How Dyson is shaking up the retail landscape again

Dyson - best known for turning vacuum cleaners into a homeowner’s most esteemed appliance - has recently opened its first dedicated UK store.

This highly respected global business has bowled us over for decades, founding cyclone technology and even creating the James Dyson award for innovation. But this time, it’s taking its offering up a notch.

Now, it’s landed itself real estate in London’s most premium shopping hotspot, and found the perfect neighbour in electric car manufacturer Tesla. Sitting side-by-side on Oxford Street, this duo signal that the UK is ready for generation technology. So how did Dyson’s first retail concept fare against other innovation heavyweights?

Of course, brilliantly. But I could still imagine them going further.

The store is aesthetically sharp and alive with motion. Its dedicated “Dyson Demo” space shows-off the full portfolio of technology pinups - from vacuums to lights to fans and, its latest product, the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer. At £299-a-piece, the Supersonic deserved some additional theatrics. 

The store is aesthetically sharp and alive with motion. Its dedicated “Dyson Demo” space shows-off the full portfolio of technology pinups - from vacuums to lights to fans and, its latest product, the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer. At £299-a-piece, the Supersonic deserved some additional theatrics. 

With its full salon experience equipped with in-store hair stylists (and a booked  list of over 50 bouncy blow-dries secured), Dyson drives understanding of its innovation through contextualising the product delivery; enabling shoppers to feel - not just see - the benefit of them.

Experiencing the technology in this way is the only way for people to appreciate the stark differences between a Dyson and the growing army of look alikes.

The retail space gets people to delve into the science behind one of the great British designer innovators. The in-store test bench, product prototypes and exploded models evidence the technology and constant innovation required to deliver this kind of excellence. People can ask for advice on how to optimise a product’s functionality and see device efficiency in action. Even see how the vacuum processes 64 different types of dirt particles.

While Dyson has bags of substantiation for why it’s superior, it knows that it needs to deliver experiences that are as inventive as the product if it wants to sell at this premium. People need these affirmative moments to enable them to validate the purchase decisions they make.

So, what went amiss?

Despite being enabled for demonstration, the store falls short in other areas.  A business like Dyson has the capacity, the ambition and the consumer appetite to create some of the best, fully integrated, omnichannel experiences on the market. With people now expecting a continuous bond between them and the brands they spend time with, maximising online-offline moments with every touchpoint is a must. We would have liked to see the staff double-up as tutors, paper brochures become digital catalogues, testing centres become even more technically dramatic and the store be connected to the wider Dyson ecosystem. 

Stores need to create value for the shoppers to empower them to drive loyalty and advocacy and be a building block in a wider conversation. This is not a store about technology, but a store about our relationship with technology; our relationship with Dyson’s legacy. 

Its nearest competitors may make products look similar – but they will never work as well. Justifying the price for such expertise therefore becomes easy. Successful brands reimagine and reengineer everyday products and services. So their stores need to do the same.

Dyson will always have the lead role for being able to turn mundane into mastery. Communicating this is where Dyson's new store really shines. And I’m particularly happy to see the term “innovation” being returned to one of its rightful owners. 

By Kevin Gill, UK CEO at Start Group.