We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Arielle Gerke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Arielle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

We have rebranded our business in recent years to showcase both sides of our business from my husband’s specialty in the business and my own. We have worked together for many years and have grown substantially from when we first started our business.

My husband Cimmaron Gerke specializes in starting young horses, problem horses, development of rope horses, barrel horses, racehorses and all-around horses. Whereas my part of the business is really directed to more of the English riding, with years of experience in training and sales of Hunters and Jumpers. I have also utilized my experience and training to focus on a program dedicated to teaching up and coming riders along with riders who have years of experience.

When we decided to Rebrand our business, I really wanted to portray our skills for both the Western and English Equestrian world. My Husband’s family was always based out of Brighton Colorado with years in the agriculture and farming business, they have one of the longest standing Brands in Colorado dating back to the late 1800s. My husband Cimmaron’s Great-Great Grandfather’s name was Frederick Dahlinger who founded the FD- brand. We decided to continue that legacy and incorporate that historic and well-respected brand into our business name, but instead of specializing in farming and agriculture, our specialty is in Training of the Equine athlete. We feel very connected to the Equine Industry as we both have a long history of not only the horsemen and horsewomen in our families but the development of Brighton Colorado as parts of our family homesteaded the area. It was important to us to keep the history our family carries alive in the industry.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My family has always had horses, so growing up I had many opportunities to be part of the equestrian community and really found that my passion was training and selling horses, as well as teaching riding lessons. I am most proud of how my business has grown as I started with a very small business and have grown substantially allowing us to make many improvements to our facility and expand. Although our business has grown so much, I feel like we are unique in the way that we can still be very personalized to fit what our clients and students need in order to achieve and accomplish their goals.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Before my business was fully established, I was working for an Equine Sports Medicine Veterinarian and worked as a veterinary assistant for a couple of years. During some routine equine dental work, I met my now husband. I feel like we have the same passion which really makes our business successful in so many ways. He brought things to my business that were missing and vice versa. We were really able to come together and create a unique business with a broad range of services that we are able to offer, and I feel like that’s really what sets us apart from other businesses who are in the same industry.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I first started my business, it was only directed toward retraining and selling off the track Thoroughbreds as well as other sport horse breeds, warmbloods etc. I had a lot of requests for lessons and aspiring equestrians who were eager to learn how to ride, so that’s when I created the second branch of my business to offer lessons and coaching. It took a while to figure out how to structure my business to accommodate the number of students and horses that I have in training and finding the best way to make everything flow together and feel organized however I had allot of help from fellow colleagues. I can’t thank them enough for all of their help in guiding me to add this second part of my business and giving me ideas on how to keep things running so smoothly.

Contact Info:

• Website: fdperformancehorses.com
• Instagram: fd_performance horses
• Facebook: FD- Performance and Sporthorses
• Linkedin: Arielle Gerke

Image Credits
All of the images that were taken are my own :)