Crow Shooting Supply 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.

Catalog size, overlap, feed uptime, and integration type for Crow Shooting Supply and Iron Valley.
Crow Shooting SupplyIron Valley
Active SKUs24,38619,978
Distinct UPCs24,38719,967
Shared UPCs (both carry)5,043
Only at this distributor19,34414,924
Uptime100%100%
IntegrationSFTPSFTP
FreshnessSynced 1 hour agoSynced 26 minutes ago

What each one lists most of

Crow Shooting Supply 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.

Crow Shooting Supply

Parts & Components
6,485
Firearm
5,009
Reloading
3,595
Optic
2,958
Tools & Maintenance
1,759
Magazine
1,267
Safe & Storage
941
Light & Laser
292

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, Parts & Components and Optic 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.

Drop-ship programme and shipping destinations for Crow Shooting Supply and Iron Valley.
Crow Shooting SupplyIron Valley
Ships to your storeYesYes
Offers drop-shippingNot statedYes source
Ships to your customer's FFLNot statedYes source
Ships to your customer's addressNot statedNo source
Ships NFA items to a receiving SOTNot statedYes 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?

Crow Shooting Supply lists 24,387 distinct UPCs to Iron Valley's 19,967 — about 1.2× the breadth. 5,043 UPCs are carried by both — 21% of what Crow Shooting Supply lists and 25% of what Iron Valley lists. Beyond that overlap, 19,344 UPCs appear on Crow Shooting Supply alone and 14,924 on Iron Valley alone. If you open one account, Crow Shooting Supply is the wider of the two on its own — it leaves 14,924 UPCs unreachable, against 19,344 if you open Iron Valley instead. Carrying both reaches 39,311 distinct UPCs, 14,924 more than Crow Shooting Supply covers alone. The largest category in both lists is Firearm — Iron Valley lists 8,039 there to Crow Shooting Supply's 5,009. 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.

Crow Shooting Supply

Crow Shooting Supply syncs a large catalog through a file-drop connection rather than a live API, and it's one of two distributors on this hub — alongside Iron Valley — where Project Parabellum authenticates with credentials tied to your specific dealer account rather than a shared integration key. That means Crow's catalog and stock data only appear on the hub once a dealer has connected their own account, unlike the API-based distributors whose general catalogs sync independent of any one dealer's credentials.

How to open a Crow Shooting Supply dealer account

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.

How to open a Iron Valley dealer account

Applying for a dealer account

  • Apply for a Crow Shooting Supply dealer accountSFTP credentials are dealer-specific; connecting Crow to Project Parabellum requires your own login, not a shared account. Because this is a file-drop connection, updates land on Crow's schedule rather than on demand.
  • Apply for a Iron Valley dealer accountSFTP 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.

Project Parabellum is not affiliated with Crow Shooting Supply or Iron Valley, and neither distributor reviews or supplies this page.

The counts here are our own measurements of the feeds we sync, refreshed hourly. They describe what each distributor sends us, which is not the same thing as everything either company sells, and they will differ from figures published elsewhere.