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
I want to say 350 at headquarters.
Honestly, I still am in the minutia. I mean, so I'm not CEO anymore of 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 a really hard skill set to master, but I think it's key for success.
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.
And if we do, we buy a smaller run. So if something is on-trend, we buy, you know, obviously a smaller run of that. And we buy specific, too, of something if we believe, for example, wide leg, right? If we know that in Texas, wide leg's going to be more popular, we just kind of focus on that region for that specific style. Yeah.
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 and our graphite's heathered. Heathered is dyeing 50% of the yarns and not dyeing the other 50%.
So it gives a softer gray look. And it feels more textured and multidimensional. Yeah. So I think in order to elevate healthcare professionals, they can't have something that's flat, right? And that's this boring standard gray that blends in, you know, it's 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 the bottoms up, right? So the healthcare 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 going to work with you and we want the graphite, right?
Our healthcare professionals will allow them to wear graphite instead of our standard gray.
That first raise 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.
It was like, absolutely not. And were these in person or over the phone?
Most of it at the time was in person. So, yeah.
And I really thought that. At that time, I was like, you're making a big mistake because you don't understand the value of what a uniform can do to a healthcare professional and 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. It 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.
We used a lot of it towards inventory, you know, 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, our factories. I said, look, I don't have any money, 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 our manufacturers, they said, you know what? Like, I really believe in your vision. I believe in what you're doing. We'll front you for a whole year. And they did. That is massive. Do you still work with those same manufacturers?
Yeah, we still work with the same manufacturers. I mean, many, many more, but yes. Yes. Yes.
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 necessarily.
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 underscrubs. 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, too micro. Too micro. And I think entrepreneurs should not think about, like, how do I buy into the TAM, but how do I create my own TAM?
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