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PrimaLoft Scales Real-World Product Testing
6x more data types. +150% more testers. 4x more recorded activities.
About PrimaLoft
PrimaLoft specializes in developing advanced technical insulation technologies which are found in a wide variety of apparel and outdoor products from many of the world’s most trusted snow, ski and outerwear brands including Patagonia, Arc’teryx, and Helly Hansen.
For over 40 years, the company has focused on delivering high-performance solutions for the most extreme weather conditions while minimizing environmental impact. Their products can be found in jackets, gloves, footwear, and more, marked with a distinctive PrimaLoft label or hang tag. Targeted at both consumers and brands looking for premium performance insulation, PrimaLoft is committed to sustainability and advancing textile technology.
By the Metrics
Recruited testers
Total number of recorded wear test activities
Total data points using automated data collection
Data types collected across three data categories
Executive Summary
The Problem
For decades, PrimaLoft’s extensive product innovation research had faced challenges due to reliance on manual surveys, scattered data collection, inconsistent validation reliant on testers’ recollections, and limited scale from difficulty recruiting qualified product testers in the quantities needed.
The Solution
The Glacier Challenge, powered by DashLX, accelerated recruitment, automated data capture, increased the quantity and variety of data captured, and streamlined the testing process. By layering Lived Experience Data with real-world feedback from qualitative reporting from testers, PrimaLoft gained far deeper context into how their products performed outside the lab.
Results
Faster iteration, richer insights, and a repeatable framework for product validation that now fuels cross-functional innovation.
Case Study Details
Overview
- Use real-world usage data at scale supplemented with surveys to create new quantitative & qualified insights
Tools
- Qualtrics (Surveys) • DashLX (LX quant data)
Connections
- Fitbit, Polar, Apple Health, Garmin, Suunto, Coros
Use Case
- Material Research and Athlete Data Analysis
DashLX
- Unified data from 6 wearables, Layered environmental insights, AI-triggered surveys
“DashLX enables precise data collection, on a second by second basis, capturing the delta between the external environment and the body’s internal climate. It’s incredibly deep, technical information that we simply couldn’t access without their platform.”
Andrea Paulson,
Senior VP of Innovation and Technology, PrimaLoft
The Opportunity: Validate in-Lab Testing with Real World Data at Scale
Lab testing is one thing. Proving product performance in the real world is another. But until the recent technological breakthroughs of wearable technology combined with machine learning and cloud data infrastructure, capturing accurate qualitative and quantitative data from product testers in extreme conditions scattered throughout the world was impossible.
PrimaLoft’s product research team wanted to validate insulation performance in real-world conditions and knew that Lived Experience (LX) Data was the key to unlocking the insights they needed.
Microclimate
The ambient temperature, precipitation, wind speed, UV index, and elevation in which the material is used
Nanoclimate
The personal environment immediately around the body: temperature, humidity, airflow, UV exposure, and elevation.
The Challenge?
Capturing data with this level of contextual precision during real-world wear testing presented several challenges. While lab testing could provide this level of detail, there was no way to practically scale it. In order to effectively close the feedback loop between field performance and lab-driven material innovation, the team needed to overcome four challenges:
1. Manual Survey Distribution Produced Poor Data Quality
Surveys were sent at fixed times, not when testers were active. This misalignment meant participants often submitted feedback days after their activity, leading to lagging responses, reduced relevance, a high reliance on subjective recollection and time-consuming survey follow-up to probe for details.
2. Manual Real-World Data Collection Produced Missing Data
Testers were expected to remember key details about their activities and environment like weather, terrain, humidity and their level of exertion sometimes days after they completed an activity. The result was frequently incomplete or missing data. Some testers captured screenshots or logged notes manually, but the process was inconsistent and difficult to standardize.
3. Manual Validation & Higher Risk of Error
Verifying data accuracy required manual review, which was costly in both time and resources. Data came in through multiple channels (photos, form fields), making standardization difficult and introducing significant room for error.
4. No Standardized Testing Framework
Each new project required ad hoc setup and coordination, making it difficult to launch research quickly or at scale. Without a reliable system, innovation velocity was limited.
The Initiative: The Glacier Challenge
To move beyond the lab and into real-world testing, PrimaLoft partnered with DashLX to launch The Glacier Challenge, an 11-week wear test program designed to put two insulation prototypes through their paces in everyday conditions. Testers logged activities like running, walking, fishing, and cycling, giving the research team side-by-side comparisons of material performance across diverse environments.
DashLX automated the entire process. Instead of manual logs and delayed surveys, every tester’s Lived Experience Data (GPS, temperature, humidity, UV, wind speed, dew point, BPM, heart rate, and frequency of activity) was collected and normalized in real time. Post-activity surveys were automatically triggered through Qualtrics minutes after an activity was completed, capturing feedback while the experience was still fresh.
By combining behavioral and environmental context with subjective real-time responses, PrimaLoft gained a holistic, high-resolution view of product performance in the wild. The Glacier Challenge proved that even small, distributed test groups can deliver rich insights when the right infrastructure is in place, setting the stage for a scalable, data-powered approach to future product innovation.
The Highlights
Lived Experience Data
Automatically captured GPS, temperature, ambient temperature, humidity, wind speed, dew point, BPM activity frequency, and activity time stamps.
Automation
AI triggered surveys were sent at activity completion.
Integrated Insights
Combined LX data with real-time, post-activity surveys via Qualtrics for contextualized feedback
The Impact: Scalable Real-World Product Testing
With DashLX, PrimaLoft now has a repeatable, automated framework for real-world product validation. What used to be manual and fragmented is now structured, fast, and scalable.
The big win: even small testing cohorts can yield rich, actionable insights when data is automated and contextualized. The Glacier Challenge proved the power of a real-time, real-world data-driven testing system to accelerate material and product innovation.
6x Data Types Collected Across Three Data Categories
Instead of capturing a singular activity, climate, and effort data point from surveys, DashLX automatically collects second-by-second contextual data points from wearables for each of these categories, including:
- Min/Avg/Max Heart Rate
- Min/Avg/Max Temperature
- Min/Avg/Max Wind Speed
- UV Index
- Humidity and Dew Point
- Elevation Changes
- Activity Type, Duration, Distance, GPS, Date, Start/End Time
DashLX linked the environmental data to precise GPS coordinates and timestamps of each wear tester's activity, enabling nuanced activity performance analysis under real-world conditions.
4x Recorded Wear Test Activities and 2x Total Data Points through Automated Data Collection
Survey sends, environmental data logging, and activity tracking were once handled manually. DashLX introduced end-to-end automation:
- Automated post-activity survey triggers
- Automatic LX data collection from wearables
- Time-stamped records for every activity
The result? More data, captured more accurately, giving PrimaLoft a larger, cleaner dataset to work with and eliminating the burden of chasing testers or validating unstructured responses.
+150% More Testers
PrimaLoft’s product testing was once limited to small regional cohorts, where testers shared similar climates and terrain. With DashLX, they expanded to multi-state testing across North America, gaining richer real-world insights into product performance.
The platform’s automated recruitment, onboarding, and tracking scaled the program seamlessly, delivering a 150% increase in recruited testers.
Cross-Functional Enablement
Data analytics in sports performance is now accessible across the organization, giving Marketing, Product, and Research a unified view of authentic performance. For marketing, these insights fuel sharper targeting and storytelling, turning real-world signals into proof points that strengthen campaigns and positioning.
“With DashLX, our data is automated, timestamped, and far less prone to human error. It’s much more standardized, and the quality is noticeably better. Having precise, real time insights was a huge reason we adopted DashLX.”
Katrina Little,
Associate Product Strategy Manager, PrimaLoft
