Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYC and indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years, each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSC and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now, welcome, Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Today, we're talking about performance attire for a highly skilled profession that, over the last decades, has become more efficient, safer for end clients, and versed at deploying data for better outcomes. But their legions still show up to work every day in the same colorful frocks that their grandparents wore on the job. What profession, pray tell, am I talking about? Perhaps you thought of the floor traders of the New York Stock Exchange, who still daily don the colorful jackets they've sported for decades. Those outfits harken back to a time when slips of paper, a ticker, often an hour behind real-time data, and a verbal agreement shouted among thousands of other conversations decided the fate of an investor's fortune. Those imprecise tools have long since been replaced by an electronic order book, algorithmic-aided trading, and what some say is a sterile technological environment. But you'd be wrong in this instance if you thought I was talking about floor traders. Today, I'm talking about a profession where a sterile technological environment is the preferred setting.
Modern medicine has been improved and disrupted in so many ways, including MRNA vaccines, robot-aided surgical tools, and using a cell phone to power diagnostic equipment. All those examples, by the way, topics that we've tackled on prior episodes of this podcast. The healthcare professionals wielding these cutting edge tools typically are all wearing the same uniform, unceremoniously called scrubs. My dad wore them as a young resident in the 1960s and my current personal physician still wears them at his office at Mount Sinai Hospital. I even snagged a pair that I still wear as pajamas, scratchy to the skin as they sometimes are, when my two kids were born at Hartford Hospital on what seems like yesterday. The boxy V-neck tops and shapeless, drawstring bottom style isn't all that modern. The look was first popularized in the 1940s and remained unchanged until much more recently.
Joining us Inside the ICE House is the co-founder and co CEO of Figs, an apparel company that set out less than decade ago to do for the healthcare sector what Nike did for sportswear and Under Armour, partnered with Virgin Galactic, is doing for space suits. Our conversation with Trina Spear on Figs' growth from an idea to an NYSC listed company supporting healthcare workers and digitally disrupting the status quo is coming up, right after this.
Speaker 3:
Connecting the opportunity is just part of the hustle.
Speaker 4:
Opportunity is using data to create a competitive advantage.
Speaker 5:
It's raising capital to help companies change the world.
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It's making complicated financial concepts seem simple.
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Opportunity is making the dream of home ownership a reality.
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Writing new rules and redefining the game.
Speaker 9:
And driving the world forward to a greener energy future.
Speaker 10:
Opportunity is setting a goal.
Speaker 11:
And charting a course to get there.
Speaker 3:
Sometimes, the only thing standing between you and opportunity is someone who can make the connection.
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At ICE, we connect people to opportunity.
Josh King:
Our guest today, Trina Spear, is co-founder and co-CEO of Figs, which trades under the tickers symbol, FIGS, or Figs on the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to founding Figs, Trina held positions at Blackstone and Citigroup Global Markets. Welcome, Trina, Inside the ICE House.
Trina Spear:
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Josh King:
You and I were chatting a little earlier, it has been about a year since Figs-clad medical professionals danced in front of the New York Stock Exchange facade to mark your IPO. How has the year and being public gone for you and the company since ringing the bell that morning?
Trina Spear:
First off, the IPO was an incredible milestone for the company. We did bring about 60 healthcare professionals through the New York Stock Exchange. It was really a celebration of everything they've done, not only through this pandemic and leading us through as the frontline healthcare workers that really saved so many through this time, but our IPO really marked such an important time for them as the world really got behind them. Our job as a company is to continue to celebrate, empower, and serve them so they can go out and serve everyone else. So, it's been an exciting journey. Since we've gone public, I think, as a company, we've really put a spotlight on this community, and that was really what our IPO and being a public company was all about.
Josh King:
You and Heather Hasson founded Figs in 2013 to address a major shortcoming at the nexus of medicine and clothing. For the audience, can you explain the genesis of the company, that really stemmed from a coffee meetup between Heather and a friend of hers who came to the Java Joint straight from her office?
Trina Spear:
About 12 years ago, Heather was sitting with a friend of hers who's a nurse practitioner at Cedars-Sinai, and she showed up in these big, baggy, boxy scrubs. Actually, the size was on the back of the neck and Heather said to her friend, "What are you wearing?" Her friend said, "These are my scrubs," and Heather said, "Those are pretty bad." Her friend was complaining about how itchy and scratchy they were and not comfortable at all. Heather said, "Well, I'll go find you better scrubs. There's got to be a company that makes comfortable, functional healthcare apparel." She thought to herself, "There's these billion dollar companies, Nike, Lululemon, Under Armor, that are so focused on building amazing technical gear for athletes, what about the people saving lives? What about our healthcare community?" Her friend said, "Yeah, there's no company like that for healthcare and there's no company like that for scrubs." Heather said, "I'm the best shopper in the world, I'll go find you better scrubs," and so she went to one of these stores, there's 4,000 of them across the country, they were essentially medical supply stores.
Heather walked into one and there was a rack of black and a rack of navy and rack of white, and all these scrubs were sold next to bed pans and knee braces. It was just a pretty awful experience. At the time, not only the was the product bad, but the distribution model was really antiquated. How could we as a company really solve those problems and really not only create an amazing innovative product for this community, but also build an incredible experience by going direct online to healthcare professionals? And so, that's what we've done. But very early on, it's still our mission and what we do every day, is very much the same and truly authentic to showing up in the best way for the healthcare community.
Josh King:
So, Trina, while the origin story of Figs takes place in California, where Heather began actually altering scrubs, New York, where you are doing something completely different working in finance, your story begins in Miami, Florida. Did your interest in finance and entrepreneurship come from your parents?
Trina Spear:
My dad was an entrepreneur. He was in the building, the real estate industry, and so watching him build a business alongside my grandfather and now my brother's a part of that business, as well, so I think I saw entrepreneurship firsthand. That was an incredible thing, but I always wanted to do something bigger than myself. I think I always wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. I always wanted to create something tangible. Although I had this career in finance where I learned so much, and it was challenging a environment working on Wall Street, I felt like there was something more that I wanted to do. I always felt like building tangible products with a company would be my path, it just took me a little bit longer and I definitely got a lot of training along the way that helped, I think, in building this company.
Josh King:
You've referenced, I think, a line from one of my favorite films, 1992's A League of Their Own when describing your personal axiom, and I think Tom Hanks may have said it, if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. Where did your own drive to work hard and succeed come from?
Trina Spear:
Oh, I love that movie, first off. But yes, I think the line is, "It's the hard that makes it great." It was Geena Davis leaves and comes back to the softball game. I think that's what it's all about, if it was easy, everyone would do it. It's actually our top core value at Figs. It's not supposed to be easy. If you do the things others aren't willing to do, you can find an ability within yourself to do great things and achieve well beyond your imagination. I think building Figs or doing anything worthwhile is hard, and it's the hard that makes it great. It's those moments when you don't think you can go on and you dig to that one extra level within yourself and surround yourself with the best, most talented people which I try to do every day and we try to do as a company at Figs, that brings you to show up in the best way possible.
Josh King:
After heading north from Miami for an economics degree from Tufts and then getting a MBA from Harvard, you spent seven years working on Wall Street, initially at Citigroup, then up the street at Blackstone. How did those experiences prepare you to run your own company and continue the axiom from A League of Their Own?
Trina Spear:
Starting my career in investment banking, I started in 2005 at Citi and was in the analyst program from '05 to '07, and those were really tough years. I think there were more M&A deals done in those two years than ever before up until that point, and even now, I think. I did about 14 M&A deals in two years, which is kind of crazy. It's a lot of late nights, sleeping in your cubicle, Diet Cokes to stay going, and there's a lot of expectation. I think from a very young age, being in those rooms with management teams, being in those rooms with bankers and lawyers and people that were doing pretty massive transactions was an incredible experience, and definitely helped raising money and doing big deals here at Figs, having our own successful IPO.
But I think being a young person in finance is an incredible experience and I wouldn't trade it for anything. That's really what my investment banking and private equity experience was like prior to business school, and even going to Blackstone after, you're surrounded with the most talented people doing incredibly challenging work. That teaches you that takes it a lot, but it's well worth it. Driving towards really big goals and achieving them, in many ways, can define your career and help propel you not only to do great things, but also purposeful and meaningful work.
Josh King:
Now, you say you wouldn't trade it for anything, but eventually, you did trade it. How did you go from that program and that life to actually doing something completely different in your whole environment, by spending your weekends in a hospital parking lot hocking scrubs at 7:00 in the morning?
Trina Spear:
Everyone thought I was crazy. All my friends and business school, friends and family members said, "What? You're leaving Blackstone to go sell scrubs? What's a scrub?" I think having just a bit of a rebellious spirit and a contrarian view on what works for yourself, I think, is really valuable. Following the trend, following the herd, never gets anyone to do something interesting, and so it was those moments. I was still working at Blackstone, I would fly out to LA on the weekends, we would sell scrubs out of Heather's car. We were collecting cash on the sidewalk and it was very much the tale of two cities, I was in this fancy office on Park Avenue during the week, and then I was on a sidewalk outside of an emergency room. But just seeing the faces of healthcare professionals, doctors and nurses coming off of a night shift. We would go get coffees and hot cocoa and we would hand them free coffee and hot cocoa, and ask them about their scrubs and what they liked and what they didn't. That experience was just so incredible. They were so receptive to having something better.
I felt, and we still feel, like we're really solving a problem, and I didn't feel like that on Wall Street. I didn't feel like I was solving a big problem. Some days, I felt like I was just moving money around a table and didn't feel like this level of, "Okay, we're really solving a problem. We're really helping people," and that is something I wanted. I wanted to feel that way every day. And then I moved out to LA and Heather and I got a two-bedroom apartment. We had no furniture in our living room and that was basically our warehouse. So, we'd stacked up all the scrubs by color and size, by SKU. Put every package together and shipped it out, so we would chase FedEx trucks so we can get out the shipments for the day.
So, it was those times where you realize you don't know what's going to happen, but you know how you want to spend your time, you know how you want to live your life. I felt as though we were doing something for a group of people that deserved it more than anyone. Our awesome humans, which is what we call our healthcare professionals, deserve the world and we wanted to build something great for them.
Josh King:
How did you hear about what Heather was up to, and how did you guys actually come together and you decided to no longer come back to Park Avenue on Sunday night?
Trina Spear:
A mutual friend that I went to Harvard Business School went to undergrad with Heather and connected us. I had heard about what Heather was doing with scrubs and building a better product and I thought it was really interesting. I think we spoke on a Monday and I traveled out to LA on a Friday, and we talked about what she was doing. Originally, it was just I was going to help her with some of the business plan, financial model type of work. As I started learning more and learning more about the industry and learning more about this community, I just felt like this was so needed. Why didn't it exist? I remember Heather saying, she said to her friend, "What was the Nike of this industry? What's that company called? I'll go buy you those scrubs. What's it called? It should exist. What's it called?" Her friend's like, "That company does not exist," and it was like, "It should exist."
The best ideas are, I think, are very obvious. Even though everyone thought we were crazy, it was obvious that this should exist. I think the simplicity of what we do, the obviousness now of what it is, is what makes it so great. The best businesses are simple. Our businesses is complex in how we get there, but simple in what it is and how it would be served.
Josh King:
On an episode of Talks at Goldman Sachs, Talks at GS, you spoke with Goldman's Katie Koch, who's also been a guest of this show, about the journey to find investors to help scale the company. Can you talk a bit about how the company grew and the process that you guys went through to find capital?
Trina Spear:
Really early on, we knew that we knew we needed to raise money. This is a capital-intensive business, we do have inventory, and we felt as though we wanted to build something big. It was not easy raising money, I think for a few reasons. Number one, the investment community, and even today, are not our customers. Investors aren't healthcare professionals, so they didn't really understand the pain point. They're interacting with blood and liquids and they're in these environments that are really intense, do they really care? We kept coming back to as a human being. You want to look good, you want to feel good, and you want to perform it your best. At the heart of what we do at Figs, that's what we're solving. It was really about telling a great story, helping them understand how this industry evolved, why this hadn't been done before, and really getting people on board with our vision, how we were going to disrupt and completely change an industry.
We got a lot of nos, but I think it's the more nos you get, the closer you get to yes. Actually, by getting those nos, it helped us really understand the core of what we were doing in a bigger way. We had raised 2 million at our initial round and that got us off the ground, and then we raised a bit more from there. Eventually, had one investor, Thomas Tull, who came in as a larger investor and he became our majority shareholder.
Josh King:
As we continue to travel through this story of Figs' growth, quick sidebar. When Katie was a guest on this show, she spoke a bit about investing in sustainable fashion. COVID really brought into harsh light that sustainable behaviors and disease prevention are often at odds with one another, you've got to throw away the stuff that's been used. Is this something that you feel Figs has managed to find some balance with?
Trina Spear:
100%. I think sustainability is core to what we do and making an impact is literally ingrained into our DNA in what we do here at Figs. So, from a supply chain perspective, we're very focused on working with sustainable manufacturing partners, using sustainable fabrications, which we have an entire collection with a recycled poly as the core of our fabric. Not just from a supply chain perspective, it cuts across every single thing that we do in terms of building a sustainable business, from a supply chain perspective, from an operational perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a team perspective. If you look at our business, even how capital efficient our business is, we've only ever spent about $10 million and we've generated over a billion dollars in revenue. Just to show how we think about building business, we have about 300 people on the team, we look to generate about $1.5 to $2 million in revenue per employee. Nothing about our business is about excess. Nothing about our business is about just doing something for the sake of it. It's with intention, it's with thought, it's with discipline, and with sustainability at heart and in mind.
Josh King:
Trina, with Figs, you didn't just disrupt what scrubs look like. You disrupted the business model, as well. You were mentioning the medical supply stores that you and Heather had gone into and looked around at. Can you talk about the decision to make Figs a direct-to-consumer brand and how that model helped the company not just scale, but also be profitable through the various stages of its growth?
Trina Spear:
It's funny, because now people are saying, "Oh, is DTC struggling?" DTC is actually the future. Brands should have direct relationships with their customers, full stop, not only from a financial perspective, because no one is saying, "Oh, that margin profile as a wholesale business is better than a DTC business." From a financial perspective, it's clear that being a DTC business is optimal, but also from an experience perspective. For us being in the healthcare industry, it was even more important. Getting your groceries delivered to your door, getting dresses or jewelry shipped to your house is a really great thing, it's a nice to have. But in the healthcare industry, being a direct-to-consumer business was a must have, a have to have. Healthcare professionals need their uniforms to go to their jobs and do their work. If you're working a 12-hour, 16-hour, 24-hour, 36-hour shift, you don't have time to go to some out of the way location in the middle of nowhere to go get your healthcare apparel.
Building a business that really served the needs of this community was so important, and there's no other business model that actually was aligned perfectly with this community and what they do every single day. We control the experience end-to-end. We start at the fiber level, create the most amazing products, and then we deliver them direct to the healthcare professional, because we believe controlling the experience end-to-end is actually the best way for people to get what they want when they need it and in the quantity they needed it. And it enables us to have so much information about what they want and what they need, so we can continue to innovate and deliver on their expectations.
Josh King:
That was my next question. You're giving them an incredible service, making their lives a lot better and easier, but being digital and being DTC helps you gather data from them to decide what future types of products to bring to market, and also, keeping the cost down for both Figs and your end customers.
Trina Spear:
100%. So, we are able to gather so much information from our customers. It's funny, if you look at this industry prior to Figs, the healthcare suppliers, they weren't really brands, they were suppliers that sold to the stores that then sold to the healthcare professional. The suppliers manufacturing healthcare apparel didn't even know the name of their customer, because they didn't own that relationship. They couldn't make something that people wanted, they didn't even know their name. At Figs, we have about a thousand different pieces of information on any one customer. We know who they are, what they do, where they work, what they want, when they want it, all of this information. I need a pocket with a zipper that holds my stethoscope. I need a specific type of lining that helps as I'm meeting with a patient. It's freezing in hospitals, I need fleeces and vests that aren't made to go rock climbing and hiking, they're made to be worn inside a hospital as I'm running around to my next patient or operating in a surgery.
Our products are really made with them in mind. At times, we're making products because of this data and at times, we're building things that they didn't even know they wanted, it's a mix of the art and the science. But the science, the data, how we collect data, how we utilize that data to make strategic decisions, understand our people better so that we can connect in more meaningful ways, is, in large part, why we've been so successful. We have over two million active customers and in taking all of those touch points and all of that data to innovate on products and connect with our community is really valuable.
Josh King:
Talking about connecting with the community, one of the Figs' mantras is to really create the world you want to live in. I think that goes far beyond providing a better product to help healthcare workers. How are you engaging actually with the community through programs like Figs Love and the Figs ambassador program?
Trina Spear:
Sure. I think creating the world you want to live in is core to how we think, disrupting anything requires you to think differently. It requires you to do things in a different way, in a unique way. At the heart of that is love. This community needs love, and we're the company that shows up and delivers on that. An example of this is one of our customers, unfortunately, her daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. She was saying "I want to buy purple scrubs," for the entire staff that was treating her daughter, and so what we did was we sent about a thousand purple roses to fill up her room at the hospital. No one expected that, in addition to, obviously, getting them the scrubs they needed. But these are the ways in which we connect and do things that just spread love and spread joy as much as we can.
Our ambassador program is another example. We have about 300 ambassadors. These are the most influential voices in healthcare. They are showing up doing the world's most important work every single day. They are out there spreading this message of how do we get more people to enter this profession? This is the most amazing job in the world to be a healthcare professional. How do we get to inspire the next generation to not just want to be like LeBron James or Tom Brady or Serena Williams? We love athletes and celebrities, but we are looking to inspire the next generation to want to save lives, and help patients, and cure diseases, and care for someone, and hold someone's hand when they're going through a hard time, we need more people like that. Our company is here to inspire people to want to become that.
Josh King:
More people like that, creating the world want to live in. After the break, Trina Spear, co-CEO of Figs and I will discuss how our companies continuing to support the healthcare industry and grow, now into its second year after becoming a public company here at the New York Stock Exchange. That's all coming up right after this.
Speaker 7:
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Josh King:
Welcome back. Before the break, I was talking to Trina Spear, co-CEO of Figs, about the founding and growth of the healthcare apparel brand which she is leading. Trina, since 2020, most of the people pulling on a pair of Figs scrubs every day have also been acquired to strap on stuff that's a lot less comfortable, PPE. How did the pandemic affect your operation, and how did it affect your decision to IPO in 2021?
Trina Spear:
I think during the pandemic, it was an incredibly challenging time for our healthcare professionals. I remember, it was in the middle of March, we started getting those calls saying, "COVID is in the United States, my employer is asking me to wash my mask that I've now used for four or five, six straight days in the sink. I'm asked to put my mask in the oven so that I could decontaminate all the bacteria." It was just this crazy, crazy time where they didn't have the protection they needed. At Figs, we were looking at each other saying, "Oh my God, we need to get them what they need." So, from masks, isolation gowns, N95 masks, hazmat suits, we went to work. We completely shifted our supply chain. We manufactured hundreds of thousands of units of PPE, in addition to donating all of our scrubs and other products within our product portfolio to get healthcare professionals what they needed to go, essentially, to war. They were going back into these hospitals, they were the front lines of this pandemic.
It was a crazy time and I'm really proud of how we showed up and how we really worked around the clock to get our healthcare professionals what they needed, but it was insane. It continues to be a challenge in institutions across the country. I think we have a better handle on it, but it is something that continues to take the healthcare community away, in many ways, from their day-to-day. So, in terms of how it impacted how we went public, I think we did grow tremendously, I think. Even over the past 10 years, we've grown over 100% every single year since we started this company. Actually, last year, we grew over 60%, so I'll take 2021 out of that. But it was that growth, not only prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic, and now, post the pandemic, that was why it went public. I think the thing that differentiated us, and it continues to, is not only having this growth, but also sustainable and profitable growth. Doing it the right way, the profitable way,
Josh King:
Less than 5% of public companies have a co-CEO structure. Why was that the right governance of Figs and how do you and Heather compliment one another's abilities?
Trina Spear:
I think it's an amazing thing to have two leaders that care as much as me and Heather at the top. I think it really does work for us. Heather is a creative genius. She's very much focused on product innovation, bringing completely new products that solve problems to this community, and really get in the hearts and the minds of this community so that we can continue to deliver and bring amazing things into the world. I think where I focus is how to ensure that we hit our mark, that the trains leave on time, that this level of operational excellence that we strive for is achieved. That's what Figs is all about, magic and creativity and operational excellence, and when you put those two things together, you can do really amazing things. I think that's why it works for us, having both sides of the brain, having both ways of thinking about the world in one company leading an amazing team every single day.
Josh King:
Well, we're often told about both sides of the brain, Trina, maybe in this case, a third side of the brain, there's a third member of the Figs executive team, your CFO, Daniella Turenshine. She joined the company for the last two earnings calls. She's been with the company several years and was an interim CFO back in 2019, but took on the role permanently in 2022, as really the markets began this wild ride that we're still continuing. How is she done during this trial by fire?
Trina Spear:
Daniella Turenshine is an absolute rock star. There's nobody I have seen jump into a role like this and just take it on in such a graceful and unbelievable way, I think. Daniella has been with us about four years and really understands every aspect of the company. I think DTC is a new way of operating. Not a lot of executives from large companies really understand our business model. Daniella really does, understanding what customers want, when they want it, delivering it single day. Our calendar is not seasonal. We have a non-seasonal business. We have a replenishment-driven business. We have a non-discretionary product. All of these dynamics make our business, we're a workwear business, we're a uniform business, all of these dynamics are very specific to Figs. Over 80% of our sales are 13 core styles. 70% of our customers are coming back, 70% of our revenues repeat customers. All of these dynamics are very specific to us, and Daniella, as our CFO, has really driven a lot of the strategic priorities and has driven this incredibly differentiated financial profile of growing at a phenomenal rate and doing it with an incredible profitability profile.
Josh King:
We looked over the transcript of your last earnings called and Daniella was asked how Figs is being impacted by inflation and/or rising energy costs. Can you speak to that and how issues are affecting both the growth and the prices for the company?
Trina Spear:
Over the past two years, there's been supply chain challenges. All through 2020 and all through 2021, we've navigated as a company, I think, the supply chain crisis better than most. I think in the first quarter of this year, there was a certain portion of our shipments that were delayed more than expected and that impacted the quarter, and so we talked about that. I think what we have at Figs is an incredible ability to navigate through any challenge. We don't operate the business quarter-to-quarter and all of this is super transitory. If you think about whether it's the freight cost or we're going to be airing more goods than we expected, our goal is to get our healthcare professionals what they need to do their jobs. If we have to air a little bit more, if there's a increased cost because of some supply chain dislocation, that does not change the overall trajectory of this business. It doesn't change even what we're going to be doing the next six months, next 12 months, next 10 years.
We're building an iconic brand over the next 100 years, and so where we're really focused is yes, in the short to medium term, navigate the best we can, build the business, grow in a sustainable profitable way, and most importantly, do the things others aren't willing to do. If it was easy, everyone do it, create the world you want to live in, and show up and create for the most important people, our healthcare professionals, and the market will follow.
Josh King:
So, we love to geek out here on Inside the ICE House on things that people don't know a lot about, and one of them, probably, is your proprietary fabric, FIONx, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. What makes this the best fabric and how does it help create this special sauce that makes Figs scrubs such a premier apparel?
Trina Spear:
Our FIONx fabric, which is our core main fabric, is an incredible fabrication. The best fabrications are twofold, they're not only comfortable, but they're also technical, but it's really hard to create something that is in... I would say, this is what we strive to do at Figs, technical comfort is the core to how we build product, and so having something that when you put it on, it's super soft, you feel very comfortable, but at the same time, it performs for you. So, what is FIONx? At the core of it, it's technical comfort. We have our FIONlite that we now call FREEx, our FREEx fabric, which is an amazing fabrication. It's recycled poly, it's an incredibly sustainable fabric. We have more product innovation coming from a fabric standpoint, but also from a style and color standpoint. Innovation is our North Star and we're going to continue to bring new, incredible innovation, from a fabric and a product standpoint, as we move forward.
Josh King:
Let's talk about innovation at the very bottom of the body, the feet and toes. Anyone who's spent their days standing on a hospital ward or a trading floor knows how important shoes are to make the entire outfit comfortable. How did your partnership with Boston's own New Balance come about and how has it helped you cloth healthcare professionals, literally, from head now, to toe?
Trina Spear:
We love New Balance. So, early on when we would do our photo shoots and films, and I don't know if people know this, but every piece of our marketing always is with real healthcare professionals, our awesome humans. As we were putting our shoots on, we would always put them with New Balance. We had a number of ads in transit, on the T in Boston, and Chris Davis, who's part of New Balance, saw that ad on the subway. He said, "Oh my God," he thought it was a New Balance ad, but it wasn't, it was a Figs ad.
Josh King:
That awesome.
Trina Spear:
So, he pinged me and he said, "We've got to do something together," and we said, "We would love to." So, this was years ago, we started developing a partnership in how are we going to create and develop the shoe for the healthcare community? We spend about a year just developing shoes for people that are standing on their feet, you're not running a marathon, you're standing on your feet. New Balance is known for comfort, and so how do we build that sole when you're in a four-hour surgery so that your back is straight and you're comfortable and it's ergonomic? How do you make it so the leathers, when you drop a scalpel, it's not puncturing through? Liquids and blood, how do we make sure it rolls off the shoe? All of that was super important. That's been an incredible partnership for us and it's been amazing to see all the different launches that we've had over the years with New Balance.
Josh King:
Tallying it all up, with or without counting footwear, what do you think is the total addressable market for your products in the United States?
Trina Spear:
So, the market, we did a third-party study, 12 billion in the US, 79 billion globally for healthcare apparel. But we believe those numbers are really understated, because of all of the different categories that we've launched and that we sell products in today that are not in that 12 billion, that are not in that 79 billion. I look at Lululemon, actually, as an incredible example of this point, because when they went public in their S-1, their TAM was $500 million, $500 million. Now, I haven't looked at their stock lately, but at one point, 50 billion, 30 billion, 40 billion, somewhere in that range. Lululemon far exceeded the TAM in their S-1, and I think we're doing something similar, where it's the market, as it stands... What I say about this is lazy companies sell into TAM, innovative companies create TAM, and so I think the most innovative companies create TAM.
I don't know if Uber was saying, "What's the taxi cab industry tab TAM?" No, they were looking at how many people drive cars or how are we disrupting transportation? Here at Figs, how are we bringing an entire layering system, what are people wearing to work, at work, from work, on shift, off shift, head to toe, what is that TAM? It's limitless, and so that's how we think about what we're doing here at Figs.
Josh King:
I don't think I jotted down that international number that you just quoted, but international expansion is definitely part of your strategy. How global is the brand now, and what are your projections for growth of that part of the business?
Trina Spear:
Total global TAM is 79 billion, 67 billion outside the US. We have essentially 0% market share internationally, only 8% of our sales are international, and so incredible amount of runway. There's 130 million healthcare professionals around the world. This is an incredible market that no one has touched. A healthcare professional's experience, whether you're living in Munich in Germany or Istanbul in Turkey or in Kentucky, had a similar similarly awful experience before Figs, and so we're changing that. We've changed the lives of healthcare professionals in so many ways. We're looking to bring comfort and functionality and design and comfort to so many people around the world, but also a better experience and a brand that they can believe in and stand behind or alongside.
Josh King:
Heather did an interview last year in which she said, and I'm going to quote her here, "I think it's very important that we are the role models. We are women CEOs, women founders of the company." What does being a role model mean to you?
Trina Spear:
Doing what you say you're going to do, showing up with intention, and believing in others so that they can reach their highest potential. I think being a role model is doing things for the right reason. Every day, we wake up here at Figs and we know what we're here to do. We have a big mission, we have an incredible purpose, and so it's just acting within that. Acting with integrity, acting with excellence, giving 150% every single day. I have a sign on my desk that says, "Awesome energy only," so you've got to bring awesome energy every day and give everyone everything you've got. Some days you don't feel like it and some days it's hard, but that's what it is. It's showing up consistently day after day after day for the right reasons, doing the right work for the right people, and I think that's what we're doing.
Josh King:
Figs successfully disrupted the healthcare uniform look after a century of the status quo, as we said at the beginning of the conversation. Do you have plans to expand into other uniformed professions?
Trina Spear:
I think right now, we have a really small percent of even the market as it's defined today. We have a 4% market share in the US, 0% market share internationally. We have so much to do to continue to serve and show up and support the healthcare community. We have discussed other uniform categories. Uniforms, in general, are broken and if anyone's going to bring comfort and functionality and design to these other uniform categories, it will be us. But in the medium to long-ish term, call it the next five years, we are very much focused on healthcare.
Josh King:
Finally, in just a couple of years, you've accomplished so much. What do you think is next for you and what are you most excited about in the future?
Trina Spear:
For me, for Figs, we feel like we've just gotten started. Even Heather and I were talking the other day and we were looking at our original vision for what we were set out to build. We feel like we've barely scratched a little bit of that initial vision. There's so much to do, there's so much to create, there's so much to build, and we could not be more excited. We are in the fastest growing job segment in the world. We sell non-discretionary products to the most amazing people. We have an incredible competitive strength, amazing business model. We don't need to raise money, we have an incredibly strong balance sheet. We are growing in an amazingly profitable way. We control our destiny.
But most importantly, we're showing up for these people and we have so much that we want to create for them. We're so excited about the future. I could not be more excited about what we're going to continue to do, not only on the product side, but also on the experience side, how we're going to continue to scale internationally, how we're going to continue to build out all of the categories that we've entered. A lot of to do, but definitely excited to keep showing up and doing the hard stuff.
Josh King:
Controlling your destiny and showing up for your awesome humans. Trina, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Trina Spear:
Thank you so much for having me.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Trina Spear, co-founder and co CEO of Figs. That's NYSC ticker symbol FIGS. If you liked what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Pete Ash with production assistance from Ken Abel and Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening, talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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