James Dyson – TYCOON PROFILE

James Dyson

By Carolyn Clarke

James Dyson is known to millions as the inventor of the revolutionary Dual Cyclone^TM cleaner. His latest in a range of bagless cleaners is the Dyson City.

The Sunday Times Rich List estimated his fortune to be over a £1billion. Yet, when James Dyson decided to invent a vacuum cleaner, he was a former art student who didn’t have a clue how a vacuum worked.

Vision of New Technology

James Dyson not only invented a new vacuum cleaner, he manufactured and marketed it. Incredibly, he overtook the market leaders. For virtually a hundred years, vacuum cleaners had been the same boring shape and dull colours.

What James Dyson did was to use his artistic imagination to do more than produce completely new technology. He made a vacuum cleaner a stylish machine. Suddenly, cleaners were colourful, they had interesting shapes. In fact his first cleaner the G-Force was pink.

So what pushed this man who was an artist-designer to invent, a new vacuum cleaner?

How the Story Began

In the late 1970s James and his wife Deirdre, with their three children, Emily, Jacob and Sam moved into a new home in Bathford. He had always helped Deirdre with the chores, but the new house also needed plumbing and wiring, adding to his workload.

The vacuum cleaner had been annoying him for sometime. It lost suction as dirt clogged the bag. It just seemed to push the dirt and dust around the house.

Finally, on a rainy afternoon Dyson sat with his vacuum cleaner for some time, asking questions. He opened up three bags – a reused one, a new but partially full one, and a brand new one, to determine what the difference was.

What he found made him angry. There was a fine coating of dust inside the reused and partially full bag. He reasoned, it had to be the pores of the bag. They were meant to let out only air, but were in fact clogging with dust and cutting off the suck. Even the most expensive vacuum cleaner ever produced would clog up.

The First Technological Breakthrough

The idea of the cyclones came from his new Ballbarrow factory. The paint spray equipment they used had a problem. Production had to stop every hour so that the screen which caught the spray that missed the metal frame, could be brushed down and the epoxy powder gathered up to be reused (epoxy powder melts when baked, to form a coat of paint).

The people who had provided the spray equipment, explained the really big industrial users of their stuff used a cyclone. The cost was £75,000. Dyson decided he would try and make one himself.

A local sawmill had a cyclone. It was a 30 foot high cone that spun the dust out of the air by centrifugal force.

He sketched the cyclone and climbed all over it to determine exactly how it worked, what the proportions were.

The next day, a Sunday, at the factory they welded up a 30 foot cyclone from sheets of steel, blew a hole in the roof and fixed it into place. The cyclone worked.
It occurred to Dyson, there was no reason why the cyclone couldn’t work in miniature.

It was October 1978. Dyson built a miniature cyclone out of cardboard, and attached a short length of hose pipe to the outlet hole of the cleaner – where the bag had once been. With lots of gaffer tape he made the structure as airtight as possible and vacuumed the house – with the first ever bagless cleaner.

G-Force

Four and a half years and 5,127 prototypes later, the Dyson was born.

The G-Force cleaner was launched in 1983. However, no manufacturer or distributor in the UK would sell a bagless cleaner.

Selling vacuum cleaner bags was a lucrative market. A bagless cleaner would seriously damage these sales.

So Dyson negotiated a licence deal with Kanaya, Kajwara and Tomachita, in a Todyo office in 1985.

The G-Force sold in Japan for £1,200.

In 1991 it won the International Design Fair prize in Japan.

Dyson in America

In 1986, Dyson obtained his first US patent. In 2005 it was reported that Dyson cleaners had become the market leaders by value in America.

Dyson in the UK

UK manufacturers were still not interested in purchasing the Dyson. So James Dyson set up his own manufacturing company.

He opened his research centre and factory at Malmesbury, Wiltshire in 1993. The Dyson Dual Cyclone became the fastest selling vacuum cleaner ever to be made in the UK.
Sacrifices and Rewards

During the four and a half years Dyson was developing his vacuum cleaner, Deidre’s salary as an art teacher partially supported him.

In fact, Dyson admits when he had the idea back in 1979 he was living off the bank. He had no money to start with because he’d been in debt ever since he was a student.

The trials and sacrifices have paid big dividends. Dyson bought the 300 acre estate, Dodington Park for £15million. He and Deidre also have a £3million chateau in France and a town house in Chelsea.

James Dyson the Philanthropist

As with so many other successful people, James Dyson gives generously. He believes it’s incredibly important to get young people interested in design and engineering. To this end he funds several projects.

There is the annual James Dyson Award. It is to inspire and encourage students from around the world to engineer a solution to an everyday problem.
The winner gets a £10,000 bursary and a trip to Dyson’s research facility in the UK.

The James Dyson Foundation runs workshops across the globe. Young people solve engineering challenges in a practical, hands-on way.

The Dyson School was an idea for a new school for young people to get involved in engineering and create a new generation of inventors – the Brunels of tomorrow. Unfortunately, there have been a number of obstacles to overcome, and the biggest hurdle – government bureaucracy – has held the project up for too long. Reluctantly, Dyson have decided to move on from their original Bath site.

James Dyson’s Personal Success Steps

Observe objects used every day. It is often assumed they cannot be improved. With lateral thinking it is possible to invent a better version.
Retain the patent. You can then raise money for research and production, by selling licences.

Be aware licence agreements aren’t always simple. For instance, in America after a licence agreement was terminated a gargantuan manufacturer began production and marketing a cyclonic vacuum cleaner under its own name. The lawsuit Dyson took out against the company lasted five years. Dyson won the case.

With starting a business or developing projects, there’s a terrible moment when failure stares you in the face. If you persevere a bit longer you’ll start to climb out of it.

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James Dyson – TYCOON PROFILE

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