Conquering Wild Waters Since 1977
Stohlquist (stohlquist.com) scores 78 out of 100 on Brand Analyzer, placing it in the Brand-Ready tier among Sports & Fitness brands, E-commerce brands, Manufacturing brands, in the 59th percentile of 7235 Sports & Fitness brands.
Stohlquist is a brand specializing in personal flotation devices (PFDs) and paddling safety gear for kayaking and water sports, alongside related equipment such as fishing gear and camping supplies. Founded in 1946, with reported headquarters in Sophia Antipolis and ownership tied to Air Liquide, the brand emphasizes nearly five decades of expertise in water safety, positioning itself as a trusted provider of high-performance gear for whitewater and recreational paddlers.
| Brand Name | Stohlquist |
|---|---|
| Domain | stohlquist.com |
| Industry | Sports & Fitness, E-commerce |
| Founded | 1946 |
| Headquarters | Sophia Antipolis |
| Parent Company / Owner | Air Liquide |
| Main Competitors | NRS (84/100), Astral Designs (83/100), Kokatat (80/100), MTI Adventurewear, Patagonia (93/100), Level Six (82/100) |
Moz Domain Authority 32/100 vs category average 44 / leader 94 - limited third-party links, so AI systems rarely encounter mentions of the brand.
No Wikipedia presence was found - a major gap, since Wikipedia is among the most heavily weighted sources in AI training data.
The homepage meta description reads "Stohlquist is the leading PFD brand fpor kayaking and paddling safety jackets, offering a wide range of high-quality products. From kayaks and life jackets to fishing gear and camp…" (Meta description: 42 words. OG description present and descriptive) - this is the summary AI engines are most likely to quote.
Structured data on the homepage: 2 JSON-LD block(s), Organization schema, Breadcrumb/Website schema, og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, Twitter cards, canonical. Adding FAQ schema would further help AI crawlers parse the brand's identity.
AI-crawler access: robots.txt present, no AI bot restrictions - robots.txt controls whether engines like GPTBot and ClaudeBot can read the site at all.
Detected tech stack: Cloudflare, Shopify.
Social footprint: verified profiles on Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter); no detected presence on LinkedIn, YouTube, GitHub - consistent profiles reinforce the brand's identity across the web.
0 Reddit mentions - community discussion signals real-world reputation to AI models.
Live results from asking a general-purpose AI assistant about the brand, checked October 2026.
When asked "What is Stohlquist?", Claude could identify the brand as of October 2026. Stohlquist is a paddlesports gear company known for personal flotation devices (PFDs/life jackets), kayaking apparel, and accessories, founded by Jim Stohlquist. It's a long-standing name in whitewater and touring kayaking circles, especially recognized for its well-fitted, durab Best known for High-quality kayaking PFDs (life jackets) designed for paddlers.
When asked "Best brands similar to Stohlquist?", Claude would recommend Stohlquist as of October 2026. It's a respected, established brand among paddlesports enthusiasts for reliable, comfortable PFDs and kayaking gear.
Common questions people ask in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search engines.
Stohlquist's main competitors in Sports & Fitness: NRS (84/100), Astral Designs (83/100), Kokatat (80/100), Patagonia (93/100), Level Six (82/100).
Sources: Brand Analyzer scan
Stohlquist has limited AI-search visibility, scoring 43/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI visibility composite (visibility 25, trust 55, recommendation 59). This estimates how likely AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are to know, trust, and recommend the brand.
Sources: Stohlquist official site
Stohlquist was founded in 1946. Stohlquist operates in the Sports & Fitness category. It is analyzed by Brand Analyzer across seven brand dimensions and AI-search visibility.
Sources: Wikidata
Stohlquist is headquartered in Sophia Antipolis. Stohlquist operates in the Sports & Fitness category.
Sources: Wikidata
Stohlquist scores 59/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI recommendation signal, indicating it is reasonably likely to be surfaced when AI assistants like ChatGPT suggest Sports & Fitness options. Recommendation depends on crawlability, structured data, and category authority.
Sources: Stohlquist official site
Stohlquist can improve AI discoverability by strengthening structured data (Organization and FAQ schema), maintaining an accurate Wikipedia/Wikidata entity, earning authoritative citations, and keeping content crawlable for AI bots. Brand Analyzer measures these as visibility, trust, and recommendation signals.
Sources: Stohlquist official site
Stohlquist is owned by or part of Air Liquide. Stohlquist operates in the Sports & Fitness category.
Sources: Wikidata
Stohlquist scores 43/100 for AI visibility - how well ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can discover, identify and cite the brand.
Stohlquist has a limited AI-visibility profile at 43/100 - a proxy for how readily ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can recognise and cite it. Its strongest area is recommendation likelihood (59/100) and its weakest is visibility (25/100). It benefits from a Wikidata knowledge-graph entry, open access for AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.) and machine-readable schema.org markup. The main gaps holding it back: no clear Wikipedia entity to anchor it in LLM training data and a low Moz Domain Authority of 32/100. In a live check, Claude could already identify Stohlquist from memory (October 2026) - a sign these signals are paying off.
The score combines seven dimensions - name quality, digital presence, visual identity, messaging clarity, trust foundation, AI discoverability, and brand authority - into a single objective benchmark.
Ranked closest to Stohlquist: STIGA (78/100), STIGA Sports (78/100), Stokastic (78/100), STREB (78/100).
A step up - brands to learn from: Zhou Nutrition (81/100), Zebco (81/100).
Category leader: Complex (97/100).
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