Arctic Horse in 2020
Our lovely horse people,
We aren't making custom skirts in 2020. This year, we're working on improving our riding skirts, developing new innovative gear (you're going to be in love!) that solves weather problems, and eliminating wait times from order to delivery.
Don't panic, we're not closing... we're hibernating. We're borrowing a strategy from the bears of Alaska in order to incubate a new period of life for Arctic Horse.
We started Arctic Horse 4 years ago in a little corner of Alaska with a couple of women. We launched our All Weather Riding Skirts to a world of women (and men) that didn't traditionally ride or work in skirts.
We held our breath, not knowing if women would embrace the amazing solution of riding skirts as we had. Then they just took off.
Without any marketing experience (wildlife biologists aren't traditionally known for our selling skills, more so bear tracking skills, and that didn't help us at all), our skirts spread by word of mouth. Your beautiful word of mouth carried us faster and further than we ever imagined.
We've grown by leaps and bounds, and so quickly at times it was all we could do to catch our feet from running out from under us. We've made and sold thousands of riding skirts to women all over the globe. From our little corner in Alaska.
Every day we get amazing stories, pictures, and reviews from women doing every day and epic things in our riding skirts, like running the Iditarod, horse trekking across New Zealand, or being able to walk a colicing horse all night in -30 temperatures.
It has been amazing to see them out in the world.
As much as we've done, we want to do so much more for women's outerwear. We want to:
- develop completely new products to solve old problems,
- build a bigger team to prevent the huge backlog we have every year, and
- have time to source even better technical fabrics and refine our riding skirts.
We have ideas and prototypes for some epic new innovative gear laying around here that we just haven't had time to develop. And, it's driving us nuts.
Because, we're a small team with limited bandwidth in a remote location (we love you, Alaska), the more successful we've gotten the less time we have to work on these other goals. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, we've been too successful for our own good at times.
So, we're going to take a break this year to work on these goals. Our heart is in giving women the gear they need to be out with their horses in all weather. We KNOW we can bring more amazing gear to the table, and deliver it to you in a more timely manner (ahem, no 4-10 week backlog), but we need to create the time to do it.
I'm *hoping* we can make amazing progress on our goals and be back in time for fall 2020, but I don't want to promise or put a definite clock on this growth period.
The details:
We'll keep our In-Stock Riding Skirts pages up as long as they are available.
After March 14th, we will accept returns of course, and refund per our policy, but we won't be exchanging returns for new custom skirts.
We always stand by our gear.
Customer Service is always available. If you have any questions, issues, or need a repair, contact customer service at hello@arctichorsegear.com
Much love to you all, and happy horsing this year. It's going to be an amazing year.
Jen and the Arctic Horse Team.
