Castleford Hire Centre
Live HireHop stock + pricing
castlefordhirecentre.co.uk
Problem.
A tool-hire business was running a WordPress site that could tell a customer what the business does but couldn't tell them whether the tool they need is actually available next Thursday. All enquiries went through phone calls. The stock catalogue lived entirely inside HireHop - their internal rental management system - invisible to anyone outside the business.
Approach.
A full-stack Next.js rebuild that treats HireHop as the source of truth. A server-side proxy queries HireHop for live stock, pricing, and date-specific availability, with unstable_cache keeping response counts inside the API rate limit. A custom pricing engine mirrors the business's day/weekly/weekend rate structure and handles the 15% insurance surcharge (waived for account customers detected via the HireHop address book). The enquiry form creates jobs directly in HireHop at status 'Enquiry' so staff see them alongside existing bookings. A separate staff dashboard behind Microsoft Azure AD shows active jobs, inventory, and bookings pulled live.
Outcome.
Customers can see live availability and get an instant price before making contact. Staff keep one system - HireHop - as the authoritative record, and new enquiries land there automatically. The public site became a real sales channel instead of a brochure.