Starting a scrub business is a relatively low-barrier way to enter the medical apparel market, with initial inventory costs as low as $300 if you start small and sell online. The demand is steady: millions of healthcare workers need scrubs, and many prefer buying from smaller brands that offer better fits, unique colors, or performance fabrics. Here’s how to get your scrub business off the ground.
Choose Your Business Model
Before you spend a dollar, decide how you’ll source and sell your scrubs. Each model has different cost structures and margins.
Private label: You work with a manufacturer to produce scrubs under your own brand name. You choose the fabrics, colors, and design details, then the manufacturer produces them. This gives you the most brand control but requires larger minimum orders, often 50 to 200 units per style and color.
Custom design and manufacture: You design scrubs from scratch with original patterns and have them produced by a contract manufacturer, either domestically or overseas. This is the path brands like FIGS took. It requires the most upfront investment in pattern development, samples, and production runs, but it lets you differentiate on fit, fabric, and features.
Print on demand or dropshipping: You list scrubs through a supplier who handles inventory and shipping. Your margins are thinner, typically 15 to 25 percent, but your startup costs are minimal since you never hold inventory. The tradeoff is less control over quality and shipping times.
Wholesale resale: You buy scrubs in bulk from established brands at wholesale prices and resell them at retail markup, either online or in a physical store. This works well if you want to offer multiple brands in one place, similar to a uniform shop.
Register Your Business and Get Licensed
You’ll need a legal business structure. Most small scrub businesses start as an LLC, which costs between $50 and $500 depending on your state’s filing fee. Beyond formation, budget for permit and license fees, which typically run $50 to $700. If you plan to collect sales tax (required in most states for retail sales), you’ll need a sales tax permit, which is usually free or costs a small fee.
A seller’s permit or resale certificate also lets you buy inventory from wholesalers without paying sales tax on your purchases, since you’ll collect it from the end customer instead. If you’re creating an original brand name, consider trademarking it. Federal trademark registration costs up to $700 in filing fees, though many businesses launch first and trademark later once revenue is coming in.
Understand Your Fabric Options
Fabric choice is the single biggest factor in how your scrubs feel, perform, and hold up over time. Healthcare workers wash their scrubs frequently, often at high temperatures, so durability matters as much as comfort.
The most common scrub fabrics are polyester-rayon blends, polyester-spandex blends, and cotton-polyester blends. Polyester-spandex has become the industry standard for premium scrubs because it stretches, wicks moisture, and resists wrinkles. Cotton-poly blends feel softer but tend to shrink and fade faster.
Some manufacturers offer antimicrobial-treated fabrics, which resist odor and bacterial growth between washes. If you plan to market your scrubs with specific performance claims like “fluid resistant” or “antimicrobial,” make sure those claims are backed by testing from your fabric supplier. Standard scrubs worn in most clinical settings don’t need to meet the formal barrier performance levels defined by ANSI/AAMI PB70 (those apply to surgical gowns and isolation gowns), but your fabric should still handle repeated industrial laundering without pilling, fading, or losing its shape.
Request fabric samples and wash them at least 10 times before committing to a production run. What feels great on the bolt can feel completely different after a dozen wash cycles.
Find a Manufacturer
If you’re going the private label or custom design route, finding a reliable manufacturer is the most important step. Start by searching apparel manufacturing directories, attending trade shows like the MAGIC fashion trade show, or reaching out to domestic cut-and-sew operations.
Overseas manufacturers, particularly in countries like China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, offer lower per-unit costs but come with longer lead times (often 60 to 120 days), higher minimum order quantities, and shipping costs that can eat into your savings. Domestic manufacturers cost more per unit but offer faster turnaround, easier communication, and smaller minimums.
Before placing a large order, always order samples. Evaluate stitching quality, seam strength, color accuracy, and how the fabric performs after washing. Ask about minimum order quantities, lead times, and whether the manufacturer can scale with you as demand grows.
Plan Your Startup Budget
An online-only scrub business can launch for under $2,000 if you start with a small inventory and handle your own marketing. Here’s what to expect across the main cost categories:
- Initial inventory: $300 to $5,000, depending on how many styles, sizes, and colors you stock
- LLC formation and permits: $100 to $1,200
- Small business insurance: $500 to $2,000 per year for general liability coverage
- Packaging and labels: $50 to $3,000, depending on whether you use simple poly mailers or branded boxes
- Website and e-commerce platform: $30 to $300 per month for platforms like Shopify, which charge a monthly subscription plus transaction fees
- Inventory storage: $0 if you store at home, up to $5,000 if you rent a small warehouse or storage unit
If you’re opening a physical retail location, rent becomes your largest expense. Storefront leases vary enormously by market, from under $1,000 per month in smaller cities to tens of thousands in major metro areas. Most new scrub businesses start online and add physical retail later once they’ve built a customer base.
Build Your Brand and Online Store
Healthcare workers have strong preferences about their scrubs. Fit, pocket placement, color options, and fabric weight all matter to this audience. Your brand should communicate clearly what makes your scrubs worth buying over the dozens of options already available.
Study what the major scrub brands do well and where they fall short. Read reviews on competitor products to identify common complaints, whether that’s limited size ranges, pockets that are too shallow, or fabrics that pill after a few washes. Those gaps are your opportunity.
Your e-commerce store needs professional product photography, a clear size chart with actual measurements (not just S/M/L), and detailed fabric descriptions. Healthcare workers shop for scrubs like they shop for athletic wear: they want to know the fabric composition, stretch level, and weight. Include close-up shots of stitching, pockets, and fabric texture. Size-inclusive options are increasingly expected, and brands that stop at XL leave money on the table.
Price Your Scrubs for Profit
Scrub pricing varies widely. Budget scrubs retail for $15 to $25 per piece, mid-range scrubs sell for $25 to $45, and premium scrubs from brands like FIGS or Jaanuu run $38 to $58 per piece. Your pricing needs to cover your cost of goods, shipping, marketing, and platform fees while leaving enough margin to sustain the business.
A common retail pricing formula for apparel is to mark up your cost of goods by 2.5 to 4 times. If a scrub top costs you $8 to produce and ship to your warehouse, you’d price it between $20 and $32 at retail. Premium positioning with performance fabrics and strong branding lets you command higher margins, but you need the product quality and customer experience to back it up.
Market to Healthcare Workers
Your target customers spend their days in hospitals, clinics, dental offices, veterinary practices, and nursing facilities. Reaching them requires focused marketing in the places they already spend time.
Instagram and TikTok are the primary discovery channels for newer scrub brands. Short-form video content showing fabric stretch, pocket functionality, and real healthcare workers wearing your scrubs performs well. Partner with nurses, medical students, and other healthcare professionals who have social media followings. Micro-influencers with 5,000 to 50,000 followers in the healthcare niche often deliver better engagement than larger accounts, and many will promote products in exchange for free scrubs plus a small fee or affiliate commission.
Group purchasing is another valuable channel. Clinics and dental offices often buy scrubs in bulk for their staff. Offering a 10 to 15 percent discount on orders of 10 or more sets can win accounts that reorder regularly. Reach out directly to office managers at local practices, or set up a wholesale inquiry page on your website.
Email marketing builds repeat business. Scrubs wear out, and healthcare workers who love a particular fit will reorder from the same brand for years. Collect email addresses from day one and send periodic updates about new colors, styles, and restocks.
Manage Inventory and Fulfillment
Inventory management is where many new apparel businesses struggle. Ordering too much ties up cash in unsold stock. Ordering too little means stockouts and lost sales, especially if your manufacturer has a 60-day lead time.
Start with a focused product line: one or two styles in your best-selling colors and a full size range. Track which sizes and colors sell fastest and adjust your reorders accordingly. Most e-commerce platforms integrate with inventory management tools that alert you when stock drops below a threshold.
For fulfillment, you can pack and ship orders yourself in the early days. Once you’re consistently shipping more than 30 to 50 orders per day, a third-party logistics provider (3PL) can handle warehousing, packing, and shipping for you. 3PL fees typically include a per-order pick-and-pack charge plus storage fees based on the space your inventory occupies.