What surprised you most during the year as you grappled with the pandemic?

Michael Schwab: I was surprised that we went literally every 45 days or so to an incremental challenge we had to overcome in terms of the product portfolio. First we had a shortage of computer chips. Then displays were in short supply. Then substrates were in short supply.

We had freight going up and you couldn’t get containers, and there were containers backed up at the ports. Then there was problems with truck drivers and freight cars. The whole supply chain was an issue when the economy began to open up.

Those supply chain issues were something we really had to think long and hard about in terms of how do we get ahead of it and make sure we had good supply for our customers base. I think we did a very good job in that regard, but I don’t think it is over. We are going to continue to see some of those challenges here.

Look at the auto industry and how they are not able to build cars because of the supply shortages of chips. We are not in that type of predicament. But the reality is something of high consideration at practically every manufacturer we talk with.

Where is the biggest problem right now with supply chain issues?

Michael Schwab: I would say all the components that go into building a notebook computer. There seems to be at any moment in time an issue. It could be drives, memory, graphics cards, ICs and displays. It’s across the board.

Dan Schwab: I think in some respects it is healthy. When we look into our crystal ball- and it is hard to look out too far- but for the next six months we see demand continuing to outstrip supply in most of the critical client computing technologies. Obviously we have been able to scale the business in a limitless way from a cloud standpoint but from a client device standpoint and related peripherals whether it be print or network products there are still are major supply challenges. That just shows how strong demand is.