Bill Hicks Co vs Sports South
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 | Sports South | |
|---|---|---|
| Active SKUs | 31,353 | 58,977 |
| Distinct UPCs | 31,350 | 58,959 |
| Shared UPCs (both carry) | 21,321 | |
| Only at this distributor | 10,029 | 37,638 |
| Uptime | 100% | 99.4% |
| Integration | API | API |
| Freshness | ||
What each one lists most of
Bill Hicks Co and Sports South 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
- 14,352
- Hunting & Outdoors
- 4,926
- Ammunition
- 3,433
- Optic
- 2,606
- Magazine
- 2,019
- Reloading
- 1,545
- Parts & Components
- 1,100
- Suppressor
- 535
Sports South
- Firearm
- 14,575
- Parts & Components
- 13,209
- Ammunition
- 5,928
- Optic
- 3,480
- Magazine
- 3,277
- Other
- 2,972
- Reloading
- 2,618
- Knife & Tool
- 2,280
Firearm, Parts & Components, Ammunition, Optic, Magazine and Reloading 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 | Sports South | |
|---|---|---|
| Ships to your store | Yes | Yes |
| Offers drop-shipping | Not stated | Not stated |
| Ships to your customer's FFL | Not stated | Not stated |
| Ships to your customer's address | Not stated | Not stated |
| Ships NFA items to a receiving SOT | Not stated | Not stated |
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?
Sports South lists 58,959 distinct UPCs to Bill Hicks Co's 31,350 — about 1.9× the breadth. 21,321 UPCs are carried by both — 68% of what Bill Hicks Co lists and 36% of what Sports South lists. Beyond that overlap, 10,029 UPCs appear on Bill Hicks Co alone and 37,638 on Sports South alone. If you open one account, Sports South is the wider of the two on its own — it leaves 10,029 UPCs unreachable, against 37,638 if you open Bill Hicks Co instead. Carrying both reaches 68,988 distinct UPCs, 10,029 more than Sports South covers alone. The largest category in both lists is Firearm — Sports South lists 14,575 there to Bill Hicks Co's 14,352. Over the window we monitor, the Bill Hicks Co feed answered us 100% of the time and the Sports South feed 99.4%.
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.
Sports South
Sports South is one of the deepest catalogs Project Parabellum syncs, spanning firearms, ammunition, optics, reloading components, and outdoor gear through a single dealer web-service connection. Project Parabellum pulls that catalog on the same automated schedule as every other API-connected distributor, so a dealer gets current stock positions across every one of those categories from one account instead of stitching together several narrower feeds.
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 Sports South dealer account — Web-service access is a separate step from the account and is granted per dealer; ask for it when the account is activated. The catalog is large enough that a first full sync takes noticeably longer than for any other distributor.
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.