The Dyson brand used to be synonymous with powerful vacuum cleaners, ones that really delivered on their promise to clean. In the last few months, however, the brand has expanded to the beauty segment with its newest product, the Dyson Supersonic hairdryer.
Weighing a fraction of the traditional hairdryer, the Supersonic promises to cut down styling time by half. The way it’s designed makes it sleeker and less noisy. Designer James Dyson and his team of over a hundred engineers did away with the whirring motor and grille that often catches stray hairs and, as a result, gives off a scorched smell.
“Hairdryers can be heavy, inefficient and make a racket. We realized that they can also cause extreme heat damage to hair,” he said in a statement. “I challenged Dyson engineers to really understand the science of hair and develop technology that helps overcome the problems of hot, bulky and unintelligent hairdryers.”
It took over four years of testing on seven different hair types and building test rigs that mechanically simulated hair-drying techniques. By the time the engineers were satisfied, over a thousand miles of human hair had been tested.
Dyson said it invested more than $62 million (50 million pounds) on R&D, including creating a state of the art Hair Laboratory dedicated to investigating the science of hair.
The resulting product, with its bright pink color and lightweight frame, looks like a toy—an expensive toy, considering it retails at P21,500.
Tucked inside the handle, however, is Dyson’s smallest, lightest and most advanced digital motor. The patented V9 motor created by a team of motor engineers works up to eight times faster than other hairdryer motors but is half the weight.
“When we first started distributing Dyson vacuum cleaners in the country a couple of years ago, we had to educate potential customers on how to use the units because the Philippines is still a broom country,” Whiteplanet’s managing director Warren Sy told Inquirer Lifestyle during the Asian launch held in Bangkok recently.
The first few months after they opened were spent training the staff how to demo the products.
“We were targeting condo dwellers and those who were part of small households, because Dyson has cord-free machines perfect for smaller homes.”
Business eventually picked up, with Dyson’s volume sales evenly split between vacuum cleaners and electric fans.
“With the entry of the Supersonic, however, the ratio is now 30 percent hairdryers and 70 percent fans and vacuum cleaners,” Sy said.
Late last year, the local Dyson stores began carrying the Supersonic. When word got out, people came to buy. By the end of the holiday season, they had sold 600 units.
“People were saying it was one of the best gifts that Christmas,” Sy said.
Whiteplanet’s vice president for communications Bobby Yan puts it all down to the emotional weight a woman puts on her hair.
“Women always want their hair to look its best. When I ask them if they are willing to have hair damage, their answer is always no. People spend over P30,000 on their phones, but can their phones make their hair look nice?” he asked.
Unlike conventional hairdryers that can reach extreme temperatures that may cause heat damage, the Dyson Supersonic has intelligent heat control to help ensure hair isn’t exposed to excessive temperatures.
To show just how smart this small appliance is, each unit contains “a glass bead thermistor that measures the temperature 20 times a second and transmits this data to the microprocessor, which then controls the patented double-stacked heating element.”
The accompanying literature can sound very space age-y, but interested parties can check out the Dyson Supersonic during the Philippine launch on March 29 (Wednesday), 4 p.m., at the Fashion Walk at Greenbelt 5.
Dyson Supersonic is available at Greenbelt 5, Century City Mall, Rustans Makati, Abenson Bonifacio Global City, SM Mall of Asia.
