James Dyson
James Dyson started life in Norfolk and has put his business drive down to his love for long distance running in his youth. "I was quite good at it, not because I was physically good, but because I had more determination,” he told Forbes in 2016.
After reading furniture and interior design at the Royal College of Art, he went onto study engineering. Early inventions included a shopping trolley and a wheelbarrow with a ball rather than a traditional wheel.
His big break came after a brainwave in the late seventies when he devised a way of using cyclonic separation to create a vacuum cleaner that would not lose suction. Supported by the salary of his wife Deirdre, whom he married in 1968, he made thousands of prototypes before launching the G Force cleaner in 1983.
Sir James told Fast Company in 2007: “There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That's how I came up with a solution.”
Beset by manufacturing difficulties, the father-of-three was forced to launch in Japan but opened a headquarters in the UK in the mid-nineties as the products grew in popularity. By mid 2005, Dyson had become the leading vacuum brand in the US.
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