The Exchanges

Q Wait, there was a guy, is, didn't somebody, like, Inside the bank vouch for you?

A Lloyds Bank ran a system. Instead of going to a man sitting in a branch of the bank and borrowing from them, they had a sort of flying doctor who went around businesses. So he was a real business expert, and he, he didn't work from an office. He just went around people's businesses. Interesting man, actually. And, uh, he, the, the, the bank refused his request for the loan. So he went to the ombudsman within the bank. And persuaded them to lend me the money. And it was a crazy thing for them to do, actually, because, uh, you know, this guy is setting up business to make vacuum cleaners to compete with all the big mountain nationals. What earth is he doing? Living in a little coach house near Bath. When you think about it, it's completely mad.

AI assessment note: “So he went to the ombudsman within the bank. And persuaded them to lend me”

Q Why could you do it for so cheap? Because your only expense was your time? Yes.

A Yes, I'm working at home. Uh, the only expense is my time and a few cheap materials. I couldn't buy a lathe or equipment. I was doing it all with little black and decas and things like that, uh, by hand. I was making cyclones by rolling them in rollers. I went and bought some antique metal rollers down at a junk store for 25 pounds, and I could roll cyclones, you know, they're a funny shape, like a sort of, Uh, upside down cone. And sold them together. So I was doing everything by hand. Um, but I could do that. I mean, it works. You, you can do things for nothing. You don't need to spend a lot of money.

AI assessment note: “the only expense is my time and a few cheap materials”

Q And you found somebody that also had an obsession with the past, past engineers, past designers, past inventors that you could actually have a, deep conversations with about how they built their products, why they made these certain decisions, and then you used those to inform the work that you guys were doing, correct?

A Yes, I mean, he, he was a friend of Issigonis, so, ah, I'd, I'd never met his againness, but I heard about him from him. They used to do hill racing together, design cars that, very, very light cars that raced up hills very quickly with very little power. So it's sort of very skinny engineering, minimalist engineering. Uh, and so he, he had quite a lot of stories from, from that era. He was 20 years older than me, so, uh, he had seen a bit of life during the war and, uh, um, and had done this racing car thing and established an engineering company. So he, he just removed the barriers, um, that it was okay to be an obsessive engineer, and you, you just do whatever it is you want to do, and then you go out and sell it, and hopefully, like the pied-pepper of Hamelin, people will follow you. Uh, so, you know, to get that advice from someone at that crucial stage in my life was, was, um, I might say mind-blowing. It was It enabled me to carry on and, and do things that everybody said I couldn't do.

AI assessment note: “Yes, I mean, he, he was a friend of Issigonis”

Q Take me in your mindset, then. What do you think was driving you? Were you anger, like, the desire to prove yourself, the love of the product? What was actually happening at that point? That is an unusual decision to make, a decision that your entire empire now rests upon. It's an incredible time in your life.

A Well, uh, I saw a problem with a product that everybody uses every day, a vital product to clean their homes. And I, as a user, I hated it because you have this bag that clogs and then you have to go and buy another bag and so on. But more than anything, it's the performance is lousy. I mean, if you have a hundred watt light bulb, it's supposed to give a hundred watts all the time. But this vacuum cleaner light bulb starts off at a hundred watts and ends up at 20 watts pretty quickly. So it's deeply unsatisfactory. So I thought if I can solve that problem, I thought if I could solve that problem, other people would buy that product. It's no substance. It's just an idea.

AI assessment note: “I saw a problem with a product that everybody uses every day”

Q working on the ball barrel, right? And you discover what a cyclone is because you were solving a problem with the ball barrel. You had, there's no way you could have predicted at the beginning that you could apply it to another domain and then wipe the floor with all your competitors. Can you explain what you were doing and how you accidentally discovered the cyclone for the first time?

A The important thing is, is to observe things all the time for an engineer and work out how they work and also Uh, incidentally, you're always working out how to make them work better. Would it be better if I did this? Isn't there a better way of doing that? And, um, and that, that always happens with all the inventions. They don't just come out of the sky. They occur because you observe something. So curiosity and observation and trying to understand things is the way to come up with new ways of doing things. And so it was with the, with the vacuum cleaner. As we said, we, we, um, we had this huge plant that, uh, They sprayed the, the frames with powder. A lot of the powder missed the frames, because they're spraying sort of open things, there's masses of it missing it. And you suck it, we were sucking it away onto a cloth filter, a huge cloth filter, which clogged all the time.

AI assessment note: “we had this huge plant that, uh, They sprayed the, the frames with powder”