Bill Hicks Co vs Iron Valley
Both catalogs are synced into one shared vocabulary, so the same UPC can be counted on either side and matched across them. Everything below is what we measured in the two feeds — how much each one lists, how much of it is the same product, and what only one of them carries.
| Bill Hicks Co | Iron Valley | |
|---|---|---|
| Active SKUs | 30,682 | 19,978 |
| Distinct UPCs | 30,680 | 19,967 |
| Shared UPCs (both carry) | 10,822 | |
| Only at this distributor | 19,858 | 9,145 |
| Uptime | 100% | 100% |
| Integration | API | SFTP |
| Freshness | Synced 1 hour ago | Synced 26 minutes ago |
What each one lists most of
Bill Hicks Co and Iron Valley describe their catalogs in their own words, and we resolve both against one shared product vocabulary before counting. A category below therefore means the same thing on either side. Each list is that distributor’s own largest categories, counted in active listings.
Bill Hicks Co
- Firearm
- 13,941
- Hunting & Outdoors
- 4,793
- Ammunition
- 3,408
- Optic
- 2,566
- Magazine
- 2,029
- Reloading
- 1,500
- Parts & Components
- 1,104
- Suppressor
- 509
Iron Valley
- Firearm
- 8,039
- Ammunition
- 3,393
- Other
- 2,901
- Parts & Components
- 2,414
- Optic
- 1,864
- Suppressor
- 370
- Unknown Category
- 24
- Displays
- 14
Firearm, Ammunition, Optic, Parts & Components and Suppressor appear in both lists, so those counts can be read against each other directly.
Each list stops at that distributor’s eight largest categories. A category on one list and not the other is one we have not counted here, not one that distributor does not carry.
Where each one will ship it
Taken from each company’s own site on the dates shown on their individual pages. Running a drop-ship programme and naming where the parcel goes are separate questions, and most distributors answer only the first — so “Not stated” below means they have not published it, not that they refuse.
| Bill Hicks Co | Iron Valley | |
|---|---|---|
| Ships to your store | Yes | Yes |
| Offers drop-shipping | Not stated | Yes source |
| Ships to your customer's FFL | Not stated | Yes source |
| Ships to your customer's address | Not stated | No source |
| Ships NFA items to a receiving SOT | Not stated | Yes source |
Every distributor here ships to your own licensed premises — that is what a wholesale account is, not a policy any one of them publishes. Confirm anything you will act on directly with the distributor.
Which should you open?
Bill Hicks Co lists 30,680 distinct UPCs to Iron Valley's 19,967 — about 1.5× the breadth. 10,822 UPCs are carried by both — 35% of what Bill Hicks Co lists and 54% of what Iron Valley lists. Beyond that overlap, 19,858 UPCs appear on Bill Hicks Co alone and 9,145 on Iron Valley alone. If you open one account, Bill Hicks Co is the wider of the two on its own — it leaves 9,145 UPCs unreachable, against 19,858 if you open Iron Valley instead. Carrying both reaches 39,825 distinct UPCs, 9,145 more than Bill Hicks Co covers alone. The largest category in both lists is Firearm — Bill Hicks Co lists 13,941 there to Iron Valley's 8,039. Both feeds answered us 100% of the time over the window we monitor.
This is arithmetic on the counts above, not a recommendation of one company over the other. Which account is worth opening also depends on terms and on what your customers ask for, neither of which is in the catalog data we measure. What each company publishes about shipping destinations is in the table above it.
Bill Hicks Co
Bill Hicks & Co. runs a broad catalog that Project Parabellum polls over a dealer API on an automated schedule. Breadth here is a matter of assortment width rather than depth in any one line, so on this hub it shows up as a distributor that has something to say about a lot of different searches. Whether that is worth an account depends on how many narrower distributors you would otherwise be reconciling by hand.
Iron Valley
Iron Valley Supply's catalog only shows up on the hub once a dealer connects their own SFTP login — like Crow Shooting Supply, it uses credentials tied to a specific dealer account rather than a shared integration key, so there's no general Iron Valley feed syncing independent of any one dealer the way there is for the API-based distributors here.
Applying for a dealer account
- Apply for a Bill Hicks Co dealer account — Breadth is the reason to open this account; if your other distributors are narrow specialists, this is the one that fills the spaces between them.
- Apply for a Iron Valley dealer account — SFTP credentials are dealer-specific; the catalog will not appear on the hub until you've connected your own login. As a file-drop connection, catalog and stock updates land on Iron Valley's schedule rather than on demand.
Both links leave this site. Applications are submitted to, reviewed by, and approved by the distributor themselves — Project Parabellum is not part of that process and cannot speed it up or vouch for you.