“ I have lots of bright, intelli- gent, young engi- neers, and I’m very happy to see the wonderful things
they do. They
constantly surprise
and delight me.”
Dyson brings out new, improved versions of
the vacuum year after year, rather than venturing into new product areas simply for the
sake of it. U.S. consumers can now buy the
DC41—that is, the 39th iteration of that first
bagless vacuum upright. Dyson’s vacuum
product names have always followed a
numerical series—DC01, DC02, DC03 and
so on—with the occasional functional epithet (Multi Floor, Animal). Where other
manufacturers go for a marketer’s idea of a
product name (Slalom, Hurricane, Power-glide, Gazelle), Dyson’s nomenclature brilliantly encapsulates the company’s sense of
continual improvement.
It does make you wonder what commonplace tool or appliance is next in line for a
sprinkling of Dyson dust. “We always look for
products with some kind of terrible flaw,” says
Dyson. “If we cannot dramatically improve
the way something works, we won’t touch it.
Sometimes it’s the realization of the flaw that
drives us to develop the technology, as with
the dual cyclone. Sometimes it’s the other way
round; we’ll have the technology and observe
that it could be good for something else. That
is what happened with Airblade [the Dyson
hand dryer launched in 2007]. We had been
developing a fast-moving sheet of air for
something else and realized that it could be
used for scraping water off your hands.”
28 ;e Costco Connection MAY 2012
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27
Form and function
Perhaps because of the way Dyson prod-
ucts defiantly break design conventions in
their category (who’d heard of a bright yellow
vacuum cleaner?), the brand has been
referred to as “the Apple of domestic appli-
ances.” However, it’s a tenuous comparison
for the man himself: “Our approach is very
different to that of Apple. They’re very
much design-led. We always start with
the technology and the design comes out
of that. Apple is about the delightful
semiotic way people interact with iPads
and iPods, but we’re about fundamentally
improving the way things work. That’s what’s
exciting for us.”
True enough: Cute and canine though
Dyson products may be, they’re still vacuum
cleaners. But, for a vacuum cleaner, the
Dyson is as close to a designer must-have as
you can get. And the company’s elegant
Air Multiplier fans and heaters are
achieving the same desirability
kudos. Functional benefits aside,
they exude the kind of Zen mini-malism that drives you to declutter
whichever room you put them in.
Dyson
DC40
Inspiring the next
generation
Dyson was knighted in 2007 in
recognition of his wider contribution to UK business. More recently
he was invited to advise the
British government on
reinvigorating the reces-sion-battered economy
and make manufacturing
mighty again. The result
A self-admitted happy loner, Dyson nonethe- less encourages collab- oration in developing new ideas.
IMAGES COURTESY DYSON LTD
was a straight-talking, 90-page grassroots
report, “Ingenious Britain.” For a white paper
it’s a pretty passionate piece of work; the idea
of taking great pride in making great things is
clearly a subject close to Dyson’s heart. In it
he calls for a society where science, technology and engineering are held in high esteem
and where children are encouraged
and excited to study those subjects at
school and beyond.
As in the UK, the number of U.S.
university students going into engineering has been in decline for
years. “Partly to blame,” says Dyson,
“is lackluster, textbook-based sci-
ence and technology teaching.”
Through the work of his educational
charity, the James Dyson Foundation
(
www.jamesdysonfoundation.com),
he hopes to put some pizzazz back
into U.S. science classes and other
subjects, starting in Chicago. So far
600,000 British students have used
the James Dyson Foundation’s
resources to work on science and
math in practical, engaging ways.
So is the next Thomas Edison
sitting in some eighth-grade science
class somewhere right now, being
inspired by James Dyson? Only time
will tell; educational reform is a slow
burner. But if anyone knows how
to stick with a slow burner and
make it work, bit by bit, day by day,
it’s James Dyson. C
Rosalind Gray is a London,
England–based freelancer.
