A Whole Lot of Hot Air - - Dyson Does Dryers . .Hair Dryers ! !

Guess who making HAIR DRYERS?

 I'm sure there is not a 1 of you who has not heard of DYSON. The man has dominated Late-night TV - in both fillers AND infomercials for over 30 years. You'd have to have lived in a cave to not know what he has done .

Four years in development, the company spent $71 million (and took all that time !)  to make its hair dryer, with the sort of specifications and research backstory of a car. The press release explains the 600 prototypes , over 100 patents pending, and a cast of 103 engineers that worked on it. It helps to explain the price ($400), but even salon-level hair dryers hover around the $300 mark. 

Founder James Dyson reckons existing dryers can be 
"heavy, inefficient, and make a racket !"

Thirty-three years ago, James Dyson set out after an unusual dream: to create the ultimate vacuum cleaner. After thousands of prototypes, failed licensing deals, and countless fruitless meetings with distributors, he finally got his bagless vacuum into stores in Britain, then in the U.S.—and took both nations by storm. 

Known as the Dyson Supersonic and unveiled in Tokyo on Wednesday, the device is his response to a question many never thought to ask: Is it possible to make a better hair dryer? This may not seem like a big deal. A few burned scalps and frizz issues aside, people have been doing just fine with the standard hair dryer for decades. But, as Dai Fujiwara, a Japanese fashion designer who collaborated with Mr. Dyson on an Issey Miyake runway presentation, wrote in an email, “Because everyday life is too common, people rarely realize there is a problem.”

About 92 percent of British women regularly use a hair dryer (according to the consultancy Mintel), while 75.5 percent of all women and 24.5 percent of men in the United States and 97 percent of women and 30 percent of men in Japan use one (according to Dyson), and most spend an average of 20 minutes on each session. So changing even a small percentage of that behavior could have outsize repercussions.

Mr. Dyson, Britain’s best-known living inventor, is the Steve Jobs of domestic appliances. He has built a fortune from making otherwise standard products seem aesthetically desirable, in the process persuading untold numbers of consumers that they really, really want cordless and bagless vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, bladeless fans and even household robots.

Still the sole owner of his company, Dyson, 64, turned that vacuum design into a billion-dollar business and he still likes living on the edge—as long as it doesn't interfere with getting 10 hours of sleep every night.....I have to completely agree with him on that second point. Getting 10- 12 hours of sleep is so dynamic for hair you can actually notice the difference in a matter of weeks!. Without having to 'buy' anything.........'go' anywhere.........or 'apply' anything - - - getting a substantial amount of sleep is paramount for good hair health

When you're asleep your body is repairing itself, that is "WHY" we go to sleep to begin with. Ever tried to stay up for 3-4 days in a row? I don't know if ANYTHING feels worse ..... don't you ? Catch up on your sleep and your complete look, attitude, hair & health is rejuvenated when you have more than enough sleep. Just try it.
................But back to Dyson.

“There has been zero innovation in this market for over 60 years,” said Mr. Dyson, 68, a billionaire who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006.

“Millions of people use contraptions daily that are hideously inefficient, waste their time and are causing them long-term damage,” he said. “We realized that:

 ''we could - & should - 

sort this situation out.”

He triumphantly held up what appeared to be a sleek black and pink plastic doughnut on a stick. “Four years, 100 odd patents and 600 prototypes later, I think we might have found the answer.”

Known as the Dyson Supersonic and unveiled in Tokyo on Wednesday, the device is his response to a question many never thought to ask: Is it possible to make a better hair dryer?

“His inventions are disruptive — beautifully so,” said Terence Conran, the British     restaurateur, retailer and furniture designer. “Who would have imagined that a bagless vacuum cleaner could become a highly covetable status symbol? He has made other businesses think differently about how to use design, creativity and innovation.”

Mr. Dyson studied furniture design and architecture at the Royal College of Art in London. He is currently provost there. “His advocacy for the discipline and for British manufacturing has had a profound influence on the British national psyche,” said Dr. Paul Thompson, rector of the Royal College. Now Mr. Dyson is trying to extend his influence into un-chartered territory: the global beauty and grooming sector.

Dyson said there were 103 engineers involved in the creation of the Supersonic, which included the taming of over 1,010 miles of human hair tresses and 7,000 acoustic tests as teams tackled three core issues: noise, weight and speed.

Ground zero for the project was the Dyson research facility, a Willy Wonka-like world deep in the rolling Wiltshire hills, with a Harrier fighter jet and spliced Mini car in the visitors’ parking lot.

Photo

Sir James Dyson in his office. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Projects are kept firmly under lock and key from virtually all outsiders – as well as many within the walls itself (which, like those owned by Roald Dahl’s flamboyant fictional chocolate factory owner, are often painted a lurid purple).

Matt Kelly was one of many young engineers milling around the plant in near identikit uniforms of hoodies, jeans and sneakers or battered brogues. “You can sit next to someone in the cafeteria here for years and not have the first idea what they are working on, and they will have no clue what you do, either,” Mr. Kelly said. “Discretion and an ability to keep secrets are essential traits if you want to work at Dyson.”

Especially when doing something so counterintuitive as moving from the practical question of what to use to clean carpets to the more touchy-feely question of what to use to style a personal image.

Ed Shelton, a design manager for the Supersonic, said: “It was the hardest project I’ve ever worked on. Beyond having to crack the science of hair, we’ve had to tackle a highly subjective user psychology.

Photo

 

A desk in Mr. Dyson’s office with various sources of inspiration.

   

Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times

“Trust me when I say there are many more approaches and angles to blow-drying than vacuuming in the world. British women want volume. Japanese women want straightness. No one wants hair damage. And then we had to create a fleet of robots specifically to test that over and over again.”

The company says the key to the Supersonic is its high-speed 13-blade motor. About the size of a quarter, the motor is small enough to fit in the base of the hair dryer handle, rather than in the conventional motor position at the top of the device, a shift that creates its unorthodox streamlined aesthetic.

Dyson has a new mission.............to create a dynamic personal hair dryer.....one thing he HAS done is change the design and he has made the tool look like it should be mounted and hung in the Museum of Modern Art.!       

 It..... is...... B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L  ! If that's something you care about....I mean those snazzy vacuums can be hung on your wall like a piece of artwork, but where does your dryer sit? Mine is jammed in a drawer out of view.
 Maybe people would hang this one up on their bathroom walls ( as in another art piece).

"By looking at the old models further, we realized that they can also cause extreme heat damage to hair." He believes the Supersonic solves those issues. Three magnetically-connecting attachments can adjust the output for different hair styles, and include a diffuser and... can you tell I'm out of my depth? Those accessories have a "double skin", so that while the inner part gets hot, the outer stays cool. (That's a cool idea!)

     

Dyson's long-awaited "silent" hair dryer, unveiled in May but available for purchase by JUNE !!!, is powered by a small, light motor that makes it quieter and more compact than current appliances.

“His inventions are disruptive — beautifully so,” said Terence Conran, the British restaurateur, retailer and furniture designer. “Who would have imagined that a bagless vacuum cleaner could become a highly covetable status symbol? He has made other businesses think differently about how to use design, creativity and innovation.”

Mr. Dyson studied furniture design and architecture at the Royal College of Art in London. He is currently provost there. “His advocacy for the discipline and for British manufacturing has had a profound influence on the British national psyche,” said Dr. Paul Thompson, rector of the Royal College. Now Mr. Dyson is trying to extend that influence into hitherto unchartered territory: the global beauty and grooming sector.

Dyson said there were 103 engineers involved in the creation of the Supersonic, which included the taming of over 1,010 miles of human hair tresses and 7,000 acoustic tests as teams tackled three core issues: noise, weight and speed. Ground zero for the project was the Dyson research facility, a Willy Wonka-like world deep in the rolling Wiltshire hills, with a Harrier fighter jet and spliced Mini car in the visitors’ parking lot.

 As with any other Dyson device, research and development didn’t come cheap: The investment, including a state-of-the-art hair laboratory, reached £50 million (about $72 million).

As a result, the Supersonic will retail at $399 when it arrives in the United States at Sephora stores in September, a price at stark odds with the low-priced high-volume business model that has traditionally defined the competitive hair dryer market.

Currently, hair dryers sold by Amazon in the United States retail for $12.99 to $219.98.

Still, Dyson has a convincing track record in persuading fans to pay hundreds of dollars on domestic status symbols that spend most of their working lives in the cupboard under the stairs or next to the dog basket.

But there have been expensive failures along the way.

 More recently, some of Dyson’s boldest claims, about advancing science in certain markets, have also been called into question by critics like the University of Westminster in London.This month the university released research suggesting that Dyson Airblade hand dryers spread 60 times more germs than standard air dryers, and 1,300 times more than standard paper towels, although the assertion is one that the company emphatically and repeatedly rejects.

So the hair dryer stakes are high and the market deeply fragmented, not least by the popularity of newer hand-held electrical appliances like straightening irons and curling tongs. Can Dyson really pull off another product revolution?

“This all does feel a lot more personal than usual,” Mr. Dyson said. “Which I suppose makes me a little nervous. But actually, I have found everything we are learning with the Supersonic very exciting. It’s the start of a new push into this sector for us. Though I can’t tell you more than that.”  What he can say is that the company is set to spend £1.5 billion (about $2.2 billion) investing in future technology and recently announced the development of four new portfolio sectors. While bullish, he also knows that not all his 21st-century inventions could be winners.

“I actually believe that success teaches you nothing; failures teach you everything,” he said, surrounded by sketches and prototypes in his meticulously cluttered office. One hundred new products are in the pipeline in the next four years around the world, he said. The hair dryer is just the beginning.

“For decades, people have just accepted a subpar experience because no one was offering them anything else,” said Stephen Courtney, concepts director at Dyson and a leader on the hair project. The company wants to change that, one locker room, spa and beauty salon at a time.

The majority of this article was written by Lizzie Paton from the NY TIMES, she did such a great job I let it be and added a little of my own, I felt many of you would benefit from.

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 Using BURST in "PRINCE  Color"