When two industry leaders, GROWMARK, Inc. and Americaneagle.com took the stage at Sitecore Symposium 2025, marketers, technologists, and digital strategists gathered to learn how a century-old agricultural cooperative is using modern cloud technology to unify its product discovery experience. The session, led by Jared Arnofsky, Senior Solutions Architect at Americaneagle.com, and Molly Blickensderfer, Digital Marketing Manager at GROWMARK, offered a look at the technical and organizational journey that brought 35+ member organizations under a single, scalable digital roof.
Unifying a complex ecosystem
We wanted a cohesive visual identity that unites all FS member organizations under one recognizable, trusted brand, and a turn-key operation for our content editors.
GROWMARK is no ordinary enterprise. As a cooperative serving other cooperatives, retailers, and businesses across the US and Canada, its portfolio spans fuels, lubricants, crop nutrients, seed, equipment, and more. The company also owns the FS Brand, a network of agricultural cooperatives with deep local roots and a shared commitment to profitability and efficiency through innovation.
But with so many member organizations, each with its own legacy systems and content, GROWMARK faced a daunting challenge: how to create a unified, consistent, and searchable product experience that would serve everyone—from local co-op managers to commercial buyers—without sacrificing brand integrity or operational efficiency.
Arnofsky summed up the challenge succinctly: “How do we control all the product data in one central location for all websites?” Blickensderfer added,
Standardization as the foundation
The answer began with data. Before any code was written or designs were mocked up, the team embarked on a rigorous process of data standardization. GROWMARK’s product universe spanned four catalogs, 16 categories, and hundreds of products—each with its own quirks, attributes, and legacy formats.
The first step was to carry out an inventory and understand every product, type, and attribute. This meant mapping every product type, category, and data field to identify overlaps and inconsistencies. The result was a unified taxonomy and attribute set that could support cross-category search and display.
“We had to organize and break down the structure of our data so that we could show how a search experience or product experience may work,” Arnofsky explained. Blickensderfer noted, “One of the exciting pieces of this solution is that we got to finally standardize our product data, an internal initiative that we have been starting to work on. This was something that we did not previously have. Taking the time to build it not only sets us up for success for the website but internally as well.”
Consistency meets customization
With standardized data in place, the team could design search, browse, and product detail experiences that pulled from a common source of truth. This ensured accuracy, consistency, and scalability across all FS sites.
The product detail pages, for example, are dynamically generated based on the product category. Unique imagery and fields are loaded for each category, following brand guidelines but allowing for category-specific customization. “We worked closely with AE’s design team to identify unique brand colors and imagery per product category. Some were matched from our existing brand guidelines and others were made net new,” Blickensderfer shared.
Before this transformation, much of GROWMARK’s product data lived in PDFs, making search and discovery cumbersome. Now, all data is rendered directly on the page, making it both user-friendly and SEO-optimized.
Building for scale and simplicity
Product owners create and update their spreadsheets, select the type of product, and upload the data. The app parses the sheets, builds a JSON output, and saves it. Content authors can manage the whole process with a couple button clicks. Once complete, re-index with a button click.”
The technical execution was as much about process as it was about technology. With a unified product structure, the team designed scalable processes for collecting, importing, and maintaining product data—reducing manual effort and ensuring consistency.
Product owners update standardized Excel sheets, which are then uploaded to Sitecore’s media library. A custom marketplace app, built with a full-screen entry point, handles the import process. The app parses the Excel sheets, transforms the data into JSON, and saves it in the media library. From there, Sitecore Search crawls the data, making it instantly available for search and display.
Arnofsky described the workflow:
Blickensderfer added, “From a marketer’s perspective, all we need to do is upload some sheets and press a button. It’s simple, quick, and we don’t need to get involved with all the technical complications.”
APIs, triggers, and extractors
For those who love the nuts and bolts, the session didn’t disappoint. The team built an API route in their headless application to expose the product data JSON. Sitecore Search uses a JavaScript trigger to retrieve the JSON file and parse URLs into a collection of records. Cheerio.js, a fast, lightweight Node.js library, is used to parse and manipulate the data.
The extractor then processes each record, pulling all relevant data into the search index. This architecture allows for efficient, incremental updates and ensures that the search experience is always powered by the latest product data.
A unified, branded search experience
The payoff is immediately visible. The new fscooperatives.com site, built on SitecoreAI (formerly known as XM Cloud), serves as a consistent and prominent online presence for all FS members. Each member has its own section, with complete control over navigation and content, but all share the same component library and data structure.
The product search experience is unified but customizable. For example, the search results for corn and soybeans each have their own branding and display logic, but both are powered by the same underlying data model. The Sitecore Search JS SDK provided a solid foundation, allowing the team to focus on customization rather than reinventing the wheel.
Dynamic, SEO-friendly, and user-centric
The product detail pages are a showcase of what’s possible when structured data meets thoughtful design. Each page is dynamically generated based on the product ID in the URL, with content, imagery, and fields tailored to the product type. Section titles like “description” are pulled from the CMS, and business logic determines which data points to display.
“All of the data is now on the detail page itself. This makes it readable by search engines and easy to navigate, helping boost our SEO and marketing efforts,” Blickensderfer said.
Collaboration, extension, and innovation
It’s important not to reinvent the wheel and use the tools available to us such as Sitecore Search SDK. Marketplace apps let us build nice custom workflows to help further simplify content author experiences.”
The project wasn’t without its challenges. Standardizing data and aligning with product owners required significant collaboration and buy-in from leadership. But the payoff—a single, cohesive product search experience—was worth the effort.
Arnofsky emphasized the importance of building on existing tools:
Blickensderfer added, “It’s necessary to make guardrails and put rules in place for how we are going to maintain our standardizations. Making sure you have the proper understanding and buy-in from leadership is key to long term success.”
Setting the standard for digital transformation
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As the session wrapped up, it was clear that GROWMARK’s journey offers valuable lessons for any organization grappling with digital transformation at scale. By prioritizing data standardization, leveraging cloud-native tools, and fostering close collaboration between technical and business teams, GROWMARK has set a new standard for unified product discovery in the cooperative sector.
In an era where digital experiences are the new competitive edge, GROWMARK’s story is a testament to the power of getting the fundamentals right—and then building something remarkable on top.