Most of the companies that come up when you search "scrubs manufacturers" don't manufacture for you. They compete with you. The global medical scrubs market was worth $48.3 billion in 2023 and is forecast to reach $85.8 billion by 2033, a 5.9% compound annual rate (Allied Market Research). That money has drawn brand owners, institutional uniform suppliers, and SEO shell sites. Only a thin slice of it is contract manufacturing capacity.
This directory profiles nine real, documented companies and sorts them by who owns a brand, who supplies hospitals under contract, and who will actually cut and sew a scrub for a new label. Then it covers the technical spec that decides whether your scrub survives contact with a hospital.
Heads up: We're OneAim, a group of documented United States clothing factories. The companies below are independent medical apparel businesses listed on public sources, not members of our group. OneAim's role is separate: we place your production with a documented factory in our group built for your product.
Key Takeaways
- The market is large and growing. $48.3 billion in 2023, forecast to $85.8 billion by 2033 at 5.9% CAGR (Allied Market Research).
- Almost nobody ranking for this term is a factory. Careismatic, Barco, Landau, FIGS, Fashion Seal, and Encompass are brand owners or institutional suppliers, not contract manufacturers for hire.
- The category splits in two. Fashion and DTC brands sell to nurses. Institutional suppliers sell to hospital procurement and laundry programmes. The garments are engineered for different lives.
- Scrubs are a proven brand category. FIGS booked $631.1 million in FY2025 net revenues, $508.9 million of it scrubwear (FIGS, Inc.).
- A new brand needs a development partner. Clothier Design Source in St. Paul is the one company here that builds functional apparel for other people's labels.
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Why is the scrubs search result so misleading?
Because the query is dominated by two things that aren't factories. First, brand owners who make scrubs only for their own labels. Second, SEO shell sites with no address, no filings, and no verifiable production. What's left is small but honest. Nine real companies, of which exactly one is an open contract development partner a new brand could hire. That's the shape of the industry, and knowing it saves you a month of wasted emails.
How did we choose these manufacturers?
We built this list from company websites, public filings, and investor disclosures. Every company here is a real, operating business: two are publicly traded (Superior Group of Companies on NASDAQ, FIGS on NYSE), and the rest publish histories, addresses, and catalogues we could read directly.
We excluded the crop of scrubs "manufacturer" landing pages ranking on this term. No factory address, no registration, no evidence of production. Padding a roster to ten with names like that would make this page look more useful and be less useful, so we stopped at the real count.
Who can actually manufacture scrubs for a new brand?
One company on this list, and it's the one nobody's heard of. Contract cut-and-sew for a functional medical garment is a development job, not a catalogue order. It needs a partner who does patterning and tech design, not one selling you an existing scrub with your logo on it.
Clothier Design Source (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA)
A US full-package cut-and-sew development house: design, patterning, tech design, and domestic manufacturing for functional apparel across athletic, outdoor, military, and medical products. Its site lists medical among its core categories and shows medical-adjacent development work. For production clients it states they are "producing over 1,000 units per style", so this isn't a 50-piece sampling shop. It declines commodity work like blank tees, and runs an education arm, The Apparel Mentor, alongside production.
One nuance changes how you approach them. Clothier does not advertise scrubs as a stock product line. Read them as a US development partner capable of building a scrubs line from your brief, not a dedicated scrubs factory with blocks on the shelf.
How do you tell real scrubs manufacturers from brand owners?
Five questions, and you can ask all of them in one email. Every company in this directory answers them differently, and the pattern of the answers tells you which of the three models you are talking to before you have spent a single call.
- What is the street address of the sewing floor? A factory gives you one and it appears on a map. A brand gives you a corporate office. A lead-generation site gives you a contact form.
- Can you make a garment to my pattern, or only sell me yours? This single question separates contract manufacturing from private-label decoration of an existing scrub.
- Who owns the pattern and the tech pack at the end? A development partner expects you to own them. A brand licensing you its product does not.
- What is your minimum per style, per colour? Colour is the trap. Scrubs live and die on colour range. A minimum that sounds workable per style becomes six times bigger once you split it across a palette.
- Which test methods can you certify a finish to? A real supply chain names a method. A reseller names a benefit.
The uncomfortable answer this list produces
The uncomfortable answer this list produces is that most of the roster below fails question two, and that is not a criticism of them. They are excellent businesses that simply are not in the business of making your product.
What separates a fashion scrubs brand from institutional uniform supply?
Who pays, and who washes. A fashion or DTC scrubs brand sells to the nurse, so the garment is engineered for how it looks, moves, and feels across a twelve-hour shift. An institutional supplier sells to the hospital, so the garment must survive an industrial laundry cycle, come back the same colour and size, and be worn by a different person next week.
That split runs straight through this roster. Barco, Careismatic, Landau, and FIGS sit on the fashion side. Fashion Seal Healthcare, Encompass Group, UniFirst, and Cintas sit on the institutional side. Same product name, two different design problems. If you're launching a brand, you're building for the first market, and your tech pack should say so. A factory that only knows the second will over-engineer your cost and under-engineer your fit.
Which US fashion and retail scrubs brands should you know?
These four own the shelf. None will manufacture for you, and that's exactly why they belong here. They're your competitive set, and their product decisions are the best free brief you'll ever read.
Careismatic Brands, Inc. (Santa Monica and Chatsworth, California, USA)
The largest medical apparel house in the world by brand portfolio. Founded in 1995 as Strategic Partners, Inc. with Cherokee Uniforms as the flagship, it now owns Cherokee, Dickies Medical, Heartsoul, Infinity, Med Couture, Healing Hands, Medelita, and AllHeart, with operations across California, Dallas, Canada, Hong Kong, China, Sweden, and the UK. It reports around 700 employees worldwide, manufactures through its own supply chain, and does not take private-label work.
Read Careismatic as a portfolio strategy rather than a supplier. One owner runs eight labels at different price points, which is how a single manufacturing base gets amortised across a whole shelf. Its corporate ownership and financial structure have moved in recent years, so confirm the group's current status directly before you cite it in a pitch deck.
Barco Uniforms (California, USA)
Founded in 1929, Barco is the clearest single example of the fashion scrubs model. Its brands include Barco One, Grey's Anatomy by Barco (in Classic, Evolve, Cultivate, and Spandex Stretch lines), Skechers by Barco, and Barco Unify, spanning scrubs, lab coats, underscrubs, and maternity scrubs. Study how it segments one product into four fabric tiers under a single licence; that's the playbook. We confirmed the founding year and brands from its own site but not the HQ city.
Landau (Olive Branch, Mississippi, USA)
Founded in 1938 by Rudolph Landau selling work uniforms in Memphis, now one of the older names in nursing uniforms. Landau says it was the first manufacturer to bring fashion colours to scrubs in the early 1980s and the first to introduce print designs in the late 1980s; both claims come from its own About page, so treat them as company history rather than settled fact. It acquired Urbane and Chefwear, and was acquired by Kindthread in 2022.
FIGS, Inc. (Santa Monica, California, USA)
The benchmark, and the proof the category is worth entering. FIGS is a direct-to-consumer technical healthcare apparel brand built on a proprietary fabric it markets as FIONx, selling scrubwear, underscrubs, lab coats, and footwear. In FY2025 it reported net revenues of $631.1 million, up 13.6% year over year, with 2.9 million active customers and an average order value of $120. Scrubwear alone was $508.9 million of that, up 14.3%.
Why FIGS is a brand, not a factory
Here's the part every founder should internalise: FIGS is a brand, not a factory. It designs, specs, and markets, and produces through contract manufacturers. You can't hire FIGS. You can copy its structure.
Citation capsule: FIGS, Inc. reported $631.1 million in net revenues for fiscal 2025, up 13.6% year over year, of which $508.9 million came from scrubwear alone. FIGS designs and specifies its garments, including its proprietary FIONx fabric, and produces them through contract manufacturers rather than owning factories. It is a brand, not a manufacturing option.
Who are the institutional healthcare uniform suppliers?
The other half of the market, and the half almost no blog post explains. These four sell into hospital procurement and managed laundry programmes, where the garment is often owned by the supplier, not the wearer.
Fashion Seal Healthcare, part of Superior Group of Companies (Seminole, Florida, USA)
The single best example of the institutional model. Superior Group of Companies traces its history to 1920 and trades on NASDAQ as SGC; Fashion Seal Healthcare claims more than 100 years serving the industry. Its catalogue is built around hospital contract supply: scrubs, lab coats, patient gowns, cleanroom apparel, laundry bags. It launched FashionPoly, a 100% polyester scrub line engineered for industrial-wash durability. That's a nameable example of designing a scrub for the laundry rather than the hand feel. During COVID-19 it donated $5 million in scrubs to frontline workers.
Encompass Group, LLC (McDonough, Georgia, USA)
A manufacturer of reusable healthcare textiles, patient and staff apparel (scrubs, lab coats, OR gowns), single-use medical products, and therapeutic support surfaces, serving acute care, long-term care, and government. Its White Swan brand has served healthcare professionals for over a century. Encompass straddles the reusable and disposable fork, so it's the reference point when you're deciding whether your garment competes with a laundered gown or a single-use one.
UniFirst Corporation (Wilmington, Massachusetts, USA)
A NYSE-listed uniform rental and managed-laundry company (UNF) whose programmes include healthcare offerings. We list it as an illustration of the rental model, not a product source: we did not verify its healthcare programme or in-house manufacturing claims, so confirm specifics on unifirst.com before citing them. The model is the point. The provider owns the garments, launders them industrially, and rotates them.
Cintas Corporation (Cincinnati, Ohio, USA)
The largest US uniform services company, NASDAQ-listed as CTAS, offering uniform rental, sales, and facility services including healthcare programmes. Same caveat as UniFirst: we did not verify its healthcare pages. Treat it as the reference point for how hospitals source staff apparel at scale, through managed programmes rather than per-unit buying.
Here's how the nine companies compare at a glance.
| Company | Location | Model | What they actually do | Open to your brand? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clothier Design Source | St. Paul, MN, USA | Contract development and cut-and-sew | Functional apparel development, US production | Yes, 1,000+ units per style (company-stated) |
| Careismatic Brands | California, USA | Brand owner | Cherokee, Dickies Medical, Med Couture, Healing Hands | No, own supply chain only |
| Barco Uniforms | California, USA | Brand owner | Grey's Anatomy by Barco, Barco One, Skechers by Barco | No |
| Landau | Olive Branch, MS, USA | Brand owner | Nursing uniforms, scrubs; Kindthread group | No |
| FIGS, Inc. | Santa Monica, CA, USA | DTC brand | FIONx scrubwear, underscrubs, lab coats | No, uses contract manufacturers itself |
| Fashion Seal Healthcare (SGC) | Seminole, FL, USA | Institutional supply | Hospital scrubs, gowns, cleanroom; FashionPoly | Contract/bulk, not published |
| Encompass Group | McDonough, GA, USA | Institutional supply | Reusable and disposable healthcare textiles | Contract/institutional, not published |
| UniFirst | Wilmington, MA, USA | Rental / managed programme | Uniform rental and industrial laundry | Programme-based, not per-unit |
| Cintas | Cincinnati, OH, USA | Rental / managed programme | Uniform rental and facility services | Programme-based, not per-unit |
Source: company websites, corporate histories, and investor disclosures, 2024 to 2026. UniFirst and Cintas are included on the strength of their public-company status; their healthcare product specifics were not independently verified in this research pass. MOQ blanks mean no figure is published, not that no minimum exists.
What fabric makes a scrub a scrub?
Stretch, recovery, and a fibre blend that survives washing. The modern scrub top is not cotton. The category standard is synthetic-dominant, built on polyester. It adds rayon or viscose for drape and a small percentage of spandex for four-way stretch and recovery. Polyester carries colourfastness and abrasion resistance. Rayon softens a fabric that would otherwise feel like a windbreaker. Spandex gives the squat-and-reach range a clinician needs a hundred times a shift.
Why we will not quote a magic ratio
We're deliberately not quoting a magic ratio, because the ones circulating online have no primary source. A number invented for a blog post is worse than no number. What we can point to is a documented direction of travel: Fashion Seal Healthcare's FashionPoly line went the other way, to 100% polyester, built around industrial-wash durability rather than hand feel. Every point of comfort usually costs a point of laundry life.
How do antimicrobial and fluid-repellent finishes actually work?
They're chemical treatments applied to the fabric, not properties of the fibre, and that matters commercially because finishes wear off. An antimicrobial finish inhibits bacterial growth on the textile, controlling odour and staining. A fluid-repellent finish makes liquids bead and roll rather than soak. Neither turns a scrub into personal protective equipment.
The discipline is testing
The discipline is testing. There are real, nameable industry test methods here: AATCC 100 for antibacterial activity, AATCC 42 and AATCC 127 for water resistance and impact penetration, ASTM F1670 and F1671 for synthetic blood and viral penetration. If a mill offers a finish, ask which method it was tested to, what result it hit, and how many launderings the claim survives. Verify the certificate before any of it goes on a hangtag. A durability claim you can't evidence is a regulatory problem, not a marketing one.
Citation capsule: Antimicrobial and fluid-repellent properties in medical scrubs are chemical finishes applied to fabric, not inherent fibre properties, so their performance degrades with laundering. Claims should be tied to a named test method (such as AATCC 100 for antibacterial activity, or ASTM F1670 and F1671 for fluid and viral penetration) and to a stated number of wash cycles the claim survives.
Why does industrial-wash durability change the whole spec?
Because a hospital laundry is not a washing machine. Institutional laundering runs hot, uses aggressive chemistry including chlorine bleach, and tumbles at high temperature, dozens of times, while the garment is still expected to look like a uniform. So the specs shift: shrinkage, dimensional stability, colourfastness to bleach and light, seam strength, and pilling resistance move ahead of hand feel and drape.
Why Fashion Seal chose polyester
That's why Fashion Seal Healthcare built a 100% polyester line rather than a softer blend. And a DTC scrub and a hospital-contract scrub can look identical and cost very different amounts to make. Selling to clinicians who wash at home? Optimise for comfort. Chasing hospital contracts? You're designing for the laundry, and wash-cycle counts belong in your quality control plan from the first sample.
How much does pocket engineering really matter?
More than the fabric, if you ask the person wearing it. A clinician carries shears, a badge reel, a phone, wipes, tape, and a pen or four, all reachable one-handed. Pocket count, depth, placement relative to the hip, and a dedicated instrument or phone sleeve are what nurses compare when two scrubs cost the same.
Pockets are also where a scrub fails. A loaded patch pocket drags on stretch fabric and pulls the panel around it out of shape. Three details decide whether the garment holds: bar tacks at the pocket mouth, a stabiliser behind any pocket meant to carry weight, and a seam line placed where the load can transfer into it. Get those wrong and the top sags within a month.
So put pocket dimensions, tack placement, and load expectations in the tech pack. A factory will not guess them, and it should not have to.
What does it take to launch a scrubs brand?
A spec, a development partner, and a realistic first order. Scrubs are technical: stretch fabric, engineered pockets, tight fit tolerances across a wide size range, and finish claims you may have to substantiate. That rules out most generalist low-MOQ factories. Be honest about volume too. Clothier's stated 1,000-plus units per style is a fair signal for the category. And a scrubs brand at 50 pieces isn't a brand, it's a sample set. Our MOQ guide and small-orders directory cover what's actually possible.
Frequently Asked Questions About Scrubs Manufacturers
Who manufactures medical scrubs?
Most scrubs sold in the US come from brand owners manufacturing through their own supply chains: Careismatic Brands (Cherokee, Dickies Medical, Med Couture), Barco Uniforms, Landau, and FIGS. Institutional supply comes from Fashion Seal Healthcare, part of NASDAQ-listed Superior Group of Companies, and Encompass Group. None takes third-party private-label work.
Can I get scrubs made for my own brand?
Yes, but through a contract development partner rather than the brands you see in stores. Clothier Design Source in St. Paul, Minnesota is a US full-package cut-and-sew development house covering design, patterning, tech design, and domestic production for functional apparel including medical, with production clients running over 1,000 units per style.
What is the minimum order for custom scrubs?
There's no published industry standard, and most companies here don't quote per-unit minimums at all, because they're brands rather than factories. The one useful published data point is Clothier Design Source stating its production clients produce over 1,000 units per style. Treat a few hundred units per style, per colour, as a realistic floor.
How big is the medical scrubs market?
The global medical scrubs market was worth $48.3 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $85.8 billion by 2033, a 5.9% compound annual growth rate (Allied Market Research). Estimates vary widely by scope, so cite one source rather than blending several. For a single-brand benchmark, FIGS booked $631.1 million in FY2025.
What fabric are scrubs made from?
Modern scrubs are synthetic-dominant: polyester for colourfastness and abrasion resistance, rayon or viscose for drape and softness, and a few per cent of spandex for four-way stretch and recovery. Institutional scrubs go the other way. Fashion Seal Healthcare's FashionPoly line is 100% polyester, engineered for industrial-wash durability rather than hand feel.
Do antimicrobial scrubs actually work?
Antimicrobial treatments are chemical finishes applied to fabric, so they inhibit bacterial growth on the textile and control odour, but they aren't personal protective equipment and their effect degrades with washing. Ask the mill which test method the claim was measured against, such as AATCC 100 for antibacterial activity, and how many launderings it survives.
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Sources
- Allied Market Research, medical scrubs market press release, 2024. Source of the $48.3 billion (2023) figure, the $85.8 billion 2033 forecast, and the 5.9% CAGR.
- FIGS, Inc. Q4 and full-year 2025 financial results (NYSE: FIGS), reported February 2026. Source of $631.1M net revenues and the 13.6% year-over-year increase, $508.9M scrubwear and its 14.3% increase, $122.2M non-scrubwear and its 10.6% increase, the 80.6%/19.4% revenue split derived from those two figures, 2.9M active customers, $120 average order value, the FIONx fabric, and the statement that FIGS produces through contract manufacturers.
- Clothier Design Source, 2024 to 2026. Source of the "over 1,000 units per style" production-client statement, the design, patterning, tech design and domestic manufacturing services, the medical product category listing, the declining of commodity work, and The Apparel Mentor education arm. Company-stated.
- Careismatic Brands, Inc., 2024 to 2026. Source of the brand portfolio (Cherokee, Dickies Medical, Heartsoul, Infinity, Med Couture, Healing Hands, Medelita, AllHeart), the 1995 founding as Strategic Partners, Inc., the listed international operations, and approximately 700 employees. All company-stated.
- Barco Uniforms, 2024 to 2026. Source of the 1929 founding year and the brand list (Barco One, Grey's Anatomy by Barco and its fabric lines, Skechers by Barco, Barco Unify), company-stated. HQ city not verified.
- Landau, about the company, 2024 to 2026. Source of the 1938 founding by Rudolph Landau, the Urbane and Chefwear acquisitions, the 2022 Kindthread acquisition, and the "industry first" fashion-colour and print claims, which are the company's own marketing history.
- Fashion Seal Healthcare, about us, part of Superior Group of Companies (NASDAQ: SGC), 2024 to 2026. Source of the 1920 corporate lineage, the FashionPoly 100% polyester line, and the $5M COVID-19 scrubs donation.
- Encompass Group, LLC, patient and staff apparel, 2024 to 2026. Source of the White Swan brand history and the reusable plus disposable product range.
- UniFirst Corporation (NYSE: UNF), 2024 to 2026. Listed as an example of the rental and managed-programme model; healthcare product specifics not independently verified in this pass.
- Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ: CTAS), 2024 to 2026. Listed as an example of the managed uniform programme model; healthcare product specifics not independently verified in this pass.
- AATCC and ASTM test methods referenced by name only (AATCC 100, AATCC 42, AATCC 127, ASTM F1670, ASTM F1671). Verify the current standard text and any supplier certificate directly with the issuing body before making a performance claim.
- OneAim Apparel internal sourcing and pipeline observations, 2024 to 2026.
Every company named above appears in this source list. Founding dates, employee counts, brand portfolios, and "industry first" claims are the companies' own published statements, labelled as such in the text, and we did not independently audit them. No company in this article is a OneAim group member, and none paid to appear.
