AI study by comdaily, part 2: who AI names when skiers ask for a jacket

When AI assistants recommend a warm, fully waterproof ski jacket, they keep returning to one name: Arc’teryx, in 16 of 20 answers. Schöffel, a staple of German ski retail, was named in none.

Shelf presence and AI presence are clearly not the same thing, and the outdoor results of a study by comdaily, a Cologne-based consultancy specializing in generative engine optimization (GEO), show how wide that gap can be. Part one, published on SGIE, covered running shoes, training apparel and sports wearables. This second part covers hiking boots and backpacks, ski jackets and rain jackets. comdaily made the results available exclusively for SGIE.

Between Oct. 21 and Oct. 27, comdaily put 18 outdoor buying questions in German, from a German IP address, to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini and Google AI Overviews every day. This produced 504 answers. The results describe the German-speaking markets, not AI search worldwide.

How to read the figures

Scope: this study covers the German-speaking markets. All questions were asked in German, from a German IP address, with Google results on google.de, and the purchase questions ask where to buy in Germany. The benchmark products were chosen for their position in DACH outdoor retail.

● Neutral question: the buyer describes a need without naming a brand, such as a ski jacket with the best cold protection and breathability for classic piste skiing. These questions show which brands AI recommends (336 answers).

●  Purchase question: the buyer names a brand, a model or a product type and asks where to buy it. These questions show where AI sends the buyer (168 answers).

●  Visibility: comdaily’s score, from 0 to 100 percent, of how present a brand or shop is across all answers in a segment.

●  Rank: comdaily’s ranking score, based on how often and how prominently a brand or shop is named. A brand placed higher in an answer can outrank a rival that is mentioned slightly more often.

●  Shortlist: the brands with at least 25 percent visibility in a segment, which comdaily calls the “relevant set”.

Who AI recommends: premium jackets, specialist hiking brands

Concentration is lower in outdoor than in sporting goods, but it rises from hiking to rainwear. The three highest-ranked brands hold 33.7 percent of all brand visibility in hiking boots and backpacks, 41.0 percent in ski jackets and 48.1 percent in rain jackets.

Rain jackets are the tightest outdoor market: only four brands reach 25 percent visibility. Patagonia leads with 70.3 percent, the strongest single position in the outdoor segments, ahead of Arc’teryx (49.7 percent), British mountaineering brand Rab (41.2 percent) and Mammut (28.2 percent). Membrane brand Gore-Tex ranks fifth (21.1 percent), ahead of The North Face (19.2 percent). In comdaily’s reading, the engines treat the membrane as a buying criterion in its own right.

Ski jackets have five brands on the shortlist. Arc’teryx leads with 62.1 percent, followed by Patagonia (49.6 percent), Mammut (49.9 percent), Norwegian brand Norrøna (41.4 percent) and Helly Hansen (31.7 percent). Two sustainability-focused brands make the top 10: French label Picture Organic Clothing (sixth, 22.8 percent) and German brand Pyua (10th, 12.3 percent). Jack Wolfskin ranks 18th (5.7 percent), while Schöffel misses the top 20.

Hiking boots and backpacks is the most open segment, with eight brands on the shortlist. Deuter (49.5 percent) and Lowa (47.4 percent) lead, ahead of Osprey, Hanwag and Gregory. Pack and boot specialists share the list: Deuter, Osprey and Gregory for backpacks, Lowa, Hanwag, Meindl, Scarpa and La Sportiva for boots. Salewa ranks 10th (18.8 percent), Fjällräven 13th (12.4 percent).

The sample answers show how strong a single product can be. Patagonia’s Torrentshell 3L appeared in all 20 answers to the question about the best-value rain jackets under 200 euros for hikers, and Gemini and Perplexity opened all five of their answers with it. ChatGPT was the exception: all five of its answers opened with Decathlon’s own brands Forclaz or Quechua.

“Retail strength and AI visibility are two different currencies. A brand can be a fixture in every alpine sports shop and still be missing from the answer when a skier asks which jacket to buy,”

said David Wiestner, Co-Founder and Managing Director of comdaily.

The bestseller paradox

Comdaily’s purchase questions name six outdoor benchmarks that it selected for their leading position in DACH outdoor retail: the Lowa Renegade GTX and the Deuter Futura, Schöffel and Helly Hansen ski jackets, and the Patagonia Torrentshell 3L and Mammut rainwear. In hiking, neutral advice matches the retail picture. In ski and rainwear, it does not.

Schöffel is the clearest case. Asked where to buy Schöffel or Helly Hansen ski jackets, the engines name schoeffel.com as the second destination after Bergfreunde. When buyers describe what they need instead, Schöffel misses the top 20 in ski jackets, even though its website is cited as a source in 12 neutral ski answers. In rain jackets, it ranks 19th (7.1 percent).

Helly Hansen makes the ski shortlist in fifth place, but its own store is more visible in purchase answers (47.1 percent) than the brand is in neutral advice (31.7 percent). Mammut ranks third in ski jackets (49.9 percent) but only fourth in rain jackets, with 28.2 percent against Patagonia’s 70.3 percent.

For Patagonia, Deuter and Lowa, the gap opens only at checkout. They lead their segments in neutral advice, but specialist retailers rank ahead of their own stores: the Deuter store is the fourth purchase destination in hiking, the Lowa store sixth, the Patagonia store sixth in rain jackets.

“Our reading is that the engines reward brands whose products are described in specific, technical terms across their own site, the retail trade and test coverage. In ski and rainwear, that currently favours Arc’teryx, Patagonia, Norrøna and Rab over brands with a stronger position in German retail,”

Wiestner said.

Where AI sends buyers: the specialist trade

Outdoor buyers who ask where to buy are sent to specialist retailers even more often than sporting goods buyers. Sports and outdoor specialists receive 59.2 percent of the links in outdoor purchase answers, against 40.4 percent in the sporting goods segments. Brand stores get 17.4 percent, price comparison sites 12.9 percent and generalists 7.7 percent. Amazon gets 0.4 percent.

Bergfreunde, the German online outdoor retailer, is the first destination in all three segments and is cited in 110 of 168 outdoor purchase answers, or 65 percent.

In hiking boots and backpacks, specialists take 53 percent of links and price comparison 19 percent. Bergfreunde (69.3 percent) leads ahead of Globetrotter and Bergzeit, with the Deuter store fourth, SportScheck fifth and the Lowa store sixth.

In ski jackets, specialists take 69 percent of links and brand stores 22 percent, while price comparison barely appears. Bergfreunde (70.2 percent) is followed by the Schöffel store, Bavarian ski and outdoor retailer Sport Conrad and Austrian board sports retailer Blue Tomato, with the Helly Hansen store fifth.

In rain jackets, specialists take 53 percent of links, price comparison 20 percent and brand stores 16 percent. Bergfreunde reaches 89.5 percent, ahead of Bergzeit and Globetrotter, with the Mammut store fourth, idealo fifth and the Patagonia store sixth.

The question sets the route for price comparison. idealo is cited in 59 percent of rain-jacket and 45 percent of hiking purchase answers, where the questions name a model (Torrentshell 3L, Renegade GTX, Futura) or ask for a good price. In ski jackets, where the questions ask about brands and assortment, it appears in 12 percent. Geizhals appears in 30 percent of rain-jacket and hiking answers and in none on ski jackets.

Second-hand also enters the routing. In rain jackets, classifieds platform Kleinanzeigen (17th) and second-hand marketplace Vinted (18th) reach the top 20 destinations, alongside Patagonia’s own resale site Worn Wear; together they account for 5.3 percent of rain-jacket links.

The engines also disagree on where to buy the same boot. Asked where to buy the Lowa Renegade GTX cheaply and safely online in Germany, ChatGPT named Lowa’s own shop first in four of five answers, followed each time by Bergfreunde. Perplexity opened four of five answers with idealo and did not name Bergfreunde at all.

“When an outdoor buyer is ready to purchase, the engines rarely send them to the brand first, and hardly ever to Amazon. They send them to the specialists they trust: Bergfreunde, Bergzeit, Globetrotter. For outdoor brands, these retailers have become part of their own AI visibility,”

Wiestner said.

Same question, different answers

The engines disagree more in outdoor than in any other part of the study. comdaily scored each engine on all 84 of its neutral outdoor answers, pooling the three segments. The scores are therefore lower than the segment figures above and are best compared between engines for the same brand.

Where the engines agree. Seven brands make the top 10 at ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews alike: Patagonia, Arc’teryx, Vaude, Deuter, Lowa, Osprey and Hanwag. Hiking brands are the most stable, with spreads of 1.0 for Deuter, 1.1 for Osprey and 1.2 for Lowa between their highest and lowest engine. Patagonia is the only premium jacket brand with equally strong positions everywhere, between 37.5 and 42.4 percent.

ChatGPT gives the British and Norwegian brands their best scores. Rab ranks third there with 36.2 percent and Norrøna fourth with 33.4 percent, against at most 8.8 and 17.4 percent at the other engines. ChatGPT’s most-cited domains are rab.equipment, arcteryx.com and norrona.com. Patagonia leads at ChatGPT with 39.3 percent.

Perplexity favors hiking brands. Deuter and Lowa rank third and fourth there, higher than at any other engine, and Gore-Tex and Austrian ski maker Atomic enter its top 7. Arc’teryx falls to 21.1 percent, against 46.6 percent at Gemini, and Mammut misses Perplexity’s top 20 at around 12 percent. In the ski sample answers, Perplexity opened four of five answers with jackets from Czech brand Nordblanc and their Dermizax membrane, and named Mammut in none.

Gemini and Google AI Overviews both rank Arc’teryx first (46.6 and 45.7 percent) and Patagonia second (39.2 and 42.4 percent). They differ on Mammut: AI Overviews gives it 45.7 percent, level with Arc’teryx, against 26.3 percent at Gemini. In the ski samples, Mammut appeared in four of five AI Overviews answers and in all five from ChatGPT.

At checkout. Bergfreunde is the first purchase destination at all four engines. Perplexity again takes its own route: idealo comes second and Otto third, Globetrotter misses its top 20 and Bergzeit ranks only eighth (17.6 percent, against 71 to 77 percent at Gemini and AI Overviews). Perplexity also cites idealo in 67 percent of outdoor purchase answers, against 24 to 36 percent at the other engines. The Schöffel store makes every engine’s top 10. With 42 purchase answers per engine, comdaily considers the overall pattern reliable, not the exact ranks.

The engines read different sources. ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews take 94 to 98 percent of the citations among their 50 most-cited domains from brand websites. ChatGPT is the only one of the three with a small editorial share (3.5 percent, mainly from outdoor-magazin.com and ALPIN). Perplexity draws 58 percent from editorial and retailer content, led by Bergzeit’s buying guides (65 citations), outdoor-magazin.com (36), GQ (36) and ALPIN (33).

Bergzeit’s magazine and buying guides are the most-cited non-brand source (67 citations), ahead of outdoor-magazin.com (40) and ALPIN (36). The German Alpine Club (DAV) is cited 20 times, Stiftung Warentest seven times. No B2B trade title ranks among the most-cited domains, which fits questions asked by consumers.

“Asking which engine ‘the market’ uses is the wrong question. In outdoor, Mammut is the #3 brand in Google’s AI Overviews and reaches only a quarter of that visibility at Perplexity. Outdoor brands need to measure each engine separately, because each one reads different sources,” Wiestner

Playbook

Based on these findings, comdaily offers recommendations for three types of player.

Brands that are strong in retail but weak in AI answers, such as Schöffel and Helly Hansen in ski jackets or Mammut in rainwear, face a use-case gap. The neutral questions ask for specific credentials: three-layer construction, breathability on climbs, snow protection, recycled fabrics. comdaily advises these brands to document their flagship products against exactly these criteria, consistently on their own site, in retail listings and in tests.

For Perplexity, the route runs through the outdoor press and test layer: outdoor-magazin.com, ALPIN, Bergzeit’s guides and the German Alpine Club shape its answers, and inclusion in tests and comparisons is what counts.

Brands that already lead in AI answers, such as Arc’teryx, Patagonia, Deuter and Lowa, still lose the buyer at checkout to specialist retailers, and their visibility can vary sharply from one engine to the next. Mammut ranks third at AI Overviews but misses Perplexity’s top 20, and Rab is third at ChatGPT and marginal elsewhere, so comdaily recommends monitoring each engine separately.

It also points to two levers brands can work on themselves: membrane partnerships, since Gore-Tex ranks fifth in rain jackets, and resale, since second-hand platforms and Patagonia’s Worn Wear already appear among purchase destinations.

Specialist retailers such as Bergfreunde, Bergzeit, Globetrotter, Sport Conrad and Blue Tomato receive most of the purchase links, and Bergzeit’s buying guides are among the most-cited editorial sources. For brands, that makes complete product data, availability and price at these retailers part of their own AI visibility.

The brands in this second part of the study are part of the world of outdoor covered by our sister publication and weekly newsletter, Outdoor Industry Compass, curated by Wolfgang Greiner.

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