Fighting His Way Out Of A Paper Bag

How Sir James Dyson got started.

- Dinah Eng

James Dyson hated the dustfilled bags and loss of suction of conventional vacuum cleaners. His solution, a bagless vacuum, became the start of a global company that today brings in $3 billion a year selling air purifiers, hand dryers, lighting, hair dryers, and of course, vacuum cleaners.

MY FATHER DIED when I was 9, and I remember doing the household chores to help my mother. I loathed changing the vacuum cleaner bag and picking up things the machine didn’t suck up. Thirty years later, in 1979, I was doing chores at home alongside my wife, Deirdre. One day the vacuum cleaner was screaming away, and I had to empty the sack because I couldn’t find a replacement bag. With this lifelong hatred of the way the machine worked, I decided to make a bagless vacuum cleaner.

I had trained as an engineer and as a designer, so how things work really interests me. Back then I was making the Ballbarrow, a wheelbarrow with a big red ball instead of a wheel. I had investors for the wheelbarrow, but they weren’t interested in the vacuum cleaner, so I went out on my own.

From 1979 to the early 1980s, I worked on developing the Cyclone technology and was getting further and further into debt. Thankfully, my wife was very supportive. Bankruptcy didn’t worry me because I can make things, but I did worry about losing our house. My wife sold paintings and taught art classes, and we borrowed, and borrowed, and borrowed. We grew our own vegetables, and she made clothes for the children.