Editor's Note: Any Self-Identified Dealers Left? (Revisited)

When I took over as chief editor of this publication 12 years ago, it was a magazine that relied on tradition. At the time, it was a 35-year-old industry stalwart that began in 1977 simply as “Security Dealer,” and took more than 30 years for the editors in charge just to add “& Integrator” to the title (in 2008).

The traditional editorial fare in the Security Dealer days was manufacturer-supplied press releases and case studies, with a little bit of technology analysis sprinkled in – mostly centered on burglar alarms, CCTV, fences, and locks.

Taking over in 2012, the product felt to me like it was tired and far too irrelevant to the business and technology landscape of the early 2010s. I decided to radically change the editorial direction of the magazine – a decision you simply don’t make lightly when it comes to a 35-year-old product.

In short, I changed the focus of the editorial to deep technology analysis and aimed to transform the magazine into “the business magazine for security integration companies,” which evolved into “the path to greater profits.”    

Just as important, I was determined to divorce the magazine from old-school terminology and thinking. Case studies? Gone. Full sections of press releases? Too dated. CCTV? Puh-lease. And this brings me to the term “security dealer,” the granddaddy of them all.

I was chatting with SecurityInfoWatch Editor-in-Chief Rodney Bosch the other day about the term. You see, every time I hear the term “security dealer” or “dealers” in general uttered, I cringe. It’s just waaay too old school for me and irrelevant to the 2025 landscape.

Rodney, on the other hand, who has enjoyed a tremendously successful tour-de-publications in our industry, with long stints at two foundational security trade publications before landing at the helm of SIW, slightly disagreed. As I listed common titles for our audience – security integrators, consultants, and alarm companies – he told me that some people in this industry would look at that list and say they don’t belong to any of those groups. I was overlooking dealers.

It reminded me of a column I wrote right here in 2020 (read it at www.securityinfowatch.com/21150106), in which, to quote myself, I posited: “A person or business that buys and sells goods is, by definition, a dealer. The term nearly always carries a qualifier in front of it – as in a ‘car dealer’ or ‘Alarm.com dealer.’ Is that what your security company is – a business that buys and sells goods? If you say yes, then I would call your business a distributor, no offense.” 

When I showed it to Rodney, he laughed and nodded, but I’m not sure he was convinced. So the inquisitive editor in me took over: Are there still executives out there who call themselves a dealer? I rationalized: There are still plenty of old-school security business executives out there, and while many are retiring and selling their businesses, I suppose some are still going strong. Are they dealers? I don’t mean “authorized (insert manufacturer name) dealers,” I mean old-school “security dealers.”

So, as a good journalist and someone who isn’t infallible, I will simply ask you: Are there any security dealers left? I truly want to know…and I would say to hit me up on LinkedIn to chat about it, but perhaps I should amend that to “mail me a postcard.”