Orion vs Primary Arms

What each one lists most of

Orion and Primary Arms 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.

Ammunition, Parts & Components, Magazine 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.

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?

Orion lists 15,418 distinct UPCs to Primary Arms's 811 — about 19× the breadth. 280 UPCs are carried by both — 2% of what Orion lists and 35% of what Primary Arms lists. Beyond that overlap, 15,138 UPCs appear on Orion alone and 531 on Primary Arms alone. If you open one account, Orion is the wider of the two on its own — it leaves 531 UPCs unreachable, against 15,138 if you open Primary Arms instead. Carrying both reaches 15,949 distinct UPCs, 531 more than Orion covers alone. The largest category in both lists is Ammunition — Orion lists 2,869 there to Primary Arms's 277. Both feeds answered us 99.9% 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.

Applying for a dealer account

• Apply for a Orion dealer account — The general-line catalog makes this a reasonable single account for a dealer not chasing a specific specialty.
• Apply for a Primary Arms dealer account — The narrow catalog makes this a supplemental source rather than a primary 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.