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.
