Unifying America's Largest RV Manufacturer Across 45+ Brands
A parent-brand redesign and data unification for the largest RV manufacturer in North America, bringing 45+ brands into one connected platform. Phase 1 ships in October.
One of the biggest names in RVs that most people have never heard of
Forest River is a Berkshire Hathaway company and the largest RV manufacturer in North America. Its brands are household names; the parent company behind them is not.
The company
- ✳45+ brands across RVs, boats, cargo trailers, buses, and trucks
- ✳Huge user base including a 125,000+ member owners' group (FROG)
- ✳Low parent-brand recognition: owners know the brand on their rig, not Forest River
The problem
- ✳Every brand ran its own site, URL, and identity
- ✳No way to discover sibling brands or search the full portfolio
- ✳Customers had to know the brand name before they could find anything
The initiative
- ✳Data migration and unification of products across every brand
- ✳Redesign of the parent site and sub-brands under one connected experience
- ✳Mapping every brand to the full product inventory
- ✳Delivery: started as discovery in January, shifted to delivery, and Phase 1 ships in October for Forest River's launch (built during an engagement with Codal)
Map a fragmented empire before unifying it
Six stages, from documenting the sprawl of 45+ independent brand sites through to a unified information architecture ready for delivery.
Current State Mapping
Mapped forestriverinc.com and every major vertical, RV, Marine, Cargo, Bus & Van, and Trucks, as its own sprawling, independently structured sitemap. Laying them side by side made five structural problems impossible to ignore: brands operating on separate URLs with unique identities, no cross-brand discovery or visible corporate connection, inconsistent naming across divisions, users forced to search by brand name rather than by what they actually wanted, and a global search that was effectively broken.
Current-state sitemap: the Forestriverinc.com homepage plus independent sub-sitemaps for each vertical, with the five structural pain points captured alongside.
Industry & Competitive Audit
Forest River doesn't have a direct competitor with the same shape, so the audit looked outside the RV category for other "house of brands" companies solving the same discovery and trust problems: hospitality portfolios like Marriott and IHG, automotive parents like GM, and single-brand ecosystems like Ford, Jeep, VW, and YETI that had to earn trust from both direct consumers and a dealer network.
- ✳Tiered brand collections: Marriott and IHG show featured properties by persona and let customers browse an entire portfolio by tier, not just by individual hotel brand.
- ✳Dealer locators with map + filters: Ford, Jeep, and VW all centered their experience on getting a customer to a real, stocked dealer fast.
- ✳Compare & inventory tooling: Ford's model compare and dealer-specific inventory search mirrored exactly the kind of PLP-to-floorplan decision path Forest River customers needed.
- ✳Guided discovery: Ford's towing guide & quiz and YETI's shop-by-activity browsing offered a jargon-free path in for less experienced buyers.
Competitive audit spanning hospitality (Marriott, IHG), automotive (GM, VW, Ford, Jeep), and outdoor retail (YETI), annotated for patterns worth borrowing.
Personas
Research synthesized into three personas that deliberately spanned both sides of the marketplace, since Forest River's site has to serve the direct consumer researching a purchase and the independent dealer network that ultimately closes the sale.
"I need accurate data and high-quality leads to keep my inventory moving and my service bays full."
"I know exactly how I like to travel, and my current unit is no longer keeping up with my lifestyle. I'm looking for a brand that rewards my loyalty with better quality and smarter technology."
"I'm not just buying a vehicle; I'm buying a new way to bond with my family and escape the city. I need you to prove I can trust this brand before I commit my budget."
Lead Handoff & Inventory Flow
Mapped how a lead actually moves today: from on-site capture (quote requests, VIN registration, wishlist favorites) through submission and routing to the two nearest dealers, into dealer CRM and follow-up. Laying out all three stages side by side surfaced pain points on both ends, no customer choice in which dealer gets the lead, no post-handoff visibility for Forest River, discrepancies in how dealers were notified, and a pattern of "one-and-done" follow-up that let hot leads go cold.
Implement secure, structured data sharing with dealers; profile customers into personas so dealers can tailor outreach; let dealers review and revisit older leads instead of losing them after one touch; and introduce a customer rating program so lead quality and dealer follow-through become measurable instead of anecdotal.
Lead Handoff & Inventory Flow: Lead Capture → Submission & Routing → Dealer CRM & Follow-Up, with pain points and opportunities mapped at each stage.
Visual Direction
The visual system had to earn its place above 45+ sub-brand identities without flattening any of them, so the moodboard leaned into what actually motivates an RV purchase: getting outside with family, not a generic industrial-manufacturer feel. Earthy greens, real outdoor photography, and a confident, Arc'teryx-adjacent tone of voice ("See You Out There," "Alpine Escape," "Bound by Peaks") set a direction flexible enough to sit above dozens of brand colors and logos while still reading as one Forest River.
Updated Information Architecture
The core structural decision: one Forestriverinc.com homepage, with "Our Products" leading into three top-level categories instead of 45+ disconnected brand sites. Recreation (RV, Marine), Cargo (shared across Recreation and Commercial), and Commercial (Bus & Van, Truck) each follow the same repeatable pattern: Landing Page → PLPs by brand → Compare tool → Model Page → Individual Floorplan Page → Brand Family Page. A standardized global utility nav, Why Forest River, Support, Global Search, Login, and Account, sits above every vertical instead of being reinvented brand by brand.
Unified IA: Our Products → Recreation / Cargo / Commercial, each following the same Landing Page → PLP → Compare → Model Page → Floorplan → Brand Family Page pattern, under one standardized global nav.
The hardest problems weren't on the screen
Convincing the sub-brands
The biggest challenge was a business one. Each sub-brand had its own identity and its own stake in it, and the redesign meant their sites would now clearly read as part of the Forest River parent site. Getting that buy-in took stakeholder alignment, not just good design: showing each brand what it gained from the shared platform (cross-brand discovery, a stronger dealer locator, comparison tools) rather than only what it was giving up.
The sheer volume of products
45+ brands, each with its own models, floorplans, and naming. Unifying all of it meant a consistent product structure that could hold every brand without breaking.
Information architecture at scale
The IA was a huge challenge in its own right: one repeatable pattern (PLP, compare, model page, floorplan, brand family page) that had to work for a brand with two floorplans and a brand with thirty.
Phase 1 ships and delivers in October
What started as discovery in January, mapping the current state, auditing the competitive landscape, and building personas, earned enough conviction to move into delivery. Phase 1 ships in October for Forest River's launch: the unified homepage, the "Our Products" navigation, and the standardized product-listing-to-floorplan pattern across the highest-traffic brand families, with remaining brands and the Commercial vertical following in later phases.
Designing a system, not a single site
Forest River was less a website redesign than an exercise in designing restraint: building a structure flexible enough to hold 45+ distinct sub-brand identities without flattening them into sameness, while still making the whole thing read as one company.
Designing for scale, not one brand
The IA had to work identically for a brand with two floorplans and a brand with thirty, without either one feeling like an afterthought.
A genuinely two-sided marketplace
Personas spanned direct consumers and the independent dealer network Forest River depends on to close the sale, so IA and lead-handoff work had to serve discovery and dealer trust at once.
Borrowing from adjacent industries
With no direct competitor shaped like Forest River, the strongest patterns came from hospitality, automotive, and outdoor retail rather than from inside the RV category itself.
Design is also a persuasion job
Getting sub-brands to accept looking like part of one parent site mattered as much as any layout decision. Discovery in January gave the team the evidence to make that case and commit to an October Phase 1.