Dyson: Good Design Sucks

Graphis, May/Jun 2002 by Shapiro, Joshua

Imagine a household appliance interesting enough to be a conversational centerpiece. It happened 100 years ago when Hubert Cecil Booth invented the first vacuum cleaner. Booth was a British engineer of circus wheels intrigued by an American cleaning machine that he saw at a trade show. Much like a leaf blower, that machine just blew dirt around with compressed air.

Booth was convinced that reverse pressure would work better. While dining at a restaurant, he suddenly placed a handkerchief between his mouth and his chair's slipcover and sucked as hard as he could. Though he nearly choked himself in the process and threw a scare among his friends, the patch of dirt on the hankie convinced him that his idea to suction up rather than blow around dirt would work.

As few homes or businesses had electricity in 1901, Booth developed a mobile machine: a heavy, self-powered, five horsepower motor driving a large suction pump mounted on a horse-drawn cart. He would drive to house calls, park out front, and clinically whiteclad technicians of the British Vacuum Cleaner Company would bring in a long, clear, flexible hose and vacuum the premises.

Booth got his big break in 1902 when his machine was used to vacuum the carpets in Westminster Abbey in preparation for the coronation of Edward VII. Impressed with the results, the new King ordered vacuum cleaners for Windsor Castle and Buckingham palace. Following the award of the royal warrant, socialites would give posh tea parties so their guests could watch the novelty of Booth's men vacuum cleaning.

Do-it-yourself home cleaning started in 1908 in Canton, Ohio, with the electric suction sweeper built-by an asthmatic but inventive janitor, James Murray Spangler-out of a tin soap box, a fan, a sateen pillowcase and a broom handle. He gave one to his cousin who was married to a local saddler, William H. Hoover. The rest is history.

The common denominator of every vacuum cleaner built since then has been a porous collection bag. Unfortunately, even the smallest amount of dust starts to clog the bags reducing the efficiency of the cleaning process. In 1978, James Dyson, a young English designer trained at the Royal College of Art, noticed this shortcoming. A professional tinkerer who had already designed a flat-hulled boat and a ball-wheeled barrow, he was annoyed enough by the clogging to explore alternatives. His approach adapted the technology of an industrial cleaning system, the cyclone separatordust removal equipment commonly used at paint shops and sawmills. Compulsive obsessive by nature, he built and tested 5,127 prototypes to refine his idea.

After five years, he had developed the first vacuum cleaner sans bag. His design spun dust particles tidily into a clear plastic collection bin without an intervening filter that could impede the flow. The trick was to accelerate the air stream first to 200 mph to shake out large fluff and debris and then to a supersonic speed of 924 mph and swirl the finest dust out via centrifugal force. Not only was his design more efficient but it had an intense sculptural beauty with exposed sections highlighted in bright, endorphin releasing colors. The effect was hypnotic. When the first ones were sold in 1993, Brits once again made showing off how these new fangled sweepers worked a subject of dinner parties.

In England, a country where entrepreneurs are discouraged and therefore rare, James Dyson is now a cultural icon of success, much like Bill Gates. "Where are our Wright brothers? Where have the Edisons and the Henry Fords gone?" Dyson rails against the shortterm mentality that inhibits innovation, and a British society that rewards entertainment over invention. "Ours is an age when the great monopolies are able to dictate that progress has ended. And they do this when they are satisfied not with their product but with their control of their market." Dyson cites as a telling example a Hoover executive who expressed remorse in not having bought Dyson's vacuum cleaner design so Hoover could have kept it off the market altogether.

Indeed English investment capital tends to look for fast, shortterm gains. Therefore financial services (trading) and advertising (immediate boost of sales) are favored. Britain lacks the infrastructure for new businesses that is common in the US-and was even more so eight years ago when Dyson was in need. Lenders and investors were against funding Dyson because he was in design and not in sales or finance. However, against all prevailing wisdom, he was able to design, engineer, manufacture and market a new product against entrenched multinational competition and prosper. His company has introduced seven models of vacuum cleaners with many variants, including a novel, self-propelled, robot cleaner. Early last year, Dyson introduced a beautiful, new type of washing machine with counter-rotating drums.

In 1985, after several heavily indebted years trying to find a company already in the consumer appliance business to build his design, Dyson granted his first license to the importer of the Filofax pocket calendar/organizer to Japan. The upfront fees and the recurring residual from the deal gave Dyson the seed money and credibility to start up his own operation in the UK in 1993. He built 30,000 of his first model and sold them for a total of 22.4 million.