Talk:Figs (company)/Archives/2021

Controversy

Controversy section should have NPOV review, while extensively cited and sourced (examples ) the language should be reported from neutral point of view.Chevoitkate247 (talk) 19:33, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Edit requests

Hi, I would like to request the following edits which will enhance the usefulness of the page to Wikipedia readers, adding information and clarifying details.

1. In the lead section, please change the lead to a more accurate description of the company and correcting the city the company is based in.
   • Please change the first sentence to: "FIGS is an American healthcare apparel brand based in Santa Monica, California."
   • Please change the second sentence to: "The company sells scrubs that come in a variety of colors and styles, as well as a number of other products for healthcare professionals."
2. In the History section please make the following edits:
   • Please change the second sentence to a more accurate description of how the company first started: "Hasson had the business idea when she realized that, unlike companies such as Lululemon, Under Armor, and Nike, that make clothes for athletes, there were no companies making fitted, flattering and comfortable uniforms for health care professionals.
   • After the sentence "Spear worked on Wall Street at the time and helped Hasson develop the business idea." Please add the following new sentences: "Hasson and Spear started the company using only their personal savings. They designed a practical and stylish alternative to the common scrubs available."
   • Please add the following phrase to the beginning of the last sentence in place of "The two began selling scrubs..." "Initially, they sold their product..." and continue with the rest of the sentence: "...out of the parking lot of hospitals, getting feedback from staff." With the new source.
   • Please add this new paragraph following the last sentence: "Their first fun of 15,000 units was sold out in four months. In 2013, Hasson and Spear raised a $2 million seed round so that they would not run out of product. In 2014 and 2015, they raised an additional $3 million. In 2016, the Lululemon-backed venture capital fund, Campfire, led the Series A round in FIGS, through which and additional $5 million was raised."
   • Please add another new paragraph: "In 2017, Thomas Tull, businessman and founder of Legendary Pictures, became the company's majority owner after he invested $65 million in FIGS. Others who have invested in FIGS include Will Smith, Irving Place Capital, former Lululemon CEO Christine Day, and Mohr Davidow Ventures."
   • Please change the first sentence of the last paragraph in History to: "The company's headquarters are in Santa Monica, California.
   • There is a small typo in the third sentence of this paragraph: "has" should be changed to "had", as in "...the company had raised a total of $75 million in funding."
   • Please remove the last sentence from this paragraph: "A "pre-IPO secondary" campaign was launched in 2020 for a possible 2021 IPO or direct listing." This sentence, although sourced, is meaningless and does not add meaning to the article, but it does add confusion.

References

Thanks so much. Todd at Figs (talk) 16:12, 22 March 2021 (UTC) I am pinging MadeYourReadThis, the editor that took the article from draft to main space to look at my edit requests and implement them. Thanks in advance. Todd at Figs (talk) 15:48, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Do you have a conflict of interest with this article? MBihun (talk) 17:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi MBihun. Yes, you are correct, I do have a conflict of interest with this article, as I have already declared above in the box at the top of this page, as well as on my own user page. Since you have expressed an interest in this article, perhaps you would like to take the next logical step and look over my edit requests above. If you agree that these edits add information to and generally improve the page, I would be grateful if you could please implement them on the main FIGS (apparel) page. I greatly appreciate that you are taking the time to do this work. Todd at Figs (talk) 14:34, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

 Done. These edits have been implemented now, Todd at Figs. Thanks! MBihun (talk) 18:32, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Edit Requests for Additions to History section and Operations

Before I list some additional edit requests, I would like to thank MBihun for implementing all the edits that were requested above. I very much appreciate your work and time spent on this article. The following are additional edits to continue to improve the article. I hope you can continue to help with this.

1. Please add the following to the end of the History section: In 2019, FIGS opened a pop-up shop in Los Angeles. The company employed close to 100 workers by 2019. They added face masks to their stock in response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The company expanded sales to Australia and the United Kingdom to meet the surging demand for medical equipment of all kinds caused by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
2. I would like to add several sentences to the first paragraph of the "Operation" section. The easiest way to do that is to simply replace what is there now with the following: FIGS sells scrubs and other associated medical apparel and products for all types of medical professionals. The apparel comes in a variety of different colors and styles, including scrub tops, scrub pants, underscrubs, lab coats, activewear, and loungewear emphasizing both fashion and function. The scrubs are made with a proprietary material that is antimicrobial for odor resistance with four-way stretch and pockets that took the partners two years to develop with comfort a primary focus.
3. Please add one more paragraph to the "Operations" section, as follows: "FIGS branding has been called "minimalist" and has been compared to direct-to-consumer brands such as Glossier, Outdoor Voices and Allbirds. The company also has about 200 "ambassadors."

References

Thank you so much for all your help. It is really appreciated. Todd at Figs (talk) 16:09, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

 Half done, Todd at Figs. I've not included item 3 of your edit request as I feel it does not have an impact on your article and could be seen as biased towards the company. MBihun (talk) 19:56, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Edit Requests for Additions to Operation, New sections and Marketing controversy

• Note: I believe I've done all of this except the "key people" (C-suite) additions. I left the request open so hopefully someone who knows more about how to include those in articles can action it. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 00:08, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Once again thank you MBihun for being so helpful with my edit requests. Your help is very much appreciated. I am once again coming to you for the following editing requests:

• Please add the following to the end of the "Operation" section: The apparel are sold directly to consumers online from the company's website, rather than in medical supply stores. FIGS also operates the Threads for Threads program which donates sets of scrubs to countries with limited access to medical apparel. The program includes giving trips and results in the donations of scrubs around the world. By 2019 the initiative had donated over 500,000 sets of scrubs in over 35 countries. The company predicted revenue of over $250 million in 2020,mostly through the sale of its upgraded scrubs. The company's warehouse is in City of Industry, California.
• Please add a new section called "Key people" below the "Operation" section with three sub-headings

1. Heather Hasson: Founder and co-CEO--Hasson began her career in the fashion industry in Italy. She was the founder of a high-end handbag company that she sold in 2009. Next, she founded a luxury silk tie manufacturer which donated one school uniform to one student in Kenya for every tie the company sold.
2. Trina Spear: Founder and co-CEO--Spear graduated from Tufts University where she played varsity tennis. After graduation, she worked at Citi and went to Harvard Business School. She was working in asset management at Blackstone when she first spoke with Hasson about FIGS.
3. Jeffrey Lawrence: CFO--Lawrence is the former CFO of Domino's Pizza. He joined FIGS in early 2021.

• Please change the name of the "Marketing Controversy" section to "Promotional video incident" which is a more accurate description of the event. Also, please replace the content that is in that section with the following content for the following reasons: There is a lot of extra information in this section which violates WP:Undue and is also overly critical of the company, violating WP:NPOV, in addition to several mistakes. I am asking for edits to the first paragraph, and the removal of the entire second paragraph for several reasons. First, the Warnock source does not support the assertions made. The word "model" does not even appear in that article. Second, why should the opinion of an internet celebrity, Mikhail Varshavski, that is sourced to a YouTube video, be included in this article? His \ views have no place as a support for allegations of "exploitation." The third and last reason is that the "Republic World" and "HITC" sources do not support the contention that "the model used in the controversial advertisement was an osteopathic medical physician who was unpaid despite the company's significant funding." The following content corrects all those problems: In October 2020, FIGS released a promotional video featuring female osteopathic medicine physicians. The video was taken down after criticism from some medical professionals on social media, noting the video's gender bias depicting negative stereotypes of both osteopathic medicine as well as females in medicine. The American Osteopathic Association criticized the video in a statement. The company removed the video from their website and apologized. Ultimately FIGS partnered with the AOA and donated money to the organization. The AOA released a statement saying that FIGS "expressed a real desire to understand and to show respect to the osteopathic profession and female physicians."
• Please add a "Philanthropy" section below "Promotional video incident" with the following content: In spring 2020 the company donated 30,000 sets of scrubs to New York hospitals Bellevue and Mount Sinai, and sent 100 care packages to health care workers every week. FIGS paid two factories to produce more than one million N95 masks and donated them directly to hospitals and medical professionals.
• Please add a new section called "Recognition" with the following content: In 2015 FIGS was recognized as a "Best for the World B-Corp and ranked in the 21st spot on Inc. Magazine's 5000 ranking of the fastest-growing companies in the US in 2018.

References

Thank you so much for your helpful edits. I am very grateful. Todd at Figs (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Todd at Figs, partially done, left the edit request open so others can look at it. To describe what I've done (well, what I'm about to do, so please wait some time for me to actually make the edits) - I will make edits to the controversy section to make it more in line with my understanding of policy and to make the language more neutral - I think the information is definitely encyclopedic and due because the "controversy" got a lot of attention in the news and other media, even getting statements from unrelated medical organizations (such as the AMA) that aren't referenced here. Anyone else is free to come along and make more edits as they see fit. I won't add the key people myself as I am not well versed in making the key people sections of articles and the information you wish added is mostly fluff/puffery of the people - at most I think the peoples' names can be notable, but I doubt that merits a section. I will also add the philanthropy information into the operations section as I think it is best there. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 23:59, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Berchanhimez so much for your input and help. In addition, I would like to explain why the entire second paragraph of the "Marketing" section does not belong in the article at all. A careful examination of each source cited for each statement in the second paragraph reveals that none of those sources support those statements. Therefore, I am requesting that the entire second paragraph of the "Marketing" section be removed. Thanks again for all your help. Todd at Figs (talk) 12:35, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Todd at Figs, I left it in because I personally saw the backlash from the "non-payment" - but I agree that the sourcing for that part is subpar at best and I wasn't able to quickly find a reliable source to replace with, so I went ahead and removed it. Whether it's true or not, if it can't be reliably sourced it doesn't belong in the article. I still don't feel comfortable acting on the other changes related to the C-suite employees. Hopefully this has helped. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:17, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Berchanhimez, I would like to thank you for all your help, and I understand and respect your decision not to implement the "Key people" request. I would like to continue our discussion of the Marketing section. I have some requests which will make this section more neutral according to the guidelines of WP:UNDUE, while still incorporating this event into the noteworthy history of the company. I am not asking to remove the criticism, but to simply tone it down a notch. Please replace the content that is there now with the following, with specific explanations of each of the changes to follow:

In October 2020, FIGS released a promotional video featuring a female osteopathic physicians. The video showed her in neon pink scrubs reading a book titled "Medical Terminology for Dummies" while holding it upside down and a camera cut that zoomed in on a blank badge labeled with the letters "DO". The video was taken down after criticism of gender bias from some medical professionals, including the American Osteopathic Association, who claimed the video promoted stereotypes of osteopathic medicine and female doctors. The AOA demanded a public apology from the company. The company removed the video from their website and apologized. Ultimately FIGS partnered with the AOA and donated money to the organization. The AOA released a statement saying that FIGS "expressed a real desire to understand and to show respect to the osteopathic profession and female physicians."

I changed the word "targeting" to "featuring" which is more accurate and more objective. I combined three long sentences describing the specifics of the criticism into one concise sentence summarizing accurately the essence of the criticism. It does not add anything to the readers' understanding of the incident by repeating in different words the same criticism. It was incorrect to quote the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. The correct name of the organization that criticized the video was the American Osteopathic Association, and my edit request makes that correction. I also added how the incident ended, with an apology, a donation and a partnership, including a source to support the statement.(Please note: the first three sources are the same sources that are on the page now. The fourth source is new.)

References

I would also like alert MBihun to the proposed edits in case he would like to add to the discussion. Once again, thanks so much for all your help. Todd at Figs (talk) 17:05, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

I've made the grammar/word changes you made, but I have left the sentence you removed: The video was taken down after widespread criticism from medical professionals, noting a disrespectful exhibition of sexism, misogyny, and gender bias by the company by portraying the "silly and dumb, but sexy" look and the information about the apology. Both of those are cited to a news article by CNN and appear to me to be fully sourced correctly. While it may not please the company to have such things called out, we cannot just remove criticism like that when it is covered in reliable sources such as CNN and Good Morning America (a subset of ABC news, another respected national news organization). There's multiple aspects of the criticism too - the sexism criticism, the "anti-DO" criticism, and the criticism due to the apology - hence why three sentences are warranted. I did, however, add the cited statement from the AOA regarding the apology and further actions - I agree that covering the controversy needs to be balanced with inclusion of the eventual outcome of the "fight" between the company and the AOA (fight in quotation marks because it seemed to be a learning experience, not a fight, but that's the best word I can find). Please take a look User:Todd at Figs and see what you think. Unfortunately, I don't think I would agree with reducing the discussion of the criticism given that it's three distinct aspects as well as the fact that it's all well sourced to major national news organizations. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 18:36, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

@Berchanhimez, I think I'd leave out the "Key people" suggestion. They can promote their employees on their own website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Closing as  Partly done JBchrch talk 19:40, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Undue weight

Todd asked if I would take a look at the marketing section, not so much what's in it as how much of it there is (For one thing calling it "marketing" is misleading; right now the entire section is devoted to the controversy).

I was struck by Berchanhimez's conclusion above that he "would [not] agree with reducing the discussion of the criticism given that it's three distinct aspects as well as the fact that it's all well sourced to major national news organizations." I don't see exactly what the three "distinct" aspects are, but more importantly the reliability of the sourcing is not where the inquiry ends here. I agree with Todd that at this point this is undue weight being given to this incident by this article.

This all occurred about eight months ago, and it seems there has been no continuing interest or further development in this story. Yet still it takes up four paragraphs. One organization's name is linked twice in the second graf; it seems to have been an overlooked editing mistake since the second sentence is incomplete. And we get a needlessly blockquoted two-sentence response that calls attention to the section, as if that were what was intended.

I know it's not ... it sort of looks like someone largely new to making this sort of edits took it upon themselves to do so and was trying to do it in good faith. I went and investigated, and in my response to Todd I reported on what I found (basically, that Lmq882, the editor in question, was indeed not very active, and their edits strongly suggest a connection to osteopathy and an interest in editing borderline promotionally on behalf of one particular osteopathic college, investing a great deal of effort in making a table showing all their affiliated hospitals).

So to me, the section does not have truly impartial origins in addition to its other issues, and it seems to have escaped needed editorial attention to boot. I really think we can and should re-evaluate whether or not one graf, as suggested above, is, at this time, all the article really needs on this. Daniel Case (talk) 01:21, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

 Done Daniel Case (talk) 02:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Request to add information about 2020 revenue and the IPO to the History section

I once again want to thank MBihun and Berchanhimez for all that they have done to help improve this article, and I hope they will continue with the following additional edit requests.

• In the next to last sentence in the History section please add the following sentence with sources: In 2020, FIGS doubled its revenue to $263 million and had profits of almost $50 million.
• At the end of the History section please add the following sentences about the IPO, with sources: On May 28, 2021, FIGS became the first company led by two female cofounders to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Also for the first time, the company allowed retail investors early access to purchase shares before the official sale began on the NYSE via the stock-buying app Robinhood.

References

Thanks so much for all your help. Todd at Figs (talk) 17:24, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Doing this now. Sorry for delay. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:20, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually both of thsese had already been added - closing as done. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:22, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Tweak the marketing section, and correct IPO date

Hello. I would like to request a few more edits to the Marketing and History sections, but first I want to thank Daniel Case for his help improving the article.

• At the beginning of the second paragraph in the Marketing section, please remove "After a tweet was seen as insufficiently apologetic." The source cited does not support this statement, and stating this is inaccurate and misleading.
• Please add the following statement to the Marketing section. The statement the AOA made is crucial to a more complete and balanced understanding of the entire story. "The AOA released a statement saying that FIGS "expressed a real desire to understand and to show respect to the osteopathic profession and female physicians."
• At the end of the History section, the date of the IPO should be changed to May 27, 2021. If you look at the source, the first line reads "On Thursday morning..." The byline says May 28, but if you check you will see May 28 was Friday, making Thursday the 27th day of May.

References

I am also pinging mBihun and Berchanhimez who have been so helpful in the past. Once again, I appreciate all the work you have done, and will do, to make this article the best it can be. Todd at Figs (talk) 19:00, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: Not enough sources. Quetstar (talk) 18:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)