The story of GIV Gowns starts long before the company did. At nineteen, Shawn Gibbs spent two years doing service work in Haiti, where he learned from a man named Fritz that dignity isn’t something the world grants a person; it is the inherent value every human being already carries, and the respect that value demands. He carried that lesson into fifteen years of practicing medicine, where he watched it play out constantly in the exam room. Patients hesitated, disclosed less and disengaged the moment they put on a gown that was never designed with them in mind; cold, ill-fitting and borrowed from a hospital ward regardless of what kind of visit they were actually there for.

The idea for GIV Gowns first took shape in 2015, rooted in the need to rethink the traditional patient gown and create an experience that better reflects the dignity of the person wearing it. In 2022, Shawn built his first working prototype, a version with a zipper running the full length of the front that was so impractical a patient had to reach to their own toes to open it. He laughs about it now, but it taught him an important lesson: an idea only proves itself in practical application.

GIV Gowns was formally incorporated in 2023, turning an idea shaped by years of medical experience into a company focused on changing how patients experience medical examinations and care. The company’s first commercial sale closed in February 2026, marking an important milestone in its journey.

In this exclusive interview with Business Fortune, Shawn Gibbs, Co-Founder and CEO of GIV Gowns, discusses how the company was born from his experiences in Haiti and medicine, the journey from the first prototype to commercialization, and how GIV Gowns is working to bring greater dignity, comfort, and respect to the patient experience.

Every growing company faces its share of challenges. What were some of the biggest obstacles GIV Gowns encountered in its journey and how did you and your team work through them? Looking back, were there any particular challenges that ultimately helped shape the company into what it is today?

The biggest obstacle has been that we’re not improving an existing category, we’re creating one. There was no playbook for what a premium, purpose-built patient gown should look like. So everything, the fabric, the fasteners, the fit, had to be tested from scratch. We went through ten different fabric variations before landing on our custom spandex-polyester blend, and I used my own blind father and my mother, who has severe arthritis, as a personal testing standard: if they could get in and out of a design without struggling, we had something worth building on.

The other real challenge has been earning trust as a young, bootstrapped company asking healthcare practices to rethink something they’d never questioned before. We worked through that the same way I approach patient care, by staying personally involved in early conversations, offering short in-office trials before any purchase and letting the product prove itself rather than asking anyone to take it on faith.

GIV Gowns has developed a range of products designed around comfort, dignity, privacy and functionality. Could you walk us through the different products you currently offer and the needs each one is designed to address?

GIV Classic is our baseline, built for general clinical use across the widest range of visits. GIV Forward solves front-access, opening where a provider actually needs it rather than in the back, without gaping open or requiring constant readjustment. GIV Duo is built for situations that call for a more structured, secure fit, and GIV Motion is designed for patients who need to move, transfer or walk without the garment working against them. Our shirt designs cover visits and recoveries where a full gown isn’t the right form factor, and GIV Kids and GIV Mini exist because a child’s relationship to a hospital environment is its own design problem, not a smaller version of the adult one. Every product shares the same foundation: helping a patient feel dignified, confident and covered, while giving providers real clinical access.

What goes into the design and development of a GIV Gown? How do you balance factors such as patient comfort and dignity with the practical requirements of healthcare professionals and providers?

Every design has to resolve the same tension: enough coverage to preserve dignity, enough access for a provider to work without repositioning anything, comfort that holds up over repeated laundering, and a price a practice can justify. Segmental access, the ability to reach a specific area for an exam or procedure without exposing the rest of the body, is the design principle that resolves the first two, and it runs through the entire product suite. We offer both magnetic and snap fasteners. Magnetic closures test significantly better for patients with arthritis, visibility limitations or mobility challenges, while snap fasteners are used in any setting involving MRI or other imaging equipment.

As you continue to expand your collection, how do you identify new opportunities for products and improvements? Does customer feedback, conversations with healthcare professionals or your own experiences play a role in deciding what comes next?

All three, constantly. New ideas start with my own clinical frustrations, then get pressure-tested against conversations with colleagues, friends and patients, including feedback gathered directly from social posts asking people to share moments where better patient attire would have helped. Right now we have pilots underway with a children’s emergency room, a cosmetic surgeon, a cardiothoracic surgeon, a general surgeon, an orthopedic group, a chiropractic group, a physical therapy group, an OBGYN group and a rehabilitative medicine group, each one surfacing what a specific specialty actually needs rather than assuming one design fits every visit.

Among your products, which product do you think stands out from a conventional patient gown? Are there particular design details, materials or features that you feel best capture what the GIV Gowns brand is about?

GIV Forward captures it best functionally, the front-opening, segmental access design that came directly out of that failed zipper prototype and years of refinement afterward. But if you’re asking what best captures the brand itself, it’s our GIV Kids Hero Gowns. We’ve custom-built gowns resembling a young cancer patient’s own athletic jersey, complete with his name and number, and a princess-style gown for a four-year-old girl in treatment. Those aren’t our biggest sellers, but they’re the clearest expression of what every other product is trying to do: give someone a physical token that says their dignity was considered.

Building trust with patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities is an important part of your business. How does GIV Gowns approach client relationships and what do you do to make sure you genuinely understand the people you serve?

Because I’m still a practicing medical provider, I stay personally involved in early adoption conversations rather than handing that off to a sales team. Every practice goes through a short in-office trial before any purchase and every account gets structured follow-up at seven to fourteen days, then at one, three, six and twelve months. Becoming a GIV Certified Partner is our own signal that a facility genuinely aligns with what we stand for, patient dignity, provider efficiency and giving back, not a substitute for outside clinical accreditation, but a relationship built on shared values rather than just a transaction.

Looking ahead, what is the larger vision for GIV Gowns? What are some of the key goals or milestones you hope to achieve in the coming years, both for the company and for the wider patient care experience?

The milestone that matters most to me isn’t a single number, it’s the day a provider says “hand me a gown” and means a GIV Gown without a second thought. It’s the day a consumer knows GIV Gowns exists as an option and that the brand stands up for their dignity, serves as a comfort and is their armor for the healthcare battle ahead. Alongside that, we’re growing the GIV Back Initiative, currently funded by one percent of every gown sold, so that giving scales alongside the company rather than staying an afterthought.

About | Shawn Gibbs

Shawn Gibbs is the Co-Founder and CEO of GIV Gowns, a healthcare apparel company redesigning patient attire around dignity, trust and clinical access. He is a licensed medical provider with more than fifteen years of clinical experience and continues to see patients in a concierge setting. He is a serial entrepreneur on his third company: he scaled Cherrytree Family Practice (2011–2020) and later brokered its sale, then co-founded and exited Smart Skin Dermatology (2020–2025), before founding GIV Gowns in 2023.

At nineteen, Shawn spent two years in Haiti, an experience he credits as the founding ethos behind GIV Gowns’ focus on dignity. He is the author of the book “Before the Diagnosis” and the creator of the Irreplaceable Provider Method and its many frameworks.

“We’ve custom-built gowns resembling a young cancer patient’s own athletic jersey, complete with his name and number, and a princess-style gown for a four-year-old girl in treatment.”