Ariat is the boot on a lot of rodeo dirt, the work boot on a lot of job sites, and the brand plenty of ranch and country buyers reach for first. It is also a Bay Area company, started by two women who met at Stanford Business School and named after the racehorse Secretariat.[10] And when its leaders and employees open their own checkbooks, the money runs almost entirely to Democrats.
- Despite its rodeo and ranch image, donations from Ariat's people run almost entirely to Democrats.
- Founder Beth Cross gave the maximum $2,700 to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.
- The name "Ariat" comes from Secretariat; its two founders met at Stanford Business School.
- Brock Purdy signed with Ariat after buying his offensive linemen boots as a gift.
- The Fisher family of Gap fame owns Ariat privately, but Gap does not.
Quick Take
Ariat's world is cowboy boots, bull riding, and rodeo arenas, a customer base most people would call rural and traditional. The federal paper trail complicates that picture. Individuals who list Ariat as their employer, co-founder and longtime CEO Beth Cross among them, have given almost entirely to Democratic candidates since the early 2000s, from John Kerry and Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The company itself stays quiet: no corporate PAC, no federal lobbying on record, and public sponsorships that stretch from the Professional Bull Riders to the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the touring showcase of Black cowboys and cowgirls.
Where the Money Actually Goes
Ariat is privately held and runs no corporate political action committee, so its federal footprint is simply the sum of what its people give as individuals. Compiled from federal and state campaign-finance records, that record leans hard in one direction. Of roughly thirty itemized contributions tied to donors who listed Ariat International as their employer, nearly all went to Democratic candidates and party committees.[1]
The largest gifts came from the top. Co-founder and then chief executive Beth Cross gave the maximum $2,700 to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and in earlier cycles wrote checks to John Kerry in 2003 and to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006. An Ariat vice president matched that $2,700 Clinton gift the same year. Other executives gave to Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024, with smaller amounts going to Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and to Texas Democrat Beto O'Rourke. The only Republican entry among these Ariat-employer contributions is a single $50 gift to a Tennessee state candidate in 2012, though that captures only donations identifiable as Ariat-linked, not every gift an employee may have made.[1]
Two cautions matter here. These are individual donations, evidence of where employees chose to put their own money, not a corporate policy or an official Ariat endorsement. And they are the itemized individual subset only, separate from any PAC or lobbying spending, of which the public records show none.
What Ariat Says, and Who It Backs
Ariat rarely stakes out overt political positions. Its public voice centers on what it calls core values of innovation, quality, integrity, teamwork, and respect, and on the western lifestyle its products serve.[2] Where the company does put its name is sponsorship, and that list is long. Ariat is the official footwear sponsor of the Professional Bull Riders and title sponsor of its World Series of Team Roping,[12] a sponsor of the National High School Rodeo Association, an official partner of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo,[9] and, starting in 2025, the official boot sponsor of the Stagecoach country music festival. In 2024 it signed San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, a partnership that began when Purdy asked Ariat to fit his offensive linemen with boots as a holiday thank-you.[13]
The same partnerships page carries a second thread. Ariat is a national presenting sponsor of the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, founded in 1984 as the only touring rodeo devoted to Black cowboys and cowgirls, and the company has tied its name to groups such as the Compton Cowboys and Brianna Noble's nonprofit, Humble. Ariat says it believes in "supporting our vast community of hardworking and diverse individuals," and frames the whole span, from bull riding to Black cowboy heritage, as one western community.[4]
What They Make
Ariat began in 1993 as what it billed as "The New Breed of Boot," by its own account the first company to put athletic-shoe technology inside a riding boot,[13] and has grown into what it describes as the world's largest equestrian brand, with western and English footwear, work boots, and apparel.[10] It is a private company that sells directly through ariat.com and through outside western, work, and sporting-goods retailers. In 2021 it opened a regional distribution center of roughly 1 million square feet on Blue Mound Road in Fort Worth, and in January 2022 it added a brand store in the city's historic Stockyards, in the Mule Alley district.[5]
Founded by Two Women, and Not Owned by Gap
Ariat was founded in 1993 by Beth Cross and Pam Parker, classmates at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The company takes its name from the middle of Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner Cross grew up watching race.[10] It has stayed privately held and, until 2026, co-founder led. Along the way it took outside investment, including a 2007 recapitalization led by LNK Partners with Brentwood Associates,[6] and a 2012 transaction in which LNK and Brentwood sold the company to an existing shareholder, the Fisher family of San Francisco (the family that founded Gap Inc.), together with company management. John Fisher, who took a board seat, said the family had by then been partners with Cross and her team for close to twenty years.[7]
That deal feeds a stubborn myth: that Ariat is owned by Gap. It is not. The Fishers hold Ariat as a family, not through the publicly traded retailer, and by 2012 they were longtime existing investors rather than a new corporate parent. Ariat has run as an independent company throughout.[7] In January 2026 the company announced a handoff at the top. Beth Cross moved to executive chair of the board, and Liz O'Neill, a former chief operating officer of Levi Strauss and Co. who had earlier spent more than a decade at Gap Inc., became chief executive on April 2, 2026.[8]
Recent News
The headline development is that leadership change. O'Neill's arrival in April 2026 marked the first time in more than three decades that anyone other than Beth Cross ran Ariat day to day.[8] On the product side, the brand kept pushing past its home arenas in 2025, adding the Stagecoach festival sponsorship[11] and signing on as an official partner of the English rugby clubs Gloucester Rugby and Gloucester-Hartpury.[3]
Footnotes
[1] OpenSecrets, "Donor Lookup: Ariat International (employer)," individual contribution data downloaded from the Federal Election Commission on February 6, 2025. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?employ=Ariat+International
[2] "Florida Freedom ink Ariat, Eli's Western Wear as official team partners for 2024 season," Professional Bull Riders, July 2024. https://www.pbr.com/news/2024/07/florida-freedom-ink-ariat-elis-western-wear-as-official-team-partners-for/
[3] "Ariat," Wikipedia. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariat
[4] Ariat, "The Legacy of Bill Pickett and the History of the Black Cowboy," ariat.com. Accessed August 8, 2026. https://www.ariat.com/al/legacy-of-bill-pickett
[5] Celestina Blok, CultureMap Fort Worth, "Ariat Western store rides into Stockyards' Mule Alley for big Fort Worth debut," January 17, 2022. https://fortworth.culturemap.com/news/fashion/01-17-21-ariat-mule-alley-stockyards/
[6] "LNK Partners Leads Investment in Ariat," LNK Partners, 2007. https://www.lnkpartners.com/lnk-partners-leads-investment-in-ariat/
[7] Ariat International, "Ariat International to Expand Partnership with an Existing Shareholder," PR Newswire, June 7, 2012. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ariat-international-to-expand-partnership-with-an-existing-shareholder-157908745.html
[8] "Levi's Former Chief Operating Officer Heads to Ariat as Incoming CEO," WWD, January 9, 2026. https://wwd.com/footwear-news/shoe-industry-news/ariat-beth-cross-executive-chairman-liz-oneill-ceo-1238443487/
[9] Courtney Dabney, PaperCity Magazine, "The Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo Returns For Its Big Kickoff Weekend With Some Major Changes," January 11, 2023. https://www.papercitymag.com/culture/fort-worth-stock-show-rodeo-returns-big-changes/
[10] Tim Newcomb, "Fast-Growing Ariat Pushes Boot Technology Forward With Athletic-Like Thinking," Forbes, July 20, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timnewcomb/2021/07/20/fast-growing-ariat-pushes-boot-technology-forward-with-athletic-like-thinking/
[11] "Ariat Named Official Boot of Stagecoach Music Festival," GlobeNewswire, March 5, 2025. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/03/05/3037360/0/en/Ariat-Named-Official-Boot-of-Stagecoach-Music-Festival.html
[12] Ariat, "Partnerships," ariat.com. Accessed August 16, 2026. https://www.ariat.com/partnerships
[13] Ariat International, "NFL Star Brock Purdy Joins Ariat as Brand Ambassador," PR Newswire, September 4, 2024. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nfl-star-brock-purdy-joins-ariat-as-brand-ambassador-302237647.html
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