How Figs Built a Billion-Dollar Brand for the People Saving Lives

20:40How many people are going to remember that two years later? Probably nobody. But like, that is the world we're living in. Like this, you know, we have no attention span. I don't, you know, like nobody does. But like, how do you break through. It was in 90 seconds. And I know that sounds like, oh, it's 90 seconds. No one watches 90 seconds anymore. Everyone watched like 90 something percent, some crazy stat. We have over like 4 million views. It has only been three days since we launched that film. Like, and it's not just, oh, I watched three seconds and bounced out. I watched all 90 seconds, which is insane on TikTok and Instagram.

21:15That's insane. No one has 90 seconds anymore.

21:18Trina Spear:It's really good. It's really good. No, because you want to know the story. Yeah. You want to be a part of that. You want to feel something again. In those early days before you had this absolutely stratospheric rise and you were selling scrubs during shift change out of your trunk, were there pieces of feedback and insight that you gleaned in those early days that really helped shape the trajectory of the company? Definitely on the product. I think there was very key insights. Where are you holding your surgical scissors? Like where are you putting your wedding ring? Like what type of zippers do you need to hold and secure your tools?

21:56So that was a key one. I think on the fabric side, like you don't have time, right? You're, when you're not working 12 hour shifts, when you're not working for three, four, five, six days a week, you know, these shifts are long. You're with your family and your friends. You're not wanting to drive to some random store in the middle of nowhere. Like you don't want to do that. So like, you know, time was a really big thing we needed to solve for. So, you know, everything, even on our e-commerce experience, it needs to be fast. We're not solving for you like scrolling. That's not our person, right?

22:27Like some companies they're solving for like, we want you to scroll and have fun and discover. Like we're not solving for discovery. We're solving for you getting your uniform so that you can go to work into your job. And how can we make that as easy and as quick as possible? So it's a different thing than other companies. And then just this concept of celebration. The biggest celebration from their job is like someone bringing pizza to the break room. Like that's it. Like pizza in the break room. That's like, oh, we got your back. And so we knew that we just needed to like up that to like the sky.

23:05Like how do we take that? Like who's really showing up for you and celebrating you and inspiring you and reminding you that you're a badass. So that even went to like, you know, we have inside of all of our products, we have inspiring quotes that say like, just saving lives, NBD, and things like that. And so remind you, like, you're a freaking badass. And like, we're going to tell you that till the end of time. Like during COVID, everyone like clapped at like 7pm, right? And then they stopped, they stopped clapping. And so it's our job to like clap around the clock for the rest of time.

23:38Trina Spear:It's one thing to speak about this in a sort of like theoretical, high-minded way, right? About keeping the spirit of community alive. Initially, you had it in this very direct one-to-one fashion, and then the company scales in this enormous way. And it can be harder to retain that one-to-one connection. You're doing it through the films, for sure. You're doing it through the small touches. How else are you reflecting back to this community that you are really connected to them? You got to be on the ground. We do activations and events. And we have a 600 person ambassador program around the world.

24:12These are like real relationships. You know, people joke like that I don't have many friends, but all of my ambassadors, all of my healthcare professionals are my best friends. Like they're calling me when they're like getting a new job, when they're bringing up with their boyfriend, like it's real. Right. And so I think it's that it's the authenticity, like you can't pay for it. Like you can't buy it. Like you can't, uh, it's, you can't replicate those 14 years of getting to know these people on a really deep level and then continuing that. And it's conversations. It's like continuous conversations.

24:48Yes. How can we show up and how can we serve you like from a brand perspective? Sure. But it's like, what's going on? How are you doing? Like, are you okay? Like, especially post-COVID, like the mental health strain and like the PTSD that this community went through. Like, these are my friends. Like, are you okay? It's like, okay, you need PPE. You need more, you know, protective equipment so that you can do your job. But we worked with a partner to get therapy for all of our healthcare workers. And now we have an advocacy group and a lobbying group in DC and partnered with the Lorna Breen Foundation fighting for better mental health support.

25:22Like, so it's like really holistic. It's like, what's going on? What do you need? I'm talking to you all day. I mean, I also do my job, but like a part of my job is like this and it's really fulfilling. Like it, it's like my life's work, right? So like, how do we understand at that level so we can continue to show up?

25:43Trina Spear:I think that's the thing that's like been coming up as you're talking about this. Like you're speaking to it so beautifully and it's inspiring. And I'm like, okay, I feel like we're also like bearing the lead a little bit here. And that like, you're the CEO of the company and you are handling so much of the tactical details, right. That are required to actually make a business a success and to scale it and to keep it successful. But you have this sense of purpose. That's a big ask. How are you portioning out your time? How do you balance that? Yeah, and I think they're like totally intertwined and like serve each other.

26:19Like you can't have like an operationally excellent business without fully understanding what your customer needs, right? So like, I think they're like fully - One informs the other. One informs the other. And so we have strategy and we have strategic pillars and we have goals and metrics and we, you know, we're a public company. We have shareholders. We have all of these things. And I would say a bit compartmentalizing and saying, okay, now I'm doing an investor call or now we have earnings. And it is a little bit of a different headspace. But at the end of the day, like, first and foremost comes healthcare professionals.

26:53If we get that right, everything else works. And you see that even in the last few years of like how we have continued to grow and scale the company and do it with a disciplined approach around growth and profitability. you can't do that without putting healthcare professionals front and center at every seat at the table and then building around them. So building the strategies around them, building a product innovation strategy around them, building a marketing engagement strategy around them, and building an infrastructure operationally excellent pillar around them. And so that's how I think about the business.

27:29Everything flows from that and being super clear about what we do. I would say a lot of businesses get unfocused, right? And I think what's been a part of our success is that it's such a beautiful business because it's so simple. Really hard to replicate, but incredibly simple. We make one product line, the FIGS product line. We sell that all direct to consumer, whether it's on our site or in our stores. We focus obsessively about this community and serving them once again with great product and great campaigns and storytelling. At the root of it, it's simple. whether it's investors or whether it's even some people on the team, whenever anyone tries to kind of sway us from that, it's just about getting back to what this is all about, who we're serving, and then how we're going to do it, which once again is super simple.

28:18Product storytelling, simple.

28:20Trina Spear:You could see early on that there was a community in dire need of being serviced in a different kind of way, that there was a distribution model that was ripe for disruption, that you could decommoditize, commoditize the industry, right? But I would imagine also that whenever you're trying to do something new that's truly disruptive, there's pushback. So who in your life was telling you this was crazy? Oh, yeah. I mean, early on, you know, I had a really good job. I was working on Wall Street, one of the most prominent, you know, asset management companies in the world, Blackstone. You know, I went to Harvard Business School, as you mentioned.

28:59So when I was like, okay, I'm thinking about leaving to join Heather, to co-found this business, to disrupt the scrubs industry, most people in my life, my friends, my family were like, what's a scrub? And like, what do you, wait, you're going to leave Blackstone to go sell scrubs? Like, that's insane. And so that was the initial pushback. I would say on the investor front, like it was really hard to raise money. I went back through some emails recently because I was like, oh, I think I met this person. And I found like the amount of no's from the investment community was pretty, I mean, it was a lot.

29:38I mean, people talk about 100 no's to get to a yes. I mean, I think it was like 1 ,000 no's to get to a yes. Yeah. And we were, it was just really hard. But I think that's also what drove us to be incredibly capital efficient and build a real company that's super profitable. It wasn't like, oh, we'll just go back to the markets and raise money if things don't go well. And so that forced us to be, to build a real business.

29:59Trina Spear:When you are out there and you are trying to raise money because you need the capital to be able to scale in the ways that you want and need to be able to, and you're getting no after no after no. Did you ultimately in that moment give up on trying to raise money and decide we're going to do this another way? No, I mean, we've raised a few million dollars and we did that. But at the same time, we knew how hard it was and we needed to focus on the business. If you're spending all your time raising money, it's a huge time suck. You have no time to build a business. We had people that believed in us, right?

30:31But they didn't believe in the industry and what we were doing. They just believed in us, which is amazing. People I'd worked with in the past at Blackstone and City and people that Heather had in her network. And so we had that, right? But at the same time, like we had only raised about$10 million at capital. I mean, at this point, we've generated, I think, over$3 billion in revenue and$400 plus million in EBITDA, right? So very quickly in our journey, we're breakeven, I would say like year three, year four, year five. And then by year six, we were like off to the races from a profitability standpoint.

31:07So we did raise some money, but like not in the way you think about all these VC backed brands that raise hundreds of millions of dollars, we only ever spent$10 million to get to where we did. We had an investor who bought out our other investors in 2017, 2018, and then he put$50 million of capital on the balance sheet. We didn't touch that. So that was just there and we could sleep at night, right? But that's what that did.

31:35Trina Spear:This culminated in some ways in your 2021 IPO. you and Heather were the first two female co-founders to IPO in the New York Stock Exchange, right? Yes. I mean, that's like at once, like a really incredible feather in your cap and also like a little frustrating to hear, frankly. You're like, yeah, but also like the first. Yeah. Okay. Can you take me back to that day? Yeah. I mean, it was really, it was really exciting, You know, and I think what made it the most exciting is that we brought about 150 healthcare professionals to the New York Stock Exchange. They were on the podium with us ringing the bell.

32:16And so it wasn't really about us. It was about them. And that was the culmination of putting this community on the map in this way. And it was during COVID. And so, you know, it was May 2021. So they were going through so much. And the company, we had to reset the bar to another level to show up for them. And so there was so much happening at that time. And it was a really exciting moment of all the hard work of this team over the previous, you know, eight plus years to get to that point. And so it's kind of cool to take your company public. I'm not going to lie. People always talk about the stresses of that, but it's pretty exciting.

32:53We had a huge party and with all of our healthcare professionals. So that's what made it so special. It was us and them together in front of the world in that way. It was pretty awesome.

33:04Trina Spear:On a personal level, were there things that you had to do to level up as a CEO as you prepared to take this company from its own private venture to being public? I would say like that's just been part of my journey since day one. Like I love feedback. Like I love criticism. I don't view it as that. I don't internalize all of it because some of it's bullshit. So you got to like be like, nope, that's not real. That's not true. But like, oh, that's interesting. Or like there's a nugget there that's like, really, I'm going to take that. and I'm going to internalize it, and I'm going to get better.

33:36And so, like, my whole thing is, if you can get 1 % better every single day, and people talk about this, it's not new, but like, imagine what you could do in the next 20 years. And so, I'm maniacal about like, continuously improving as a person, as a CEO, as a leader, like making people feel like they can do anything. Like, how do you believe in someone more than they believe in themselves? I think we did do that for this community, but we also do that. Like, my job is to do that for the team. Like, How do you continuously show up and get better? And there's so much stuff that happens that you're really able to do it at this insane rate.

34:10So I would say the IPO and the months leading up to the IPO, you have all these people around you, like bankers and lawyers being like, no, that sucks. That's great. You're able to really hone in on the story and what this was all about. But I even through that process got more convicted because people were trying to tell us what this company was and who we were and what we were all about. because they were just like slapping other S1s and other business models on us. And I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. This is who we are. So like actually during that process, it wasn't just like, how do I get better?

34:41It was like, how do I remind all these people that don't know us who we are, what we're all about and how we're gonna go change the world. And so that was like an extra boost of like, you guys don't really know. So you'll teach me some things, but I'm gonna teach you some things too.

34:57Trina Spear:I mean, okay. Where do you think that conviction and self-possession comes from? I mean, do you never suffer from self-doubt? I think when you work as hard as I have, right? Like, I'm not married. I don't have kids. Like, I work really hard. And like, when you work really hard at something in an obsessive, crazy, maniacal way, and you prepare, like you prepare for the opportunities that come your way. Like you are pissed when people doubt you. You are pissed when somebody tells you that's not the way it should be this. And you're like, and you firmly know it, like in every sense of your being, like, you know that they're wrong.

35:35You're not going to let them come into your company and do something the way you don't think it should be done. Cause you know, with every ounce of your being that like, you're wrong. Right. And so like, and I founded this freaking company. Like, I'm not going to let you come in and change what we're doing, given how big our mission is. Like, I'm not going to let you do that. We have work to do. We have to go change this industry. We got to make sure that everyone's focused on these people so that we can get more healthcare professionals involved and in this profession so we can all be healthier and live longer.

36:10And this is big. This is big stuff. You sit at a desk and run some numbers. You sit at a desk and make some documents. You're not saving lives. You don't know what this is all about. So like, yeah, I know more than you about what I do.

36:31Trina Spear:CEO meets motivational speaker. I don't know about that. I love it. No, I'm like, I forgot I was interviewing you for a second. I thought I was just like an audience member. I'm like, yeah. Wow. Gas me up. This is actually the best interview. I don't think I've shared like 80 % of what I'm talking about with anyone in my life. So you clearly know what you're doing and are doing something right. Like, I don't think I've ever said any of this to anyone. Oh, music to an interviewer's ears. Thank you so much. It's definitely you and not me. As you were moving toward the IPO, you also had this other insane thing going on, which is that you were in the midst of what turned out to be a four-year lawsuit.

37:11Trina Spear:It was essentially more or less a false advertising suit that was levied against you, yeah? Yeah, I mean, in the end of it, it was basically like they were suing us for the whole basis of the company. It was almost like they were suing, like everything that we had done was a lie. I mean, that was essentially the lawsuit. There was so much more to it than, oh, it's just this lawsuit. I mean, you know, people get sued all the time, but this was way deeper and truly personal because they were suing us for hundreds of millions of dollars, not just the company, but also myself and Heather personally.

37:44And so this was a four-year lawsuit started in 2019. It was through the IPO. Actually, they threatened to put an article in a very high profile. I won't say which one it was, a very high profile newspaper the morning of our IPO, right as we were going to ring the bell. And, you know, we were able to not have that happen. But it was super stressful. I mean, it changed the course of my life in the best ways.

38:10Trina Spear:What did it teach you about yourself and your metal? I think, you know, there's so much pressure when you're in these situations to settle, actually. You know, companies are sued all the time and there's this pressure that you're going to spend all this money and it's going to take so much time. And I would say up until that point, we did. When things come up, you're like, okay, you let the lawyers deal with it and you settle. And I think what I learned about that is that you shouldn't settle and that you should fight for what's right. And when you haven't done anything wrong, which we hadn't, you have to stand up for yourself.

38:47And integrity isn't just like standing up for yourself when something's not right. Actually, standing up against when someone's doing something wrong so that that doesn't happen to somebody else. Right? And this company had sued a whole slew of companies before us. And many of them went out of business. I mean, it's actually devastating. All these littler scrubs companies went out of business because this company was a bully and used litigation to take companies out. And we were the first company to say, that's not going to happen. You're not going to bully us. And thank God we had been successful enough to fight it.

39:26We had enough resources to actually fight them. spend four years in an incredibly intense and, you know, insane lawsuit that ended in a three and a half week trial. We were able to do that and go up against the Goliath of the industry and fight them and win so that somebody else wouldn't have to have that happening. They went bankrupt after that and the CEO got fired. So, so much had happened post that where I was like, yeah, like you can't just do that to the startup, to the company trying to innovate and disrupt an industry because you took your hand off the wheel. You were on the back porch collecting checks, not actually serving people.

40:08You don't even know that your customers' names. Yeah. You didn't deserve to be the leader in the industry.

40:12Trina Spear:Was there any piece of you or your team that did want to at any point go in the direction of settling versus fighting this thing out? Oh yeah. And there were times that I was like, This is too hard. I won't go into all the details of how they tried to really hurt us personally, with our company, with our team. I was on the stand for three days. This was insane and intense. There were times all the way leading up to jury selection where we were like, maybe we should settle. But I think in the end, credit to my board. My board was like, no, we know we didn't do anything wrong. We need to go up against this to prove for the rest of time that you can't, with figs.

40:54And so that was like this moment of like reminding yourself who you are, what you're made of, what you stand for, not letting this happen, not just to us, but to anybody. It wasn't

41:06Trina Spear:right. It strikes me that there's another component of this whole journey that seems like it has to be so incredibly important, which is your relationship with your co-founder, Heather. Yeah. You didn't know each other prior. We did not. She came into your life with this idea you were connected by a mutual friend, any co-founder relationship, good or bad, somewhere in between. It's like a marriage, right? Like, what made you feel like, okay, I'm going to hitch my wagon to this woman? You know, I think Heather's a true visionary, creative genius person, but like, I didn't know all the things that we would go through together to get to this point where it is, to your point, a marriage.

41:45It is this incredible relationship, incredibly impactful. I don't even know how to describe it. There's not even words to describe this, you know, dynamic of like, we're for many years, like we it's us against the world. And like, how are we going to do what we believe is right? And this litigation was like that on steroids. But even we have similar values. We have this mission and we are fully, fully aligned on going after it. Not to say that over the years there haven't been disagreements or things that we aren't aligned on, but at the core of how we show up is this concept of Ubuntu, which I don't know if you know about, but it means like I am because you are, I am because we are.

42:31And like our success is like inextricably linked. And I think you have to have that mentality of like, if you're not good, you're not happy, you're not successful, you're not all the things that you need to be. I can't be what I need to be. And like now that's actually a value within the company. And it's really powerful because it's like, I don't have I don't have kids, but in congratulations. I don't know if that's like public. Oh, you noticed? Thank you. But like they say you're only as happy as like your most unhappy kid.

43:01Trina Spear:And that's like real. Like I'm not happy if Heather's not happy. I'm not happy if someone on my team isn't good. We need to make sure that like everybody is working together and you're working at your highest potential, your highest level so that I can do what I need to do. And she's just been such an incredible support. Like I remember during the lawsuit, like we were sitting there like for hours on end. And Heather has like ADD, like she's like cannot sit still for that long. And so she's like drawing during like the closing argument. And she turned to me and she's like, chisel, chisel. And I was like, what do you mean?

43:32And she's like, this is like Michelangelo. Like he chiseled to create the David and like this. And like in the end, it was like a masterpiece. And like, that's what's happening right now. Like we're just being chiseled. And like what will come out on the other end, like we're going to win. And I was like, that's just such a beautiful concept. And I think people should think about that. Like when bad, bad stuff's happening, like you're just being like crafted. into who you are meant to be on the other side.

43:57Trina Spear:Do you think figs is still being chiseled today? Yes, we're gonna be chiseled to the end of time. Well, it was funny because we had this event on Friday and Heather and I after the event and I was like, and you know, you notice things that weren't perfect. And I was like, do you ever, do you think anything ever gonna be like, you know, the perfect vision of what you think about? And she's like, no, that's like our story. Like it's always a bit imperfect, but that's what makes it so beautiful. The sound wasn't right at the beginning and we were talking to our community And I was like, yeah, but that's what makes it like awesome, right?

44:28Because people come up and, you know, and interact in a way that's really authentic. There's no space between us and everybody. And that imperfection is what creates that space. And, you know, this company, I was thinking about this too. Like, this is a company in our industry. They've relaunched their Instagram like 10 times because like they changed their collection. And then they, and it's like, no, like you can see all our flaws. Like go back to early days. Like it is not beautiful. Like it is not perfect. Right. Like, and I think that's just the story of like you continue one foot in front of the other, like, and it's never going to be perfect.

45:05But that's the beauty of it. And that's what makes it so it's messy. It's like, you know, it's a little unhinged at times.

45:14Trina Spear:But that's what makes it so great. Can you speak to one of those like early days, like let's say first year mistakes that ended up being kind of transformative for the company? One that like we've talked about is like the, the, we swapped the women's and men's inseam. And so we got the, all these emails that came in that was like my package. And it was from men being like, you know, their pants were too, the inseam was too short, which we were like, oh my God, this is crazy. And you were like, oh no, just go find Karen in radiology and you guys can swap. Exactly, exactly. And that was like a huge production issue, right?

45:48And it taught us about, you know, QC and ensuring our quality control. And now, you know, that was a huge learning that now we've implemented at the highest, highest level to make sure that never happens again. But that was a big mistake. And it was early on where we didn't have the capital to, you know, have that not be a little mistake. And we ended up having to donate product and, you know, reengineering the product from there. But every day, it's a little off. It's a little messy. It's a little this. It's a little that.

46:16Trina Spear:But that's what makes it so great. Given that you're talking about how limited people's schedules are, right, the fact that you need to be actually operating at a very high level of excellence so that you can get these healthcare professionals what they need in a timely fashion. These inseams show up. They're wrong. They can't wear them. Did it harm customer relationships? Or were you able to— Well, luckily, we didn't, like, have many at the time. This was, like, 2013. like we were very very very small company and so and I think that was like you know we were also selling scrub that collection out of our car and so we're like oh my god you know and and so we were able to to make it right and build those relationships literally one-to-one um because the company was so small at that point what's an imperfect thing about you that you would never change?

47:03Oh, there's so many perfect things. You know, people think that I'm like stubborn, right? And that I'm like pretty hardheaded, hardheaded about things. And some people say that I don't listen. They don't realize I listen more than they think. Like I really listen, but like being convicted on a mission and a vision, and I'm super proud that we haven't pivoted 10 times. Some people at companies are proud of the pivot. I'm super proud that we haven't pivoted. So I would say like that's an imperfection and sometimes it probably crosses that line. But I'd much rather live in myself, my own skin and be able to look in the mirror and be like, yeah, I believe that.

47:44Not let people drive my decision making too much and be a pushover. I don't know.

47:50Trina Spear:The pivot or the lack thereof is like part science, part art. Like do you have any advice in terms of an internal or external rubric for figuring out when to stay the course, when to recalibrate? I actually do have a framework. And because like the why and a lot of the what can't change, but the how can. So like the why, like why we're showing up every day, why we're doing this, who we're serving and the who can't change. This is what we need to do, right? This is what we need to do. How we get there, I'm actually pretty flexible on. so here are the things that like we won't change because I've hired new executives right and they're like you know I want to do all these things and I need to give them a framework no like you can never touch these things like these are figs isms like we actually put them on the board like these are figs isms like you cannot change them you know we've had a designer come in and say oh like I'm going to change how we do color drops like no you're not that's like a figs ism right but But on the margin, that's an interesting idea.

48:54That's the how. You can modify the how. How we get there. How we implement. How we execute. I'm always looking to get better. Bring me new process. That can shift. The why, never, and a lot of the what. I love that. Yeah.

49:14Trina Spear:That's a great answer. You're a delight. Thank you for being here. Oh, my God. This is awesome. Thank you for having me. And thanks to all of you for tuning in. Make sure you're subscribed to Shopify Masters so you never miss an episode. Until then, see you next time.