Have you ever been to one of those corn mazes that pop up every October? Usually “themed” sometimes like Jurassic Park, or Disney or many other options, the idea is to start at the beginning, work your way through a maze or labyrinth of passageways and find the center, then the exit. Usually they are designed in such a way that you take several wrong turns, come up against obstacles and dead ends and eventually, by process of elimination, find the “right” path.

Why am I talking about corn mazes in May? Each year when it comes time to write the SDM 100 cover story, I look to the open-ended comments in the annual survey to find the common themes. For the past couple years, the answer has been obvious: it went from COVID-19, to supply chain shortages as the topics that popped up again and again. This year I am happy to report COVID-19 was mentioned only a as challenge that was in the rear-view mirror for almost all of the top security dealers. Supply chain, of course, came up frequently — as did labor shortages, which have been an issue for many years.