Dyson keeps it all in the family

Sir James Dyson has signalled his intent to keep Dyson a privately owned family business by revealing plans to acquire his son's lighting company, cementing his place as heir to the Dyson helm.

Jake Dyson Products, which makes high-end energy efficient lights, will now become part of the overall Dyson group as Sir James looks to develop his eldest son's technology and incorporate it within future Dyson products.

"I want the business to remain a family business," Sir James told the Financial Times in an interview. "Jake is highly competent, loves technology, and has good business sense and marketing sense. He's got all the things I had and more, because he's more inventive. So he will take it to places I couldn't."

Both Jake, and his younger brother Sam, have been non-executive board directors at Dyson since 2013, but the move to fold Jake's lighting company into the business will be viewed as early succession planning by the 67-year old inventor.

But Sir James said the idea initially stemmed from the company's board members, who were interested in the light emitting diode technology that Jake has developed. "The Dyson business, not just me, got really keen to pull Jake in and to have the two businesses working together - developing technology for him and using his technology with ours," said Sir James.

Dyson, founded by the eponymous inventor in 1993, has moved into several new categories in recent years and now makes purifiers, heaters and fans as well as products using its Airblade technology - including a tap with a built-in hand dryer.

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

Jake's lighting business will be the newest addition to Dyson's suite of products. While the lights will still be branded Jake Dyson Lighting, they will now be manufactured alongside other Dyson machines in southeast Asia.

Since starting his business in 2003, Jake has launched five lighting products, developing a heat pipe technology for LEDs that enables them to last significantly longer than current products on the market. His latest light Ariel will retail at £1,300 when it is launched later this year.

The company, which employs eight people and is expected to break even this year, has seen an eight fold increase in sales between 2012 and 2014, going from 12 retail stockists in four countries to 420 stockists in 27 countries over the same timeframe.

For Jake, being part of the bigger Dyson group will help speed up the development of his company's pipeline of products, as well as giving him more time to focus on designing new products.

"I really want to get involved and have an input into other things that are going on down there, the other categories and products. It's addictive and you see what's going on . . . and I almost feel left out," said Jake.

Dyson saw sales rise to £1.3bn in 2013 and now sells more than 90 per cent of its machines outside the UK, up from less than a third in 2005.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation