Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Dyson: A British inventor pivots to Asia
By Peter Campbell and Michael Pooler in London and Stefania Palma in Sydney
Source
: CARTA image / Alamy Stock Photo.

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91
CASE STUDY
Dyson’s interest in cars goes back to the cyclone 
principle it uses in its vacuum cleaners to suck up 
dirt. In the 1990s, Sir James suggested this could be 
used to extract fumes from diesel exhausts, but his 
approaches to car makers were rebuffed.
Today, the company can boast success in almost 
every product category it has entered with the nota-
ble exception of its washing machines, which sold at 
a loss and were discontinued.
Sceptics say there is a huge difference between 
high-end domestic appliances and an automotive 
industry undergoing radical shifts amid the rise 
of electric propulsion technology, artificial intelli-
gence and new ownership models. Yet with far fewer 
moving parts than traditional internal combustion 
engine cars, battery-powered vehicles are easier 
to design and produce, opening the door to new 
entrants, from California’s Tesla to Croatia’s Rimac.
In China alone, which Dyson sees as its biggest 
target market, there are more than 300 registered 
electric car start-ups, many with rich backers and 
ambitious founders. They include names such as 
Lucid, Byton and Nio, which is backed by the inter-
net group Tencent and recently listed on the New 
York Stock Exchange.
‘We know it is a crowded market,’ Sir James said 
last year. ‘But if you produce a product that has tech-
nology that is genuinely better, and a performance 
and product that people want, you can make money.’
Tesla has sought to cement a position by attacking 
the inefficiencies it saw in established manufactur-
ers, from overreliance on suppliers to the traditional 
dealership model. Dyson is applying a similar disrup-
tive mentality.
‘Dyson thinks, like Musk, the incumbent industry 
doesn’t know what it’s doing,’ says one person who 
has worked on the project. ‘That’s quite a risk.’
The company’s notorious secrecy – it took more 
than a year to agree a confidentiality agreement with 
one supplier on the project – means few details have 
been revealed about its maiden four-wheeler to roll 
off the production line in just three years. Scheduled 
to be the first in a planned series of three models, 
it will be pitched to the upper end of the market 
and produced in a small batch of several thousand, 
according to people familiar with the plans.
Unlike Tesla, which has suffered manufacturing 
problems, the British group already makes millions 
of products a year, and sources around 4bn parts 
annually from across the globe.
‘He’s not a Silicon Valley start-up, he understands 
manufacturing,’ says one supplier.
Dyson believes that its specialisms, in areas such 
as electric motors, batteries and aerodynamics, will 
give it the edge over companies with a century’s 
worth of experience in car making. But to succeed, 
it will need to cast off some of its reluctance to col-
laborate with component providers.
Dyson sales
Source
: Peter Campbell and Michael Pooler, “Dyson: a British inventor pivots to Asia” in London and 
Stefania Palma in Sydney OCTOBER 26, 2018.
Revenues (£bn)