Sir James Dyson's origin story is now practically industrial folklore. Frustrated by his own vacuum cleaner's loss of suction, the Norfolk-born inventor built 5,127 prototypes over five years before landing on cyclonic separation technology. Rejected by major manufacturers, he launched his own machine, the DC01, from Wiltshire in 1993. It became Britain's best-selling vacuum in two years.

What followed was rapid, international expansion. Dyson secured licenses in the UK and the US. In 2002, it moved its manufacturing plants to Malaysia and eventually relocated its corporate headquarters to Singapore in 2019, to give it proximity to Asian markets and manufacturing.

Recently, President Trump’s tariffs have weighed on Dyson. Revenue fell by £440m to £6.13bn in the year to December 2025. Yet the underlying business remains resilient. 2025 brought plenty of new product launches and EBITDA climbed 18 per cent to £1.11bn despite these headwinds, with growth notably strong in hair care and beauty.

With his 80th birthday in May 2027, Dyson remains hands-on at the business. He continues to pour money into education through the Dyson Institute, as well as tending to a 36,000-acre farming empire. The entrepreneur has engineered plenty of best-selling tech products, but his greatest invention is surely the business itself, today one of the UK’s biggest and best-known brands.