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Figs scrubs are meant to withstand high-pressure hospital visits and 12-hour operations. But yesterday, the DTC medical gear brand faced a different kind of stress test: a public trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
Overnight check-up: Figs raised $580+ million in its IPO after it priced shares at $22—higher than the expected range of $16–$19.
- Investors were ready to scrub in: The stock surged 36+% Thursday to close at $30.02, giving the company a market cap of ~$4.8 billion.
- Figs was the first IPO to sell shares to retail investors via Robinhood—and cofounders Heather Hasson and Trina Spear were the first women co-CEOs to take a company public.
The backstory: Hasson and Spear saw more room for digital disruption in scrubs than in toothpaste or suitcases. Most scrubs-makers sell via brick and mortar, without personalized branding—clearing the way for Figs to build a digital-first, millennial-friendly biz.
- 98% of Figs’s sales come from its website and app. Net revenue hit $263 million last year, up from $110.5 million in 2019, and Figs is profitable.
- As of March 31, Figs had 1.5 million active customers, 62% who were repeat shoppers.
Primary content providers: Among doctors and nurses, spots in Figs’s ambassador program are more competitive than a Mayo Clinic residency.
“They're not professional influencers who are paid to fake selfies,” Hasson told Retail Brew. They’re 250+ active medical pros who promote Figs gear between overnight shifts, a marketing move the team said is critical to its growth.
Upcoming rotations
No retailer hits the public market without plans to funnel its fundraise into future growth.
- In its S-1, Figs outlined opportunities from international expansion to a DTCification of other uniform apparel industries, like food service and construction.
- But the latter won’t come for at least five years, Hasson told us.
Current priorities? Expanding Figs’s assortment for healthcare workers. Spear told Retail Brew that despite its outsized online presence, Figs only holds 2% of US market share in the healthcare apparel category, which it pegged at $12 billion last year.
Increasing Figs’s share will require bigger pushes into 1) menswear, which generates 17% of revenue and 2) lifestyle products, to complement the 82% of revenue from core scrubs.
Looking ahead...Figs will have to meet incumbent scrubs players IRL eventually. Hasson said “nontraditional” offline retail experiences are coming soon—like pop-ups and experiential activations. “We do plan to be everywhere and anywhere a healthcare professional needs us to be.”—HL