Suck it and see: the rise of Sir James Dyson

Sir James Dyson recently moved his residency from Singapore back to the U.K, as one of the best-known supporters of Brexit comes home. Sir James has risen to be one of the U.K’s richest men, and it all started with some sticky tape and some cardboard.

The idea that made his name struck him one day in his wheelbarrow factory. He wondered if the industrial extractor at his factory could be scaled down for domestic use. The idea that became his flagship vacuum cleaner had been born.

The extractor in his factory had one feature that was missing from all home vacuum cleaners. It did not use a bag to gather the dust, rather it created a cyclone that spun the dust to the outside of a cylinder where it could be collected.

He rushed home and dismantled his vacuum cleaner and fashioned a crude cyclone device out of cardboard and sticky tape. In an interview on BBC radio in 1999, he said – “I started pushing it around the room, and it worked.”

Of course, this rather simplifies the story. In reality, developing the vacuum cleaner took him to the verge of bankruptcy. It took over 5,000 prototypes and four years of hard graft before he had a machine that he was happy with.

But his work was only beginning. It took another 10 years and left him owing the bank over £1 million to take his idea from prototype to production.

He said later that – “That’s probably why it took me such a long time to get the vacuum cleaner going because I didn’t have any money. I’ve always been heavily in debt. The bank got pretty nervous at times, but they stood by me.”

The product was eventually launched in 1993 and quickly became the best-selling vacuum cleaner in the U.K.

Diversification

Sir James has never been one to skirt controversy. In 2002, he moved production from his U.K. base to Malaysia, in a move that was widely criticized at the time but helped increase the commercial success of the company.

It was also a move that, by his own reckoning, allowed him the cash flow he needed to develop new products. Dyson now manufactures heaters, hairdryers, hand dryers, and lighting systems.

This diversification, along with a focus on innovation, has turned his company into an industrial giant. The most recent figures available for the company are from 2019. That year the firm reported a net profit of £711 million ($985 million). An increase of 17% from the previous year.

Personal wealth

Sir James is now one of the richest men in the U.K. In 2020 he topped The Sunday Times Rich List for the first time with an estimated fortune of around £16 billion ($22 billion).

He is also thought to be the biggest farmer in the U.K., owning large swathes of farmland throughout three of the country’s farming heartlands.

Not bad for an idea that started with some cardboard and sticky tape.