WHY WE CREATED THIS PLATFORM

We started FIGS because extraordinary people who care for patients, cure diseases and save lives were being neglected by the apparel industry. If global companies could focus on empowering athletes, then surely we could build a company whose mission is to celebrate, empower, and serve the incredible community of healthcare professionals who are always serving others.

To advance that mission, FIGS created a healthcare apparel and lifestyle brand that helps healthcare professionals look, feel, and perform at their best. In doing so, we revolutionized the large and fragmented healthcare apparel market, we branded a previously unbranded industry, and we de-commoditized a previously commoditized product. Most importantly, we built a community and lifestyle around such an important yet underserved profession. 

Standing up for the healthcare community also means standing up for our integrity. That’s why we are presenting this platform, to engage with how FIGS is regarded in the public conversation. It’s a way for us to share our perspective in our own voice, speaking directly to our community. 

We knew starting out that doing things differently in an industry that had done things only one way would mean facing opposition from legacy players.

One of those is a company called Strategic Partners, Inc. (also known as Careismatic Brands), which is one of the largest legacy players in the medical apparel market. SPI generally takes commoditized scrubs that it licenses through third-parties and sells them through brick-and-mortar stores that serve as middlemen. FIGS is different. We design our own premium healthcare apparel and lifestyle products and sell them through a convenient online platform that is specifically tailored to the needs of healthcare professionals. Faced with this new competitive business model, SPI saw FIGS as a threat and is trying to intimidate us with a lawsuit.  

But the claims in that lawsuit are meritless and we are not going to let anyone stand between us and serving the community of healthcare professionals that we’re so passionate about.

Going forward, we will be speaking up with our perspective on this platform. That includes setting the record straight when it gets distorted. We invite our community to follow that discussion here. 

And to the many voices of encouragement, and especially to all the Awesome Humans who make up our community, we start by simply saying thank you.