Sir James Dyson
The world is full of surprises. Before I even get in front of Sir James Dyson, I receive a call from his PR chief checking I am not just going to ask him about money. “It would be a complete waste of our time if you only wanted to focus on his wealth,” she says, rather sharply. “The last time you wrote about him…”
The last time I wrote about him he had recently moved all his manufacturing abroad, bought himself a large mansion with a £15m dividend and didn’t like the emphasis I put on how his sacked British workers would take it.
So it might seem rather rich that, seven years later, he is popping up to advise the Conservatives on Britain’s industrial base. Last week he produced a 60-page report, commissioned by the Tories and entitled Ingenious Britain: Making the UK the leading high-tech exporter in Europe.
Which begs the question, what’s his best advice? Make everything in Malaysia? And politically, have we missed something? Just a few years ago he was an adviser to Labour. Four years ago, he was knighted by Tony Blair.
Luckily, Dyson doesn’t lob his jasmine tea at me straight away. “No, you make a good point about manufacturing,” he smiles benignly. “My business is still based in Britain. Its head office is here, all its invention is here, its profit is here and we pay tax here. All wealth is generated here. We could assemble here too — that would employ more people. But we would probably be bust. And we wouldn’t be near the component suppliers. They are in the Far East.”
All of that is what he wants to address. As ever with Dyson, who spent his early years being told his aim of building a bagless vacuum cleaner was potty, his ambitions are big and brave. He wants a shift in culture, no less, to “reawaken Britain’s innate inventiveness”. Then he wants us to rebalance the economy away from financial services and back towards making things.
His report details how the job can be done, starting in schools and universities and then broadening it to politics and the media. It also lists changes to tax credits and investment incentives that should be made. The report is signed off by industrial and educational heavy hitters, including Sir John Rose, chief executive of Rolls-Royce, and Sir Anthony Bamford, chairman of JCB. Impressive stuff, in short.
Now, I would like to think that Dyson, one of the most charming industrialists you could meet, is not a man to hold a grudge, but that may be wishful thinking. The very fact he has popped up as David Cameron’s new best friend, after being spurned by the Labour government, which two years ago depth-charged his plans for an engineering academy in Bath, tells its own story.
“Spurned?” he drawls, when I put it to him. “I hadn’t viewed this in terms of sides but in terms of what I believe in. Yes, I was an adviser to Labour, and went to one or two meetings for them, but really, I was never as high as a czar or anything.”
Dyson is such a disarming interviewee, passionate about engineering, nonchalant and gentle about so much else, that it’s easy to forget he is also a ruthlessly dedicated entrepreneur. His business is still growing — £628m turnover, £85m profit, 2,500 employees — and still pushing out startling new products. The latest is a bladeless fan, launched next month, a simple loop of metal that produces a constant flow of air without buffeting. At £199 it is distinctly high end, like all Dyson products.
It joins the £600 hand-drier — which uses a sixth of the electricity of conventional models — and 16 vacuum-cleaner variations. A £799 Dyson washing machine, the Contra-rotator, was discontinued in 2005. “Too expensive to build,” shrugs Dyson. “We lost £90m on it.”
As he, his wife and his three children are 100% owners of the business, doubtless they gave each other a stern wigging over it. But with their vacuum cleaner still No1 by value in the American market, they can afford to make the odd mistake.
“We are private for one very good reason,” he says with a nod. “I can concentrate on what is best for the company long term.”
So there we are, sitting in his London showroom, a converted Chelsea town house, where the front wall has been knocked out and replaced with two storeys of glass, and vacuum cleaners perch on pedestals, dotting the room behind.
All are in Dyson grey, as is the man himself — battered fleece, baggy corduroys, cropped hair — looking like he has just come in from a bracing walk. Long and lean, he seems a decade younger than his 62 years, testament to the 10 miles a week he still runs, and all that jasmine tea.
“But yes,” he acknowledges finally, tapping a copy of the report in front of him, “my previous passion was doing the engineering school and that got thwarted, so maybe this was a natural follow-on.”
That plan for an engineering school, aimed at 13 to 18-year- olds, who would feed into local businesses and universities, had consumed years of Dyson’s life. Hence he was enraged when Ed Balls, the education secretary, pulled government support and backed a different project, headed by “that Dragons’ Den man” — Dyson can barely bring himself to utter the words Peter Jones.
“Apparently the government was advised it would get more PR that way,” says Dyson. Then he sighs.
His frustration flows through the 60-page report. At the micro level, he wants schools to stop teaching a combined science GCSE and go back to separate exams. “Children like challenges. They like experiments,” he says. “They are not getting enough of them.”
At the macro level, he wants our culture to do more to celebrate engineering and invention. “We’ve lost interest, and we’ve lost confidence.”
But hang on, can governments create a whole new culture? “I think they can,” says Dyson. “Look at the war. In five years we launched the jet engine, the computer, radar, sonar. But the government had to galvanise Britain to do it.”
So what we need is a good war? “Haha. No. It’s about putting an emphasis on science and design and technology in schools and in universities and in postgraduate research, which we are appalling at. And it’s also about the government saying it wants new things that do things better, not worrying about the impact decisions might have on various pressure groups. They have to be brave.”
So Dyson wants more large-scale projects in rail and power generation and, yes, he knows spending is tight, but putting off these decisions invariably means they cost more in the long run. And he wants a tax system that rewards investors in research and development, and offers better tax credits for tech firms, less for bankers, and lower corporation tax.
He has costed it, too, so it won’t involve more money than is currently distributed. Hence his riposte to the CBI’s criticism that tax credits should be for all. He is sticking to a budget, not spreading everything around. And his new political chums approve. “Cameron has said he will follow it. George Osborne has agreed, too.”
And Dyson wants more celebration of engineering and invention, especially from people like me. “The business press concentrates so much on the City that takeovers and salaries start to become the news. If there was more coverage of manufacturing, more children could be inspired to make things.”
That doesn’t answer the problem of where things are made — where labour is cheaper. But that doesn’t matter, he says, if we invent more, we own more intellectual property, we keep the profits. And we must stop financial services siphoning off the best brains. “They take 50% of engineering graduates,” he says, shaking his head.
That’s because we are good at financial services, surely? No, he says, it’s because we ignore the value of engineering.
You have to credit Dyson for being bothered. In the 1990s, his wife Deirdre told me the key adjective to describe her husband was “stubborn”. That hasn’t changed. The son of a Norfolk teacher, he learnt young to ignore the advice of others, peddling his inventions to non-believers. Beneath the designer boffin exterior is a spiky sense of mission that has led to him falling out with many people, even his own sister for a time.
But when something matters to him, he persists. He could sit behind the gates of his Gloucestershire manor, landscaping his 600 acres, but he genuinely wants to make Britain a better place. If the Conservatives help him, he will join them.
Politically, of course, he is an accident waiting to happen. “To be honest,” he says, “I don’t know who my MP is, or what party they belong to. I haven’t voted for a long time.”
But would he work in a Tory government? “I would be happy to see this through,” he says, tapping the report again. Some think the Conservatives might ennoble him, and give him a government brief, if elected.
“Well,” he counters, “I don’t expect anything. I have a very pressing business to run but, if I was asked to, I would, because I passionately believe in it.”
And you might think he is preparing for something, as he lets slip that he will shortly stand down as chairman of Dyson, the business he founded in 1992. Bob Ayling, long-term board member and former boss of British Airways, will replace him. The company’s chief executive, Martin McCourt, another long-term ally, will remain in day-to-day control.
Dyson himself will have a new job title. “I’ll probably be called chief designer,” he says. “It’s just to make sure there is proper continuation should I go under a bus.”
His aim, he adds, is not to spend less time there, but more — working in the labs where the real invention goes on. Won’t that be a bit awkward for his staff, having the boss sitting by their side all day? “It’s where I started,” he shrugs.
Dyson doesn’t need anyone to warn interviewers off certain topics. He will talk about wealth if you want, though he is barely interested. That could be because he is worth more than £920m in the forthcoming Sunday Times Rich List. He was a billionaire three years ago but won’t mind dropping a notch in the recession.
He has also learnt to understand how others feel. When we met in 1999, he told me he would never pay bonuses to staff. “I think the whole principle is demeaning,” he said.
Now he has changed his tune. “Yes, we have a bonus scheme. I think it was your suggestion,” he says drolly. And the bonuses could be rather good this year, as the company did better than expected in 2009. “We increased our market share in every country we sell in.”
And that, he says, is because consumers are prepared to pay for quality and for invention, even in a recession. And he promises another product launch later this year that will delight us. “I’m very sorry, but I can’t tell you what it is. I always feel awful about that,” he lies, with a wink. Is it a robot? A car? A lavatory? “Well, one thing I can confirm is that it will have a plug on it.”
Will he be Lord Dyson by then, and continue to star in those rather naff ads he produces? He chuckles. “I hope you will be surprised. I’ll try not to bore you.” As if he could.
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: May 2, 1947
Marital status: married, with three children, and five grandchildren
School: Gresham’s, Norfolk
University: Byam Shaw School of Art and Royal College of Art
First job: designer at Rotork
Pay: £400,000 plus dividends. His wealth is estimated at £920m
Homes: Gloucestershire and Provence
Car: silver Range Rover
Book: The Great Lover, by Jill Dawson, a fictionalised account of poet Rupert Brooke’s life
Music: Benjamin Britten
Film: Bright Star
Gadget: “Handheld DC31 vacuum cleaner, of course”
Last holiday: Lisbon — “It’s my favourite city”
WORKING DAY
THE founder of Dyson wakes at Dodington Park, his 18th-century manor house in Gloucestershire, at 7am. “I go down and have a site meeting over breakfast,” says Sir James Dyson. “We have a team of craftsmen still working there. We’ve been rebuilding it for seven years.”
He drives to Dyson’s HQ in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, by 9am. “I really like to get downstairs and be with the engineers, looking at experiments and new designs.” Only one executive reports direct to him, the head of new product development. Everyone else reports to the chief executive.
Dyson visits his manufacturing base in Malaysia six times a year, and America twice a year. If in Britain, he finishes by 6.30pm, and rarely socialises for work afterwards.
DOWNTIME
“MY hobbies are planting trees and landscaping,” says Sir James Dyson. He drives his own digger, remodelling the 600 acres of parkland round Dodington Park. “I’ll also go running a couple of times a week, five miles up and down hills.” He spends his money renovating Dodington and expanding its formal gardens. “Yes, they get bigger every year.” He also runs a helicopter. “Because time is terribly important to me. I like to get from one place to another quickly.”
Otherwise he likes to be with his family. One son designs lighting, another heads his own record label. His daughter is a fashion designer. “They do their own things. That’s much healthier.”