How Did a Trip to Kenya Lead Heather Hasson to Figs?
Heather Hasson says a trip to northern Kenya is what led her to Figs. Her handbag business had collapsed after her partner died of lung cancer. She had no money and no plan, so she went to clear her head. Travel was cheap. In school after school, teachers said children stayed home because they had no uniforms. A child put in a uniform goes to school with a different mentality, and that stayed with her.
Back in Los Angeles she had a few thousand dollars. Tie cloth is small next to the fabric for pants, so she made bow ties, neckties, and scarves in silk and wool. A job at Theodore in Malibu paid $9 an hour and bought what material she could afford. She sold the ties through a website, trunk shows, and word of mouth, and she says that money put about 10,000 children in school. She called the work Figs. She had written the letters out as fashion-inspired global sophistication, but she picked the name because she loves the fruit. She treated it as a hobby, not a company she set out to build.
In one clinic they let her into an operating room while the staff operated on a boy, and they had no scrubs. Nurses and doctors there had done the job for 25 years. She decided to send them some.
