Once launched, new products are already old news. “What can we do next time to make it faster, quieter, lighter-weight, improve the ergonomics, whatever it is?” Mejia-Montane said.
Founder and chief engineer Sir James Dyson has a practice of encouraging younger engineers to be in the room and to have the “wrong thinking” and “ask questions you wouldn’t normally ask”.
“Everybody is an engineer, even if you’re not an engineer,” Mejia-Montane said.
“You’re encouraged to think like an engineer, which means to take things apart and figure out how to put it back together in a more effective, more efficient way.”
Despite containing no electric components, Chitosan’s bottle has a distinctly device-like feel, thanks to its magnetic cap and pump that dispenses a precise pea-sized amount. Once applied, the serum feels and acts less like a hairstyling product and more like skincare for hair.
Dyson’s hair serum range, Chitosan (pronounced ki-toh-zan).Credit:
“All roads always lead to hair health. That’s the one thing that we’ll never compromise,” Mejia-Montane said. “All of our research is about making sure that every product here is maintaining the integrity of the hair health.”
Dyson’s haircare foray is its latest attempt to convince critics that it can succeed in markets outside its natural habitat. Not all previous efforts have paid off so far. Dyson’s experiment to build an electric vehicle was scrapped for being not commercially viable, and its noise-cancelling headphones that double as an air purifier have been derided by some as “absurd” and “ridiculous”.
At $89 per 100ml bottle, the products are priced on the premium end, but Mejia-Montane argues it’s more accessible than purchasing an $849 Dyson Airwrap.
“It’s like the person who buys their Chanel lipstick who doesn’t have a Chanel handbag. This is also a way to enter into the brand.”
Chitosan’s range contains five products: four pre-style creams to be applied to wet hair, ranging from a lighter blend for straight hair to a richer blend for coily hair, and a post-styling serum to hold curls and contain flyaways.
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Within the company, some secrets are closely guarded. Certain sections of the business are siloed from one another to prevent employees from knowing about research that’s happening in other departments. The company, valued at $US20 billion ($30.5 billion), spends about a fifth of its profit on research and development and spends millions of dollars each year protecting its innovations through patents and litigation.
James Dyson oversees every aspect of the business’ engineering and product development, from its dimensions of height, weight, design, and even its colours. Purple, which features in many Dyson products, including the Chitosan range, is his wife Deirdre’s favourite colour.
The 78-year-old’s acumen extends beyond business. Dyson has established its own university, the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, and has a sustainable strawberry farming business. He is estimated to own 35,000 acres of land in Britain.
”James is very open to not setting any limit, exploring, looking at areas that have been untapped, problems that he says others have ignored,” Mejia-Montane said.
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