Case Study
Featherlite Inc.
Featherlite is a leading manufacturer of all-aluminum car, horse, stock, recreational, utility, and specialty trailers, with 100 dealers across the United States and Canada. eWay Corp partnered with Farmboy Inc. to implement four custom WordPress features on the new Featherlite website: Dealer Locator, Inventory Locator, Leads Export, and Parts Label, all driven by daily SFTP/CSV syncs and cron automation.
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Platform
- WordPress
- Services
- WordPress Development + Custom Plugins
- Engagement
- Project-based
Client Snapshot
About Featherlite Inc.
- Scale
- 100 dealers across the United States and Canada
- Website
- www.fthr.com
Featherlite Inc. is a leading manufacturer of all-aluminum trailers, including car trailers, horse trailers, stock trailers, recreational trailers, utility trailers, and specialty trailers. The company sells through a network of 100 dealers across the United States and Canada.
Customers can shop from Featherlite's selection of inventory or work with a dealer to custom-build a trailer to fit their specific needs. The company's website is the primary discovery channel for both standard inventory and custom build conversations, supporting dealers with tools that keep their listings current and connect prospective buyers with the right partner.
The Challenge
WordPress integrations driven by daily SFTP data flows.
In 2020, while Farmboy Inc. was building a new WordPress website for Featherlite, eWay Corp partnered with them to implement four specific features on the site: Dealer Locator, Inventory Locator, Leads Export, and Parts Label. Each feature depended on data flows between Featherlite's back-office systems and the public website.
Featherlite's dealer and inventory data lives in their operational systems. Each day the data needs to flow to the public website so prospective customers can find dealers and browse current inventory. Conversely, leads collected through website forms need to flow back to Featherlite's systems so the sales organization can act on them.
The challenge was building reliable, low-maintenance integrations that handle the daily data flows automatically. Featherlite's team did not want to manually upload dealer information, copy-paste inventory listings, or export form submissions on a schedule. The integrations needed to run in the background.
What had to be built
Dealer Locator with daily SFTP-CSV sync, map functionality, and search by location and trailer type
Inventory Locator with daily SFTP-CSV sync and dealer linking
Leads Export delivering form submissions to SFTP multiple times per day
Parts Label tagging dealers as Part Dealers and enabling filtering on the dealer search page
Reliable, automated cron-driven data flows requiring no manual intervention
The Solution
Four custom WordPress integrations driven by SFTP and cron.
eWay built four custom WordPress features for the Featherlite site. Each one runs as scheduled cron-driven scripts that read or write CSV data over SFTP, with the WordPress database as the durable store for whatever the public site needs to display. The integrations run in the background without requiring manual intervention from Featherlite's team.
Dealer Locator with a daily script that reads CSV data from Featherlite's SFTP location and refreshes the WordPress database. The script removes old data and imports new data each day, ensuring the public site reflects the current dealer network.
Map functionality with location pointers for dealers, plus search templates that let visitors find dealers by location and trailer type.
Inventory Locator with a daily script that synchronizes CSV inventory data into the WordPress database. The script compares incoming records against existing records, updating modified items, adding new items, and removing items that no longer exist in the source CSV.
Inventory items linked to their respective dealers, with search templates that let visitors find inventory by location and trailer type.
Leads Export with website forms collecting prospect submissions, daily aggregation scripts that merge form data into the required output format, and SFTP delivery of the file to Featherlite's location three times per day at defined intervals.
Parts Label tagging that uses CSV data to identify Part Dealers and apply the appropriate label on the dealer search page, with filtering that lets visitors narrow searches to Part Dealers specifically.
Architecture
A glimpse of the stack
Platform
WordPress
Automation
Cron-driven scripts running on a daily schedule
Data Flow
SFTP CSV ingestion and SFTP CSV export through scheduled jobs
Frontend
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, custom PHP
The Outcome
Automated data flows that keep the website current with dealer and inventory operations.
Dealer network always current
The Dealer Locator refreshes from SFTP every day. Visitors searching by location and trailer type see the current dealer network rather than stale data. Map pointers reflect what is operational today.
Live inventory across the dealer network
The Inventory Locator synchronizes daily from SFTP. Items that exist in source data appear on the site; items removed from source data drop off the site. Visitors browsing by location and trailer type see what is actually available.
Leads flow back without manual handoff
Form submissions are aggregated and delivered to Featherlite via SFTP three times each day. The sales organization works from the data Featherlite already runs on rather than from a separate web-form system.
Part dealer filtering for visitors
Part Dealers are tagged automatically based on CSV data and appear with the appropriate label on the dealer search page. Visitors looking specifically for parts can filter to the right partners.
Featherlite's WordPress website now operates as an integrated extension of the company's back-office systems. Dealer and inventory data flow daily from SFTP to the site. Form submissions flow back from the site to SFTP. Parts dealers are tagged and filterable. The integrations run automatically on a cron schedule without manual intervention.
Common questions about this engagement
What buyers ask before engaging us on a project like Featherlite Inc.
Why SFTP and CSV instead of an API integration?
Featherlite's back-office systems already produced dealer, inventory, and parts data as CSV exports to SFTP. Building integrations that consume those existing data flows meant the back-office team did not need to change how they export their data, and the public website could rely on data that the operations team was already producing for other purposes. The trade-off is daily synchronization rather than real-time, which matched Featherlite's operational tempo.
How does the daily inventory sync handle removals?
The script compares incoming CSV records against existing WordPress database records. Records that match by identifier and have changed are updated. Records that exist in the CSV but not in the database are added. Records that exist in the database but not in the current CSV are removed. The result is a complete refresh that keeps the website's inventory aligned with the source data each day.
Why Parts Label tagging on the dealer search page?
Some Featherlite dealers handle parts specifically rather than full trailer sales. Visitors looking for parts need to find those dealers without wading through every dealer in the network. The Parts Label tagging lets visitors filter dealer search results to Part Dealers specifically, matching them to the right partners faster.
How did Farmboy and eWay work together?
Farmboy Inc. led the design and build of the new Featherlite WordPress website overall. eWay served as the specialist technology partner for the four custom integrations: Dealer Locator, Inventory Locator, Leads Export, and Parts Label. The two organizations operated as a paired team where Farmboy owned the website's design and content structure and eWay owned the integration features that connect the site to Featherlite's back-office data flows.
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