Nobody Agrees How Big the Scrubs Market Is. That's the Story.
Key takeaways
- Estimates of the scrubs market range from about $13B to over $90B because firms define "medical scrubs" differently; the U.S. garment figure is about $3B.
- The business is really three: legacy uniform giants (Careismatic's Cherokee and Dickies), DTC brands (FIGS, Jaanuu), and cheap private-label or marketplace scrubs.
- Careismatic filed Chapter 11 in 2024 with about $833M in debt; Jaanuu was sold in a 2025 asset sale, signaling the DTC scrubs boom cooling.
- The market's fragmentation is why nurses pay wildly different prices for garments that look the same.
Here is a simple question with no honest answer: how big is the scrubs market?
Depending on which research firm you ask, the global "medical scrubs market" was worth about $13 billion in 2025, or about $54 billion, or more than $90 billion. Same product category. A roughly fifteen-fold spread. That is not a disagreement about scrubs. It is a disagreement about what the word means, and once you see it, the whole industry makes more sense.
The $96 billion number, and why to distrust it
The big figure making the rounds, around $96 billion for 2026, comes from Mordor Intelligence, which projects the "medical scrubs market" growing from about $90 billion in 2025. The catch is in the fine print: that number folds in lab coats and other medical apparel, so it is really measuring health care clothing broadly, not the scrub tops and pants a nurse buys.
Other firms draw the line in other places. Fortune Business Insights put the 2025 market around $54 billion. Persistence Market Research put it near $13 billion. None of them are lying. They are counting different things under the same label, which is why you should never quote a single scrubs "market size" without asking what got swept into it.
The most grounded number I have seen is smaller and comes from trade reporting, not a research deck. Supply Chain Dive, covering the legacy giant Careismatic, described the domestic U.S. medical scrubs industry as worth about $3 billion. That figure, scrubs, in the U.S., as actual garments, is the one that squares with reality. The tens-of-billions estimates are medical apparel wearing a scrubs label.
Three industries pretending to be one
The definitional mess maps onto a real split. The scrubs business is actually three different businesses that happen to share a shelf.
The first is the legacy uniform giants. Careismatic Brands owns Cherokee, the licensed Dickies Medical line, and more than a dozen other labels, and calls itself the world's largest medical apparel provider. It is also a cautionary tale: bought by a private equity firm for around $1.3 billion in 2021, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2024 with roughly $833 million in debt, and emerged that June under new ownership. Its revenue had slid from a peak near $687 million in 2021 to about $559 million by 2023. Alongside it sit Barco Uniforms, a family-owned company that has made scrubs since the mid-20th century and produces the Grey's Anatomy line, and Superior Group of Companies, a public firm that owns Fashion Seal and Wink. Three separate owners, no common parent, grouped together only by age and approach.
The second is the direct-to-consumer disruptors. FIGS is the public face, with $631 million in 2025 revenue. Jaanuu, founded by a physician in 2013, is the other name people know, and its recent history is its own signal: the brand was sold in an asset sale to a new owner in May 2025, with the name and team kept on. When the category's most-hyped startup changes hands that way, it tells you the DTC scrubs gold rush has cooled into something more ordinary.
The third barely shows up in those market reports at all: private-label and marketplace scrubs, the Amazon listings and store brands that quietly move an enormous amount of product at low prices. Nobody publishes a credible size for it. Everybody in the business knows it is large.
Why the structure matters to what you pay
This is not just trivia for analysts. The shape of the market is the reason scrubs prices are all over the place.
At the top, brands compete on story and charge for it. In the middle, the legacy giants compete on hospital contracts and distribution. At the bottom, private label competes on price alone and drags the floor down. A nurse standing in front of all three is paying wildly different amounts for garments that, from across the room, look the same. The premium is real sometimes and pure branding other times, and the labels do not tell you which.
Frequently asked questions
How big is the medical scrubs market?
Estimates vary widely because firms define it differently: roughly $13 billion (Persistence Market Research), about $54 billion (Fortune Business Insights), or more than $90 billion (Mordor Intelligence, which includes lab coats and other apparel). Trade reporting via Supply Chain Dive puts the U.S. scrubs garment industry at about $3 billion.
Why do scrubs market-size estimates differ so much?
Each research firm counts different things under the same label. Broad "medical apparel" figures sweep in lab coats and other clothing, while the narrower, more grounded number measures actual scrub garments in the U.S.
What are the main types of scrubs companies?
Three: legacy uniform giants (Careismatic's Cherokee and Dickies Medical, Barco, Superior Group), direct-to-consumer brands (FIGS, Jaanuu), and private-label or marketplace scrubs sold cheaply on platforms like Amazon.
What happened to Careismatic and Jaanuu?
Careismatic, which calls itself the largest medical apparel provider, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2024 with about $833 million in debt and emerged that June under new ownership. Jaanuu was sold in an asset sale in May 2025, with its name and team kept on.
Where we fit, and what we are betting
Eipnare lives in that middle gap on purpose, so take this as an interested party talking, not a neutral referee.
- The market's confusion is the opportunity. When nobody can even agree what a scrub is worth, the brands that win trust are the ones that are clear about the trade they are offering. We would rather be specific than aspirational.
- The Careismatic bankruptcy and the Jaanuu sale are worth remembering. Scale and hype both turned out to be fragile in this category. The durable thing is a product nurses re-buy because it worked, not a balance sheet or a campaign.
- Our wager is narrow: build a set that earns its price on the floor, sit between the $90 premium and the $15 mystery-fabric bargain, and let the work do the arguing. In a market this noisy, boring reliability is a position.
So, how big is the scrubs market? Big enough that nobody agrees, fractured enough that a giant can go bankrupt while a startup gets bought and a public brand grows double digits, all in the same year. The size is unknowable. The turbulence is the real headline.
Sources: Mordor Intelligence, Fortune Business Insights, and Persistence Market Research on medical scrubs market size; Supply Chain Dive on Careismatic and the U.S. scrubs industry; company filings and trade reporting on Careismatic's bankruptcy, FIGS' 2025 results, and the Jaanuu asset sale.
Edited by Hedy Nie, COO of Eipnare. Connect on LinkedIn.