James attended the Royal College of Art to do design. There, He met a very creative engineer (Jeremy Fry). They started together to work on amphibious landing craft Jeremy'd invented.
After they finished the prototype, James said, "Now what?". Fry replied, "We make it." And then? "We sell them." Soon, they were selling 200 boats a year.
In 1979, James started working on vacuum cleaners after seeing an industrial sawmill, which used something called a cyclonic separator to remove dust from the air.
He thought the same principle of separation might work on a vacuum cleaner. There, James started working on vacuum prototypes. A lot of them.
Quoting
“By 2,627, my wife and I were really counting our pennies” “By 3,727, my wife was giving art lessons for some extra cash”
When the vacuum was ready, Dyson spent three years traveling the world and trying, unsuccessfully, to sell his vacuum. Trying to explain the reason for this fail, James stated
"Not because it was a bad idea, but because it was bad for the [vacuum bag] business."
This didn’t stop James, who borrowed 900 k£ (with his house on the line) to fund his factory. Looking at his sales process, it's interesting to notice this Quoting again
The only way I got into the big British stores was because in 1995, the former British foreign secretary, Lord Howe, came to look around at the factory. He asked if there were any problems. I told him I couldn't get into Comet, which was our equivalent of Best Buy. He said, "Well, my wife's on the board!" The next day, we got a call from the purchasing director. Within a year, we were the best-selling vacuum cleaner in Britain.
The rest is history.
Today Dyson revenues account for 4,4 B£ in revenue
Kudos Sir Dyson
Thanks to Javier Nadal, who told me about this story
About Holborn Consulting
Holborn is a Sales advisory boutique in London, specialized in supporting high-tech firms in the B2B market development.
PS
This story is taken from the book - "The Unbent" - Amazon link
Other credits: article
This article was also published on Medium - LINK
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