Figs as Fashion’s Next Workwear Trend? 

Dickies. Carhartt. Figs?

Fashion can be a fickle club of exclusivity and healthcare workwear has hardly ever been used as inspiration for the next season’s trends – until possibly now. 

Santa Monica-based Figs Inc. is nowhere near a start-up and its loyal following, ranging from students to healthcare professionals, has been interesting to observe: customers staying up until midnight to scoop the latest release, covetable colorways, silhouettes just as appropriate in the hospital as they are running errands, a high-end store (the company’s first) opened at Westfield Century City, collaborations with New Balance and a growing lifestyle segment. 

Take all of that in with the company’s multi-page ad in Vogue’s September issue and another in the New York Times, along with an expanding executive team pooling experience from Levi’s and Under Armour. The result has been the evolution of a modern performance brand that’s one part workwear and another part activewear.

“The next closest competitor [to Figs] continues to be about one-tenth our size, and how are we widening the moat?” CEO and co-founder Trina Spear said during a November earnings call. “We’re doing it with new product innovation, elevated quality. We’re engaging our customers. We’re advocating for them. We do remain the leader in the space and we’re going to continue to invest in widening the moat between us and everybody else.” 

Spear launched the business in 2013 with Figs Executive Chair Heather Hasson. Sales initially began out of Hasson’s car. Several years later they were pitching fashion editors at publications such as Women’s Wear Daily for coverage, in a move that offered a glimpse of their market positioning strategy.

In calendar year 2022, Figs generated net revenue of $505.8 million, which was a jump of nearly 21 percent from 2021. The company swung to a net loss of $9.6 million in 2022, compared to net income of $21.2 million on account of the pandemic-induced supply chain crisis, inflation and increasing inventory levels. However, the headwinds were viewed as short-term.

Figs as Fashion? 

To be clear, Figs management has never come out with explicit aspirations of becoming a “fashion brand.” At the end of the day, their focus and greatest growth potential is in healthcare. That drives their marketing decisions, brick-and-mortar strategy and category growth. 

Still, a look elsewhere in the market offers a possible blueprint for Figs. Dickies workwear was and continues to be a staple for a number of professions (healthcare included) and Carhartt equally so. Both brands, along the way, also recognized the potential in producing product for fashion consumers. 

Dickies has a separate lifestyle division, which is focused on producing product “inspired” by the heritage workwear business. Carhartt has Carhartt Work in Progress, or WIP, focused on placing a fashionable spin on the workwear brand. 

There’s clearly appetite for more from Figs beyond scrubs. 

In 2021, Figs’ first year as a public company, the lifestyle or non-scrub business was 13 percent of overall revenue. 

Lifestyle prompted former Figs CFO Jeff Lawrence to say at the time “people should not sleep on the lifestyle aspect of this brand. We put a lot of investment in it. We’re getting a lot out of it. And we’ll continue to make sure that we invest there.” 

Fast forward to the most recently reported quarter, ended Sept. 30, and the non-scrub business is nearly 20 percent of overall sales. 

Recent releases include a wide leg cargo scrub pant, scrub jogger, Sherpa jackets and other outerwear, underwear and office basics. 

Bolstering a Growing Brand

Spear recently pointed out to analysts the company’s sitting on $232 million in cash and underscored the continued investment in the business, even with the macro challenges. 

Notably, plenty of the more recent years’ investments have been new hires.  

Figs in 2023 brought in former Under Armour Senior Vice President of Global Product Supply Jami Pinto as Figs chief global product and sustainability officer. 

On the design side, there’s Senior Apparel Designer Marilia Sio, who previously worked at Adidas on the Beyonce Ivy Park collections. The company’s director of outerwear design Maxi Roberts came from Canada Goose, where she was most recently senior design manager of product story and validation. 

The prior work experience of newer employees shows a bolstering of the Figs team’s expertise when it comes to apparel design and performance fabrications. 

Another major investment has been physical retail. Figs started as a digital direct-to-consumer business and last year’s expansion into brick-and-mortar in Century City is no anomaly. 

Figs is expected to open its second store in Philadelphia in the first half of this year, after having already signed a lease for roughly 4,000 square feet that will be used as a store and community event space.

“The largest, most iconic brands have stores, and our plan is to be a very large, very iconic brand for a long, long time,” Spear said. 

She referred to physical retail as “profitable billboards” that help to further boost online sales. 

“You try on your uniform in the store, you figure out your size and then you can kind of shop the next time online after understanding [sizing and fit],” Spear said. 

Staying a Market Disruptor

Figs’ success has led to new competitor labels, but much of the white space that existed a decade ago when the brand was just getting off the ground remains today. 

There’s a large part of the vendor market that Hasson back during the company’s first-ever earnings call in 2021 called the “old school players,” who strike licensing deals to make scrubs. 

“In that outdated model, the companies that are selling their product to the retailer, they don’t really understand the customer,” Hasson said. “They don’t have any data on the customer. They don’t even know their name. And then retailers… selling it to the consumer, these are stores and strip malls and out-of-way locations that close at 5 p.m…. That’s the way the industry existed for the last 100 years prior to us disrupting it.” 

Hasson said even with newcomers entering the competitive landscape, trying to replicate what Figs has done, the business has an advantage in the loyal following that took a decade to build. 

She also pointed to a reality during that same earnings call that rings true regardless of what segment of the garment industry a company hails from. 

“I think over the last 10 years, it was hard to build a brand. Over the next 10 years, it’s going to be even harder,” Hasson said. “And customers are smart. Healthcare professionals are even smarter, and they want that authentic connection with a brand that stands for something that they can stand behind. And so, we’re going to continue to show up for healthcare professionals and do things differently and be there as they actually are, on the frontlines right now. And our job is to support them in every way we can.”