Bom Kim is a Korean-American Billionaire businessman who founded Korea's largest e-commerce company, Coupang. With Coupang valued at $9 billion in 2018, Kim has become the 2nd youngest billionaire in Korea at the age of…
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The cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner is the flagship product of Dyson, but did you know that it is born after 5 years of R&D and 5,126 failed prototypes?
The inventor of the vacuum cleaner is none other than James Dyson, who founded Dyson Ltd. and he is a billionaire entrepreneur today.
James Dyson was born in Cromer, Norfolk in 1947. He studied furniture and interior design at the Royal College of Art before moving into engineering.
James revealed that he excelled at long-distance running when he was young not because he was physically good, but because he had more determination.
Running taught me about determination, about not giving up.
Particularly not giving up when everything seems hopeless, everything against you, and everything is difficult.
That’s the time when you double down as they say, really go for it.
Because success or the end is just around the corner.
His first job was with Rotork – an industrial manufacturing company where he helped Jeremy Fry to design Sea Truck.
Even though the Sea Truck design was a success, James left Rotork to spend time with his kids and start something on his own.
This is when he realized that the wheelbarrow back then was difficult to maneuver and easily got stuck in the mud.
Ballbarrow is his first original invention – a modified version of a wheelbarrow using a ball instead of a wheel.
James started his company to sell ballbarrow which owns close to 50% of the market share during its peak.
However, James recalled that he made two mistakes back then. First by registering the IP under the company, and secondly by having external investors.
It wasn’t a family business, it wasn’t owned by Deirdre and I.
We have some shares in it, but then other investors have shares.
And the thing I learnt from that, is that it’s much better to not have outside investors.
And be able to do what you want to do, without worrying about what other people think.
If you’re gonna fail at something, it’s better to fail because your idea was wrong, than fail because someone else idea was wrong.
James believes that good products require many rounds of failed attempts, but investors are expecting immediate returns.
Like Steve Jobs, he was forced out of his own company and this is why Dyson is not publicly listed until today.
James was too occupied with his business back then so he bought the most powerful vacuum by Hoover at the time to clean his house.
However as both an engineer and consumer, he was frustrated with the dust bag that always gets clogged which would reduce the suction.
James learnt and applied the concept of cyclonic separation to suck the excessive powder while spraying the ballbarrow.
This gave him an idea to apply similar technology in the vacuum cleaners, and also to bounce back from adversity at that time.
You might be wondering why didn’t the key players like Electrolux adopt this technology earlier? The dust bag was a USD500 million market back then!
In contrast, James did not have this baggage and he believes that when the technology is not realized yet, it doesn’t mean that it is impossible.
However, James had no money to start with but he has the support of his wife. They went into debts but James was determined to make it work.
It wasn’t smooth sailing obviously. After 5 years and 5,126 failed prototypes, G-Force vacuum cleaner was born in 1983.
James still keeps his over 5,000 pieces of hand-drawn prototype diagrams until today, which he emphasizes that it’s important to learn from failures.
Failure is so important, that’s what you learn from it.
If you always succeed, always getting the right answer, you’re learning nothing.
However, no distributor or retailer would sell his product in the UK as it would have disrupted the valuable market for replaceable dust bags.
Therefore, James launched it in Japan instead through catalog sales. Manufactured in bright pink, the G-Force sold for today’s equivalent of USD2,700.
It was a huge success in Japan but the breakthrough in the UK market only came more than 10 years after the initial idea.
The slogan “say goodbye to the bag” through TV advertisements has attracted the attention of consumers who are willing to pay extra for the convenience.
The Dual Cyclone became the fastest-selling vacuum cleaner ever made in the UK, and it has evolved over the years to become an iconic product.
Dyson has since expanded its electrical appliance range by launching Dyson Airblade in 2006, Air Multiplier in 2009, and Dyson Supersonic in 2016.
Dyson even invested USD2.7 billion to produce its electric car but it was called off in 2019 citing the project is not commercially viable.
In recent years, James Dyson Award and Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology were launched to breed the next generation of engineers.
