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...Continued from page 17) generating a tenfold increase in the size of the business and leading its diversification into 50 countries. Reported turnover for 2009 was £770m, up 23 per cent on 2008, and profits doubled to £190m.
But while McCourt might be executing the plan, Dyson is still firmly at the helm, driving the company’s vision and ethos – to question, to make mistakes and to challenge the status quo. Dyson is the ideas man, an engineer who loves nothing more than to hole up with his R&D team at the ‘top secret’ end of the Malmesbury HQ.
The Dyson success story is the stuff of entrepreneurial legend. Long before the ‘celebritisation’ of business shows like Dragon’s Den, he painstakingly developed the idea of using cyclonic separation to create a vacuum cleaner that would not lose suction as it picked up dirt.
Following numerous prototypes, Dyson launched the G-Force cleaner in 1983, selling it in Japan via catalogues, since UK manufacturers and distributors were unhappy to rock the highly profitable cleaner-bag model. Ten years later, Dyson set up his own research centre and factory in Malmesbury, creating a base from where he, still very much the handson industrial engineer, has continued to lead the development of products including the current line-up of vacuum cleaners, Air Multiplier fans and Airblade hand dryers.
EXTENDED REACH
Whether it’s because of the David and Goliath battle that Dyson picked with Hoover, after it copied his patented cyclonic technology, successfully winning around $5m in the process, or the never-ending range of brightly coloured vacuums, the UK’s love affair with Dyson has endured. The only blip came in 2002 when product assembly was moved to Malaysia and 560 workers were made redundant, generating headlines in the process. In fact, the loss has long since been absorbed and the company now employs more than 1,500 in the UK and 3,000 globally, expected to rise to 4,000 by 2015. Dyson is open about the factors behind the decision.
“Our components were already made in Southeast Asia and shipping them half way round the world was not green and was a logistical nightmare, so we moved assembly to be closer to our suppliers. The net result is greater prosperity, which in turn has generated more jobs [in the UK].”
Dyson is equally open about his approach to global expansion: “There’s no set route, but we always start with the local British embassy, finding out information and then launching ourselves in the embassies too. You learn a lot from them about what goes on in a country and they are also useful after the event if you need help or local legal advice. Sometimes we find a distributor, other times we will employ our own people and start with small beginnings, never going in with all guns blazing.
“Our philosophy is that a country must pay for its own advertising. That way, you’re not spreading your cash around and an organisation learns to look after itself and grow at a pace that it’s comfortable with. I’m not in that much of a hurry and (Continued on page 20...)
TURNOVER FOR 2009 WAS £770m
I’m not in that much of a hurry and I would rather proceed carefully
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