Heather Hasson
speaker
81 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Heather Hasson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Honestly, I still do think I'm in the minutiae. 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.
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, how do you know FIGS?
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 a terrible cook. I can't cook anything, but I'll bring you lemonade or something like in the juice world. I could do that. Great. But you can teach me something probably.
No, I totally agree. I think, you know, when you take something that's so simple in your everyday life 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. Yes.
He took something so simple that you see every single day, but 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. Yeah. But yeah, in terms of figs, that's exactly, you know, what we did over 13 years ago is we took something that was like a commodity and like decommoditized it.
Well, I think so. Since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a surgeon. Okay. And what attracted you to that? 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 an incredible surgeon. But when I was in school, I did poorly. I mean, obviously, organic chemistry is impossible. Anatomy... It was my favorite course.
And I just didn't do well. I got all Ds. 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 a doctor. So I gave up. And when I graduated University of 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.
I didn't have any money. I didn't come from money. So 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 bag company. Back up.
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 zero. Mm-hmm. Zero, zero. 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 are beautiful. They were gorgeous. What kind of bags were they? They were like just giant handbags. They were big, oversized handbags. Beautiful.
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. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's okay. I mean, I was super young and he was a 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 my business partner passed away. I was in the hospital for a really long time with him and I just needed a break. And so then I went over to Kenya and then I started going to 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 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. So you didn't just go and buy them.
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. I can sew, but not well.
Yeah. And so the feedback from the surgeons, the nurses, they were just like, I can't believe you did this. We've never felt like we were on part of a team before. And that's when the idea of FIGS came about. 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? Okay, so wait.
Yeah, it was how important it 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, massive 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.
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