James Dyson on being a ‘clean freak’ and why he loves purple

It’s not every day you get to speak with the James Dyson, so I was a little nervous. One did not want to bore the world-famous entrepreneur with the same tired questions repeated by every other interviewer. At the same time, being presumptuously over-familiar was not an option, either.

He might be a nice man in a cardigan, but he’s also a powerful billionaire, one of the foremost inventors of our time, a Knight of the Order of the British Empire, and patron saint of men who don’t know what to get their wives for Christmas.

A household that doesn’t have a Dyson product in it has at least seen and heard of the brand’s air purifiers, haircare tools, floor care tools and more; or perhaps encountered its hand dryers in a mall.

We don’t say we are vacuuming our homes any more; we say we are “Dysoning” them. Or “Dysoning our hair”, conceivably (note to the aforementioned men: A hair styling tool is an appropriate special-occasion gift; a cleaning appliance is a gift for the home, okay?). The point is, you know you’ve made it when your name becomes used as a verb.

I wanted to establish myself as a credible journalist in my first words of greeting when our online video conference started, but my words were in vain – I had neglected to make sure my microphone was turned on, revealing myself as a tech disaster to the man on the cutting edge of technology.

With its team of engineers and scientists all over the globe, Dyson launches new products as if they grow on trees, each one designed to improve on the last, or introduce a tool you never knew you needed.

Its latest product is the WashG1, the brand’s first dedicated wet floor cleaner. Among other features, it has two counter-rotating rollers, a one-litre clean water tank, a separate dirty water tank, and even a self-cleaning mode. 

This was where Sir James and I began to bond: Over the fact that we both happen to be clean freaks.

“I couldn’t bear the idea of dirt being spread in any way, as it is with existing mops or some of those machines with rotating pads,” he told me. That’s what gave rise to the Wash G1.

“We’ve been cleaning floors and vacuuming them for many years, but more and more with hard floors, not carpets. Hard floors need to be washed, because they get dirty with things spilt on them and so on. We wanted to wash floors properly,” he said.

“With WashG1, in every rotation of each of the two counterrotating brushes, they are fed with clean water and the dirty water is scraped off. At no point are you spreading the dirt that’s on the floor. It’s quite a simple machine, in that it’s putting out clean water and taking out any dirt and debris, and then pumping the dirty water up into a tank. From the user’s point of view, you just have to fill the clean water tank, and then clean the dirty water tank. If you want to wash the rollers, you can take them out and wash them, although there’s a wash cycle on the stand as well.”

He chuckled: “Like you, I have to be a clean freak. There’s nothing wrong with that – we should all be clean freaks, really.” It helps, he added, that a floor “after it’s cleaned by the WashG1 looks brand new. I’m not just saying that.”

Another upcoming Dyson launch is set to appeal to us hygiene lovers: The Dyson CleanTrace technology that allows users to attach their mobile phones to their floor cleaners, so you can see which spots you cleaned and which you missed. The part you cleaned gets highlighted in purple.

“I don’t think it was me who chose the colour, but it’s quite good because you’re unlikely to have a purple floor. It’s important that whatever colour it is contrasts with the floor,” Dyson mused.

An interesting thing about the colour, which preceded the other vivid hues that Dyson products are known for: “With purple, I did start years ago. Twenty years ago, no one was using purple in fashion, or anything, so it was an original colour to choose.”

Of course, in the past, “It was a colour only used by royalty and bishops. There’s a reason for that – historically, it’s a very expensive colour that came from a shell called the Purpura shell. Up until about 1860, it was a very, very expensive dye, so only the royalty and bishops – who were rich in those days – could afford it. Purple dye was invented in 1860, and after that it became cheap. Though it was still only the prerogative of royalty and bishops to use it. To use it on a product when we first did it, was considered slightly outrageous.”

To be fair, lots of things he’s done were considered slightly outrageous at some point in time. From inventing the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner in 1983 – after a famous 5,127 failed prototypes – due to dissatisfaction with his household vacuum, to branching out into hair care and even hair styling tools, Dyson’s drive to engineer products that function better has led to a technology enterprise of over 10,000 people worldwide, including its global headquarters right here in Singapore.

Did he ever consider naming it anything other than “Dyson”?

“That’s a very good question,” he said. “I had developed companies with other names. The good thing about my name is that it has two syllables – that’s the first thing. The second thing is that all the other companies at the time were quite old, public companies. Here I was as a private individual… I thought it was better to name it after myself because I’m responsible for it. If you buy a Dyson product, I’m responsible for it. It’s not an anonymous public company, I own it and I care about every product we make. I think that’s the difference between Dyson and a lot of other companies.”

It might seem random to sell hair curlers and straighteners alongside vacuum cleaners, but it all began with his famous cyclone motor.

“We started with vacuum cleaners, knowing that we wanted to do a much better vacuum cleaner motor, so we developed new technology that is high speed and a much smaller vacuum motor. In developing that technology, we realised we could make a different hair dryer with a tiny motor that goes into the handle instead of a big motor that goes up at the top, which gives it a very top-heavy feel. It's the motor that really led us into beauty,” he recounted.

“We’re driven by the advantages that technology can bring to a certain product. Beauty was something I wanted to get into as technology hadn’t really been applied to beauty before.

“Using technology to make (the vacuum cleaner) lighter, more efficient and work better then led us to look at hair – how we protect hair, how we protect the scalp; to have a sensor to sense how close you are to the head so as to not damage your hair and scalp.”

Which of his products does he have in his own home? “Everything that I can!” he said. (Work-life separation? What’s that?) “I use the Dyson hand dryers in the lavatories at home. And, of course, the Dyson hair dryers, Dyson WashG1, Dyson vacuums, Dyson Robot, and Dyson purification in every room because I think it’s important to purify every room. I use all of them – is that greedy?”

He refused to choose a favourite. “I like them all. You like your children for different reasons, but you love them all unconditionally,” he declared.

Okay, but if he were a Dyson product, which would he be, and why?

“I don’t think I’d want to be a hand dryer, because I don’t want to be looking at people’s dirty hands – well, I hope they’d be clean,” he mused, with a chuckle. “I think probably, I’d like to be washing people’s floors, or being a robot and going around with my camera, because we have a 360-degree camera. Knowing where I’m going, because I can see. I think being able to see would be useful, and going around people’s homes would be useful. Seeing people’s clean floors would be satisfying!”

The Dyson WashG1 will launch officially by July on Dyson.com.sg and at Dyson Demo stores, with a retail price of S$999. For more information, https://www.dyson.com.sg/new-launches/dyson-washg1.