Dive Brief:

• In an effort to continue expanding its business, FIGS, the direct-to-consumer healthcare apparel start-up, named Jeffrey Lawrence, former Domino's finance chief, its CFO Wednesday. Lawrence's first day was December 31.

• "Jeff shares our commitment to serving healthcare professionals and his experience overseeing Domino's global modernization and growth will be instrumental in helping us bring the power of FIGS to healthcare professionals around the world," co-founder Trina Spear said in a statement.

• During his more than 20 years with the world's largest pizza chain by retail sales, including five years as CFO, Lawrence helped lead digital transformation, international expansion and its IPO. He announced his intent to retire during the chain's second quarter earnings call in July 2020.

Dive Insight:

Domino's and FIGS are similar in many ways, despite their vastly different size and revenue, Lawrence told CFO Dive in an interview Wednesday.

"Domino's is consumer-facing; so is FIGS. Domino's sells 80% of its product through digital means; FIGS sells 100%. Domino's uses data to make really good decisions; FIGS does the same," he said. "It's a brand; it's consumer-facing. That's what prepares me to be a really good partner."

FIGS, whose main product is medical scrubs but has recently expanded into active wear, outerwear and accessories, has experienced strong growth and profitability since its 2013 founding by Heather Hasson and Spear.

Lawrence will focus on helping FIGS maintain profitability and expand beyond its current markets in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia.

An eventual IPO is "a strategic option, among others," Lawrence said. If an IPO makes sense for FIGS to pursue over the next 12 to 24 months, he said, "we feel we will be able to execute at a very high level." Spear told The Wall Street Journal FIGS has raised $75 million so far, and doesn't intend to seek additional funding.

Lawrence is FIGS's first CFO since 2019 when Karsten Loose departed. In the interim, the company SVP of finance and strategy Daniella Turenshine led finance.

"Six to nine months ago, we decided that, just given the trajectory of the company, having a CFO of Jeff's caliber would be an important part of where we're going," Hasson told the Journal.

"I have a lot of experience in capital markets," Lawrence said. "I [led] the IPO at Domino's, and raised, over time, around $10 billion of total capital, both equity and debt."

"Working at Domino's was really like working for four or five different companies," Lawrence said. "Whether it was product, tech, analytics or international expansion, we made all these transformations with a great team that got more right than we got wrong."

Just over a decade ago, Lawrence said, Domino's stock was as low as $3 per share; at the time of his July retirement, it hit $425 per share. "That was the result of great people doing great work over a long period of time and we were rewarded by the market," he said.

Though he said he'd be retiring, Lawrence never assumed he'd fully stop working.

"I'm only 47; I knew I was going to jump back in, but, very candidly, I was gonna be really picky about what I got involved in this next act of my career," Lawrence said. "I didn't think I'd jump back in this soon. I thought I'd spend time with my family, maybe do some consulting, I looked at CEO jobs, and private equity roles. But once I met [Spear and Hasson], I found a truly purpose-driven organization and team."

"Jeff is very much a strategic CFO," Spear told the Journal. "He disrupted Domino's, and then built it into a first-of-its-kind type of tech company for the pizza industry. What we're doing here is we're disrupting an antiquated industry."

Spear's attitude is echoed among other startups to have recently hired CFOs from well-known public companies.

In August, General Motors CFO Dhivya Suryavedara stunned investors with her surprise move to payments startup Stripe; last month, Capital One CFO R. Scott Blackley moved to health insurance startup Oscar, and Aetna's mid-Atlantic CFO moved to virtual care provider Doctor on Demand.

"Experienced finance chiefs who have led large organizations can develop long-term strategies and maintain financial discipline, which startups sometimes lack," the Journal wrote.