? They were both, oh, man.

 

Heather Hasson  28:04

Yeah, most of it at the time was in person so.

 

Megan  28:06

Yeah, well, that even feels worse, because you’re using all the charm in the room and it’s not working.

 

Heather Hasson  28:11

Yeah, and I really thought that, like I at that time, I was like, You’re, you’re making a big mistake because you, you don’t understand the value of what a uniform can do to a healthcare professional, and you’re not getting you’re not getting it, and then that means you’re a shitty investor, because you’re not understanding another person’s lens, which that’s your job. Yeah, it was Trina, and I was a lot of no’s. And then we finally got a yes, and we raised our first round. I mean, a couple million for figs.

 

Megan  28:38

What were you using it towards? Was it towards marketing. Was it towards building inventory? What was the usage that people have a real learn of how you can take that and turn it into $2 billion plus.

 

Heather Hasson  28:50

We used a lot of it towards inventory. You know, for for people starting a business, try to negotiate, obviously, with your manufacturers, to get a longer lead time right before your net terms, before you have to pay. So in the beginning, when I didn’t have any money, I negotiated with our facilities or factories. I said, look, I don’t have any money, and but you got to believe in this. And they did, and they fronted the capital for a year of production. And that’s how, actually, figs was started, like I didn’t have any money. So the our manufacturers, they said, you know what? Like, I really believe in your vision, I believe in what you’re doing. Will front you for a whole year, and they did.

 

Megan  29:31

That is massive. How do you still work with those same manufacturers?

 

Heather Hasson  29:35

Yeah, we still work with the same manufacturers. I mean, many, many more.

 

Megan  29:39

But yes, wow, that’s great. Well, I also love just the loyalty in that, because they believed in you. They were they were incentivized because they wanted it, but they believed in your vision from the beginning, it suddenly becomes really personal.

 

Speaker 1  29:58

The large question that a lot of people listening will probably ask is, how do you get someone to buy into your vision? How do you get someone to believe in the thing as deeply as you do? Because, as you’re saying, you went through so many no’s like an auditioning actor before you heard yes. But what makes that yes happen is that just timing. Is that the right connection? Is that stars in alignment? Or is there something that changed in how you conveyed your vision?

 

Heather Hasson  32:48

You know, I think for figs, it was a number of things. It was proof of concept, right? I think with investors, you have to show proof of concept. And sometimes people show, okay, this is,  what the TAM is. This is what the total addressable market is. I am not. I don’t come from the background the School of Business School at all. And I don’t believe necessarily in Tams for myself, because I think that you could always create your own total addressable market, right? You can create it. And that’s the same concept of creating the world you want to live in, right? So everybody’s like, oh, the TAM is too small for scrubs. And I’m like, that is the most ridiculous comment. It’s not too small. It’s actually massive, because you’re not including, you know, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, you’re not including the under scrubs, you’re not including the socks. You’re not including the socks, you’re not including soup to nuts, soup to nuts, and you’re thinking of it in a very small way, yeah, two micro, two micro. And I think entrepreneurs should not think about like, how do I buy into the TAM? But how do I, how do I create my own Tam?

 

Megan  33:55

Yeah, expand it beyond what people can wrap their heads around. Because, of course, no one would have thought that we were going to then be facing a pandemic, and how figs showed up for that, where it had just been scrubs, if you looked at the TAM, you weren’t thinking about masks at the onset, and then suddenly that ends up being a very vital part of how the entire world was navigating through this. Can you talk a little bit about what happened when the pandemic began, and how you guys showed up in that moment?

 

Heather Hasson  34:25

Sure, yeah, that was, um, wow, yeah, I started seeing it in December, and then it hit really hard in March of 2020, where were you I was in? Or was I, I think I was in Vietnam actually at the time.

 

Megan  34:42

Doing volunteer work or doing work with the business.

 

Heather Hasson  34:45

No work. I was with our manufacturers. Oh, yeah, okay. And I’m like, okay, something, something is going to happen here really quickly, because we’re in healthcare, and we see everything right, and we’re in communication with healthcare professionals globally. So we know we have our. You know, finger on the pulse. I’m like, Okay, this is, this is going to get serious really quickly.

 

Megan  35:05

But so when you hear this news, and you’re in Vietnam and you’re at the factory, is Trina with you? Do you call Trina? Do you leave? What do you end up doing in that immediate moment when you recognize we’re gonna have to action something, and you’re kind of figuring it out in real time, I think, as the rest of the world was, but you know, it directly affects your business and how you can show up for your customer.

 

Heather Hasson  35:24

Yeah, I think we were a little bit ahead of the normal commercial world, since we were so in tune with healthcare, but we didn’t realize the magnitude of what was going to happen. Nobody did right? So it was honestly our partnering with our manufacturers. It was partnering with anybody who we knew to get our masks to healthcare professionals. I mean, I we had calls saying I’m using a mask eight times and I’m putting it in the oven to sterilize it, and my institution’s not helping us out. Oh my gosh, they couldn’t help them out. And it was our duty as a company to protect and to provide gear for healthcare professionals, right? They’re on the front lines, right? And so we just did everything we could to get hundreds of 1000s of masks to healthcare professionals. We just gave them that for free. We made oxy pulses. So that was a huge thing, too.

 

Megan  36:15

The pulse oximeters, yeah? Oh, interesting. I didn’t know you did that.

 

Heather Hasson  36:19

Yeah, that was a that was a really big deal, because with the breathing and healthcare professionals were handing them out to patients. So we gave them, we gave them a ton, and then we said, give these out to patients so they would know when to come to the hospital if they need to come to the hospital again. But yeah, and I mean, it was the entire company was amazing, and we really just were working 24 hours a day for quite some time, for what, two years, year and a half.

 

Megan  36:42

Wow, I mean, it’s just, I think for anyone who’s listening, they have to feel so inspired by what you’ve created, by knowing that one moment, one observation of something can end up changing the trajectory of your whole life, where you build something and have a robust team, but also that you’re continuing to pivot to the needs of what the company wants, and also out playing and over delivering on what the expectation is, even for your investors. And so speaking of that, what was it like to take FIGS public?

 

Heather Hasson  37:17

It was awesome. It was honestly a lot of work, I think to be able to get to a place of like, okay, we are taking our company public is an incredible milestone, even though it’s, I mean, it’s, it is grueling, it is very difficult, and it looks easy, obviously from the outside, right. Oh, you made tailored scrubs. You had a great brand. Oh, you went public first. Female founders go public. Great. But there have been, like, you know, major hardships along the way, and there still are, right and.

 

Megan  37:51

What type of hardships would you be comfortable sharing so that people know that it’s not just an easy road.

 

Heather Hasson  37:57

One that was actually that really, really got me was we were in a terrible, terrible lawsuit.

 

Megan  38:03

Oh, gosh.

 

Heather Hasson  38:04

Yeah, and I think you know, I was being personally sued as well, for everything my company was being sued. And it was like, Are you gonna lose everything? Hmm, and you can, yes, you can.

 

Megan  38:18

Do you feel more resilient after having gone through that, because I will say, you won.

 

Heather Hasson  38:23

And we won.

 

Megan  38:25

You fought that fight and you won, so in some ways coming out of that, because I think every entrepreneur, in ways big or small, are going to deal with things that feel like battles or criticism or scrutiny or legal or what have you. And how do you stay the course through that, as opposed to just going, what is the point? They’re coming for me, how did you how did you stay the course? Why did you choose to fight the fight, and how did you feel coming out of it with a win?

 

Heather Hasson  38:51

I just think about being a giant killer sometimes, right? Like David.

 

Megan  38:58

I just slaying dragons, like.

 

Heather Hasson  39:00

In the sense of, like, right? Because, like, the people that were suing us, they were the Giants, right? They were the Goliaths. We were the Davids. Yeah, David and Goliath, Goliath, right? And I move on very quickly. So it’s like, okay, next then go, I mean, I think everybody has to be resilient in order to be on this earth. You have to be, you have to be pliable in some, you know, fashion, yeah, but yeah, you just move on to the next thing go.

 

Megan  39:22

Yes, onward, next. Yeah. I mean, that’s huge. And so now, as you’ve you know, stepped out of a more formalized role, but you’re still in the weeds and in the granular for figs. What are you working on now?

 

Heather Hasson  39:34

Well, about two years ago, I started to see healthcare professionals having an issue with certifications and education, and I started a company in healthcare education, and we have not launched yet, and we’re about to launch. We’re in beta, and basically we came out with a new way for healthcare professionals to get certified. We track and manage your certifications, so it’s healthcare professionals learning from each other instead of learning, necessarily even from a textbook or from a third party. So a specific example, actually, that just happened the day, which was pretty cool here in the United States, when you have a baby, and sometimes our OB guys, right? They are protocols to cut up. And in Colombia, you cut laterally, and that’s their protocol there. And so we’re watching these two surgeons talk on our platform. They’re like, why do you do this? I’m like, Well, this is why. This is the research. This is the papers.

 

Megan  40:37

Wow.

 

Heather Hasson  40:38

And they’re like, okay, that is really fascinating to know that. So that’s just one micro example, but times that by millions.

 

Megan  40:46

Yes, with peer to peer learning and understanding that even in the cultural context of things, how much we can learn about what’s happening on the other side of the globe, even though you have the same profession.

 

Heather Hasson  40:56

Yes, and right now, I mean, we have 10,000 professionals on here. We’re watching, we’re learning, we’re iterating, and it’s really neat to see when healthcare professionals learn even just know protocols from state to state, or hospital to hospital or country to country, you’re finding a need. Yeah, we’re finding a need. And we didn’t do this. I actually just did this as a passion project because I didn’t want to start another company. I just zero desire. I’m like.

 

Megan  41:21

Why does every female entrepreneur that I talk to says that, and yet they do because, like, no, no. Then this is it. Then I’m done. And they’re like, I kind of got the bug, but I see something else I can do and be helpful with. So let’s do that too.

 

Heather Hasson  41:33

Yeah, I think I can’t, first of all, for me, I can’t sit still. I always have to be doing something, and I always have to be solving for a problem, because that’s just how my mind works. If I’m not solving for something, I feel like I’m worthless. So I think this is a very, very big issue in healthcare, and my job is to okay, how do I help healthcare professionals? How do I be their biggest cheerleader? How do I give them time back so they can have better patient outcomes, right? And so selfishly, so I’m a patient too, right? So I can live longer and live healthier and live the best life ever. How do I do that for Heather, make sure all our healthcare professionals are taken care of? So this new company is amazing, and it’s called Aug it’s called Aug health, and we’re super excited to launch it, and I think it’s going to make a massive difference in healthcare education.

 

Megan  42:20

Well, well done. I think this is going to be illuminating for so many people, and also just a good reminder that you don’t have to have some revolutionary idea that is reinventing the wheel to be able to see a hole in the market, to recognize where you can be additive in a way that’s not just going to be profit building, but is going to really be fulfilling on a level that you can rest well at night knowing that your purpose has really added to someone else’s sense of worth and how they show up in their job and filled a need in a different way. And I think it’s really profound, what you what you guys have been able to create so well done.

 

Heather Hasson  43:00

Oh, thank you so much, Megan.

 

Megan  43:08

Next week, we’re talking to a founder who bootstrapped a wait for it hair tie business and turned it into an $87 million beauty brand.

 

Next Guest  43:19

We were profitable year one. I mean, that’s what happens when you don’t hire a graphic designer. No, I’m not.

 

Megan  43:30

Can you guess who it is? See you next week.

 

CREDITS  43:40

Confessions Of A Female Founder is a production of Lemonada Media.  Created and hosted by Megan. Our producers are Kathryn Barnes and Hoja Lopez.  Kristen Lepore is our senior supervising producer. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Megan. Mix and sound design are by Johnny Vince Evans. Rachel Neel is our VP of new content and production, and Steve Nelson is our SVP of weekly content and production. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. There’s more Confessions Of A Female Founder with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content when you subscribe in Apple podcasts, you can also listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next week.