Ariat Founder Beth Cross Inducted into Cowgirl Hall of Fame

Ariat Founder Beth Cross Inducted Into Cowgirl Hall of Fame

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame held its 48th Annual Induction Luncheon and Ceremony this past Tuesday. Four new inductees were welcomed, including Beth Cross, co-founder and CEO of Ariat International. Since its inception in 1993, Ariat has grown into one of the largest and most recognizable equestrian and western sports brands in the world. As the official footwear partner of PBR, many a bucking chute bears the brand’s distinctive three horseshoe logo – a hallmark of quality and staple of cowboy culture throughout America. 

Beth joins more than 200 remarkable leading women of the west who have been recognized by the Cowgirl Hall of Fame for their lasting impact in and around horse culture and Western lifestyle. The ceremony was held inside Dickies Arena, home of the Ariat Texas Rattlers Professional Bull Riding team, which in September welcomed record-breaking numbers of fans to Fort Worth for sold out Rattler Days shows. 

The Texas Rattlers are proud to be sponsored by Ariat and congratulate Beth on this amazing accomplishment. In recognition of this well-deserved honor, we’re highlighting the inspiring story of our sponsor company and the woman behind its continued success.

From East to West

Despite Ariat’s renown across the American West, the story of Beth Cross’s company actually begins in the East. Cross grew up on a farm just outside of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where her mother raised thoroughbred horses. One of eight children, Beth and her siblings grew up working on the farm and going to races like the Kentucky Derby to watch the horses compete. These early years would have a tremendous impact upon the course of Cross’s life, with her love of horses and equestrian sports serving as the pillars of the company she would eventually go on to found.

Cross’s first move west took her as far as Colorado. After two years in Boulder at the University of Colorado, Beth took a break from school and spent some time traveling. One of the places she ended up was Alaska, where she worked as a cook on a salmon fishing boat before ultimately heading back to Boulder to finish her degree. Beth received her BA from the University of Colorado in 1986, followed by her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1988.

Two years later, Beth began working in product development for Reebok, coming up with ideas for all the different types of sports that could benefit from performance athletic shoes. It was here that she met Ariat co-founder Pam Parker while collaborating on the same project, changing the trajectory of her life—and the world of performance footwear—forever.

A New Breed of Boot

“The one thing we always believed was that riders are athletes,” Cross emphasized in an interview for Ariat’s So They Say web series. Integrating athletic technology into riding boots was not something that had ever really been done before Beth had the idea to do it. Before Ariat, industry standards had not changed for the better part of a century and were in desperate need of reform, as many of the options available to equestrians were clunky, heavy, and uncomfortable. Drawing inspiration from her upbringing, Beth approached her bosses at Reebok with the idea of developing a line of athletic footwear specifically for horse riders. Although Reebok approved of her idea, they did not feel it to be quite the right fit for their business needs. 

Beth knew that her vision held the potential to completely revolutionize an entire industry. She went part time at Reebok and began to move forward with a business plan to start her own company. She modeled the name Ariat after the famous racehorse Secretariat: “a non-stop competitor known for his will to win against all the odds.” 

Beth was drawn to many aspects of Secretariat’s story. Although he is now considered one of the greatest racehorses of all time, the true power of the thoroughbred was initially underestimated by many. Secretariat tended to be the last out of the start gate, which meant he often had to come back from behind in the face of overwhelming odds to take his victories. He won the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown, and to this day holds records that have never been broken. Most inspiring to Beth was the story of the horse’s heart, figuratively as well as literally: Secretariat exhibited a true love for running throughout the entirety of his career, and after his death, an autopsy revealed his heart to be roughly three times the size of a normal thoroughbred’s.

Ariat was founded in 1992. The next year the first-ever Ariat riding boots officially hit the market. Tragedy struck when the truck carrying Ariat’s first batch of orders from the factory caught fire before reaching the shipping facility, sending years of savings and hours of work literally up in smoke. Once again, Beth swiftly overcame this setback, taking the news in stride and immediately setting her sights on moving forward.

“That’s where my mind is always oriented,” Beth says. “It’s always, ‘What are we going to do about it?’ as opposed to spending too much time thinking about what actually happened or whose fault it might be.” 

Cross has carried this forward-thinking philosophy throughout the entirety of her career. For three decades, she’s built Ariat from the ground up, from an inkling of an idea to a global success story.

Legacies of Excellence: Ariat and the Texas Rattlers

Ariat and the Texas Rattlers are not satisfied with merely meeting the standard of excellence – they aim to set it. Just as Beth Cross’s goal was to build her company into the number one equestrian and western lifestyle brand in the world, the Ariat Texas Rattlers work hard every day to build our program into the best in the league. Much like our sponsor company’s namesake, the Ariat Texas Rattlers have won many hard-fought victories by standing strong in the face of adversity, gritting it out through injuries, point deficits, and all sorts of ups and downs that come with the unpredictable nature of bull riding. Our team won the PBR Camping World Teams Series title in 2023 and remains the only team to boast a perfect win record on home soil. From ride to recovery, Ariat gear keeps the Rattlers performing to the best of their athletic abilities, with cutting-edge technology specifically designed to fit the needs of the dynamic sport of bull riding. 

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When Beth Cross founded Ariat nearly 30 years ago, she was bringing brand-new ideas and technology into an industry built upon tradition and highly skeptical of change. The same can be said of the PBR itself, and perhaps even the more recently introduced Camping World Teams Series. Today, both Ariat and the PBR have become household names across America and the Teams Series continues to grow in popularity with every subsequent season since its 2022 launch. 

It’s hard to imagine the world of western sports without either Ariat or PBR, but it was truly not so long ago that each was just an idea being turned over in the back of someone’s mind as they debated whether or not to take the leap. The story of Ariat and Beth Cross’s example of leadership are true testaments to the value of hard work, resilience, and the importance of maintaining forward motion.“So much about leadership is understanding and embracing failure,” Cross has said. “Some advice that is horse-related is well known: ‘When you fall off, you get up and get back on.’ For a long time, I thought that phrase meant that you had to be willing to face your fears, but now I see it more as a lesson in patience and perseverance.”

Beth Cross has more than earned her spot among the greats in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. The Ariat Texas Rattlers are grateful for Beth’s vision for her company, and for Ariat’s contributions to our team and the world of western sports as a whole.