inside billionaire james dyson's reinvention factory: from vacuums to hair dryers and now batteries - best air purifier 2016

Wearing a blue polka
Oxford and the striped Reebok sneaker, James Dyson strayed out of one of his 56-acre compound. The beanpole-thin 69-year-
The old billionaire squeezed into some bushes and pressed his nose directly on the reflective glass that covered his new top
Secret lab, two smooth
It looks like the story cube that was sent directly from Santa Clara to Cotswolds.
To his delight, he did not know what his engineer was doing inside.
"I hope they are working," he said with a smile . ".
In reality, it's moving.
In the days of this brandnew $200-million-
In addition, on the other side of the glass, dozens of young engineers are opening their gear and settling in their place.
As we all know, their work in D9 is to experiment fearlessly, fail constantly, and record the failure of the company --issued black-and-
The yellow notebook is the basis for more experiments, but there are also more failures. -
It is also a company sideline in patent litigation.
This endless cycle of failure rarely leads to revolutionary new products: a bag-free vacuum cleaner (
5 years, 5,127 prototypes)
360-Eye robot (1,000-17Plus Prototype
And a supersonic hairdryer (
4 years, 600 prototypes).
But these successes add together: Dyson's 58 products created $2.
Sales last year were $4 billion and net profit was estimated at $0. 34 billion. even if Dyson reinvested 46% of the Company's Ebitda in research and development, it surpassed competitors such as Electrolux and Techtronic.
Dyson owns a 100% stake in the company, worth about $4. 8 billion.
D9 is the shining cornerstone of Dyson's continued efforts to attract engineers to work for him directly from college to the corporate headquarters near marlesbury, located two hours and 5,400 kilometers west of London, in an ancient market town.
His average age of engineers is 26 (
He has 3,000 people worldwide and hopes to hire another 3,000 by 2020)
Their youth is not accidental.
"Enthusiasm and lack of fear are important," Dyson said . ".
"Don't focus on experts and keep working hard because you believe something is important.
When you are young, it is much easier to do it.
"Dyson's own fearless spirit has enabled him to constantly test new products, although his perfectionism often hinders the release of new products.
He is best known for creating the first bag-free vacuum cleaner 30 years ago, and his company still has 70% of sales coming from vacuum cleaners, many of which are now lightweight, handheld and batteryoperated.
But Dyson also had a successful experience with Airblade clothes dryers.
Dyson humidifier
There is also a Pure Cool Link, a fan that can be used as an air purifier.
The latest miracle in his workshop is the supersonic explosion. dryer.
Dyson spent $71 million.
1,000 miles of human hair)
Develop a $400 device designed to eliminate thermal damage and reduce uncontrollable swings.
It was launched in Japan in April and came to the United States. S. any day now.
Dyson hopes that all the new engineers he employs will speed up the company's innovation: Dyson plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to develop at least 100 new products by 2020, almost twice as much as the current market, equivalent to the number of products launched since its inception.
"We have been reshaping ourselves," Dyson said . ".
"We are fighting the status quo.
We still feel small, agile and pioneering.
"While Dyson is low-key on details, he reveals that many new products will be related to personal care or lighting.
The lighting system was the brainchild of his eldest son and heir Jack, 46, who spent two years in Dyson and left in 2002 to start his own sales business
Cooling LED light fixtures.
"I want to go out and do my own thing and prove to myself that I can do it," Jack said . " He came back in April with his LED technology and ideas.
But Dyson's biggest bet is the battery.
In his view, the current rechargeable Lithiumion (li-ion)
A battery that powers most gadgets in the world (
Including his own.
Charging time is not long enough and needs to be safer (
They catch fire occasionally. .
Loyal to his nature, rather than gradually improving the existing li-
Dyson is building a new path: experiment with solid materialsstate li-
Use ceramic ion batteries.
To this end, Dyson made its first acquisition in the company's history in October 2015, spending $90 million on Sakti3, a battery start-up based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
This is just the beginning.
Dyson vowed to pay $1.
4 billion build battery plants and invest in R & D within the next five years, which is a huge gamble for a large company.
But Dyson did not flinch, claiming it would soon be the longest in the world
Long lasting, most reliable battery to global li-
According to research firm Lux, the market for ion batteries is $40 billion.
"The battery is very exciting and sexy stuff," Dyson said . ".
The seeds of Dyson's determination and resilience are planted on the coast of Norfolk, northeast England, where he is the youngest of the three brothers and sisters.
His father taught classics in Gresham, an elite boarding school built in 1555;
His mother dropped out of school at the age of 17 and joined Bomber Command during World War II to raise children.
His father died of cancer at the age of 9 in Dyson.
After losing, Dyson began to force himself.
Despite hearing that it was the hardest instrument for the orchestra, he picked up the bassoon.
At the age of 14, he began to run competitively and often woke up at 6 in the morning. m.
Training, Sprint sand dunes (
He learned that resistance training is better).
In the evening, he usually runs for another two hours until after midnight.
In those days, it was an easy thing for him to think.
"All of a sudden, I have something that I can kick people's ass once in a while," Dyson wrote in his 1997 autobiography . ". A self-
He is described as a poor student attending Byam Shaw art school in London, where he met his wife Deirdre.
Later, although he had never completed his undergraduate degree, he entered the postgraduate course of the Royal Academy of Arts.
At school, Dyson developed an alternative design for an aluminum roof.
This led to a meeting with Jeremy Fry.
Inventor with roof-like installation
As soon as the two met, Fry finally provided Dyson with his first complete
Working at his manufacturing company, Rotork.
Dyson helped design the company's first marine truck.
Fast cargo ships, and sell them to armies around the world, including those of Egypt, who used them against Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
When Dyson was out of rotook, he took the time to fix his 300-year-
Old farmhouse near Bath.
One of his earliest trademark buildings was the transportation of cement during the renovation --a-better-
A modern trolley.
His version uses a ball instead of a wheel because it is more evenly distributed in weight and won't get stuck in the mud.
In 1974, he quit his job and began bargaining with bank loans and his brother's help --in-
He recently inherited the money.
Interest rates soared two years later
They sold a 270,000 stake to an investor with a debt of up to $ 33%.
In 1979, Dyson was forced out in part because he wanted to extend the loan to fund more inventions while others wanted to pay off their debts.
Still, the first startup gave Dyson a huge gift.
Colored powder sprayed on the baseball field (
Still, he likes to make his tools popular.
Collect on factory equipment.
Just before he was kicked out, he had an idea to absorb annoying dust by installing a handmade industrial fan with a fast spinning mechanism on the ceiling of the factory.
At about the same time, he was renovating the Hoover vacuum with his family (
He can't afford a new one).
It will send out when the bag is full.
On a Sunday in October 1978, after watching the movement of the factory cyclone --
Inspired, Dyson rushed home and tore the bag off the vacuum cleaner.
He replaced it with a cardboard version he made in the factory.
It works well enough to stimulate Dyson to try and create a qualitymarket version.
He and his mentor Jeremy Fry initially took out $53,000 each.
He spent thousands of hours in the next five years. and dollars)
His artist wife made those famous 5,127 prototypes to maintain the family by selling illustrations and teaching stationary things to British fashion magazines --life classes.
When it was finally finished in 1983, Dyson's bag-free vacuum was very powerful with its interior
The cyclone mechanism separates air and dust at a speed of 924mph and can extract cigarette smoke from the air.
In order to pay off the debt, he decided to license the technology.
It took him two more years to sign his first big client.
The Japanese company Apex agreed to pay $78,000 in advance and pay a 10% royalty for the development of $1,800G-Force vacuum.
Things are not so smooth in America. S.
There, the original licensing agreement was broken and a series of lawsuits were triggered.
After so much trouble, Dyson is eager to launch his own brand.
He used most of the cash from Japanese transactions and $1 million in bank loans to launch the iconic yellow --and-
1993 Silver Dyson twin whirlwind.
Although the price is as high as $300, twice as high as that of a competitor, it is still very popular, becoming the best-selling vacuum cleaner in the UK, sucking a total of $1.
Sales as at 1997 were 6 billion.
At about this time, Dyson hired Martin mccott, who had worked in Dulak and Toshiba, as chief financial officer.
McCourt was promoted to CEO in 2001.
11 years later, Max Conze, 17, is now CEO.
A one-year-old veteran of P & G company, accepted the job of managing the company in one dayto-day basis.
Free from picky
GRITTY refocused on invention.
In 1998, he recruited five doctors. D.
Students at Kent University commissioned them to build Dyson's first robotic vacuum cleaner.
Before he was satisfied, it took him a few years to go through 1,000 prototypes again.
He canceled the first model due to technical barriers and high costs.
"We are never afraid to take a step back and go, 'that's not right.
"We don't push it out," said Mike aldread, Dyson's chief robotics engineer . ".
The pursuit of perfection may be Dyson's biggest advantage and his biggest shortcoming.
IRobot beat Dyson to market in 14 years and launched its first robotic vacuum cleaner in 2002.
According to Euromonitor, iRobot sold about 2 million units last year for $375 to $900.
Dyson's robotic vacuum device, known as the 360 Eye, was finally unveiled in the United States. S.
This past summer
For $1,000, 360-
Degree vision with a proprietary navigation system helps it move better under the dining hall chair and bed.
The company declined to comment on the quantity it sold.
Dyson's passion for invention is reflected in the yellow-and-Black Notebook--
"Confidential" of each seal "--
His engineer carries it with him.
On them, they should write down every thought they come up with, from how to smooth their hair faster to how to adjust the battery --
Vacuum cleaner.
When books are filled, they are stored in a vault that engineers can access if they want information or ideas from past entries.
But it is vital that these journals are often used as the main evidence for Dyson's patent applications and frequent lawsuits.
The company costs about $6.
Patent proceedings 5 million a year.
While many cases were settled out of court due to undisclosed amounts, it is well known that Hoover agreed to pay Dyson $6 million in 2002 to infringe on the patents of its cyclone technology.
Lest someone think Dyson is a fantastic person.
He obviously knows how to play politics.
According to the patent service claimed by IFI, people with about 7,500 global patents play an important role in obtaining US patentsK.
Amend the tax law to benefit patent holders.
Dyson's holding company, which is already registered in Malta, is a tax haven and he wrote a 2010 report entitled "clever Britain" at the request of soon"to-
David Cameron, prime minister, on how to make the country a leading technology exporter.
He supports xxx in it.
Known as the "patent box", the income tax on patented products is reduced to 10% and R & D is encouraged.
The patent box came into effect on April 2013.
A month ago, Dyson set up his holding company in the United States. K.
Make full use of the new laws.
Since then, the company's tax revenue has fallen by a fourth percentage of its revenue.
"So we can reinvest more, so it helps us," Dyson said . ".
For Dyson, the battery has become an obsession, and he envisioned that combining better batteries with his products would bring "a lot of product opportunities ".
To show his point, Dyson jumped up from the table in Malmesbury and grabbed a red one --and-
Remove the purple cordless vacuum from the sofa and run along the floor to show it is easier than the standard plugin. Battery-
There are two electric vacuum cleaners now.
His company sells £ 9 million a year, of which £ 30.
"It's really taken over and I think it's going to go on," Dyson said . ".
But we need better battery technology.
"Dyson's wireless cleaner can only run for about 40 minutes before it needs to be charged, which can take three and a half hours.
That's why Dyson paid $90 million to buy sakti3, a battery startup.
The company was developed in a small laboratory. state battery-
Using the battery prototype of the ceramic wafer, a thin film is deposited on the ceramic wafer instead of the liquid electrolyte in the traditional battery, which makes them safer. Solid-
According to a patent application from sakti3, states can also store more than 30% of their energy for the same volume, or more than 50% of their energy for the same mass, this means that the product may be smaller and lighter than today's state-of-the-art liquid lithiumion batteries.
Sakti3 claims that these batteries will last twice as long as other batteries on the market at the moment, and will take much less time to charge.
Dyson is one of several companies that bet on stability, such as Toyota, Nissan and Bosch.
Although many people focus only on automotive applications, the National battery will replace the current rechargeable battery.
But Daniel Abraham said it would be "groundbreaking" if Dyson could expand this battery production for household products, not to mention future cars ", battery specialist at Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois
But the height of Tesla cars
Elon Musk, founder of the company, spent billions of dollars improving the current liquid lithium.
The ion battery seems to disagree.
At a recent press conference, he said he was not too worried about solid
At least on the automotive side: "It will take at least four to five years from the time it works in the lab to the time you really reach high capacity.
Even in the lab, we don't know anything better than what we do here.
"Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the high cost.
At present, it will cost at least $2,000 to build a solid car.
According to several battery experts, the National battery supplies cordless vacuum.
Dyson claims that it can significantly reduce these costs and not-so-distant future.
Others are not sure.
"We don't see solid.
Chris Robinson, research assistant at Lux research, said: "State batteries are still competitive for at least ten years . "
National battery development.
But don't tell a true Dyson disciple.
Bruce Brenner, Dyson's energy director, said
The development of storage, "impossible things inspire us.