My very talented husband and his very talented Grandfather own the greatest rodeo equipment company on the market. It is called Chute Help. We are green in so many senses of the word - we use Earth's most important resource (GRAVITY) to operate our most coveted product, the Chute Help Fully Automatic Chute.
This product is Utility Patent Protected, and unbeatable - but our competitors know that :)
The line of complimentary products to complete a roping arena are just as well built and valuable to anyone in the sport of team roping.
I began working with Austin in 2015 (after a 3-year stint at Panhandle Western Wear - literally the best Western Wear on the market), 6-months after we were married. I came on to handle Marketing, but it turned into much bigger of a job description as time went on. As you may know, if you own a business, you do everything from janitorial work to company finances, and everything in between.
The challenges of working in a Family Business are more complicated than you can even imagine! There are so many people, with so many opinions, and they all feel that they have the right to be heard and obeyed. This creates a toxic situation at times, but it also lead Austin and I to learn how to set boundaries. We grew closer as we learned how to set these very important boundaries to protect ourselves and our company. Some relationships suffered, but in the end they are stronger because of it.
Some product lines we also offered at Chute Help was Easy Now (horse training products) and Smart Arena (rodeo technology that provides online storage for rodeo performance runs). Both of those lines are SO AWESOME, but were taking away from the main focus in our careers, which is Chute Help. Easy Now is now manufactured and distributed by a rockstar company that you know and love - Equibrand. Smart Arena is on a break, as we think about what to do with this technology that we spent years developing - it truly is unlike any other similar product!
Back to the title of this article - Chute Help is a family owned and operated business. We celebrate together, we argue together, we make up together and create together. Austin, Tom and I seem to quite often be on the same page, and I know that Tom trusts Austin explicitly with this company.
What's next with Chute Help? I don't think that we even know. All we know is that this product line (which has some exciting new products to HOPEFULLY be debuted at the 2021 NFR in Las Vegas) is exceptionally the best.