It has been reported that Dyson has filed designs with patent offices sparking speculation that the company may be planning to make small kitchen appliances.
The company, best known for its Cyclone vacuum cleaners, has created designs for appliances including kettles, toasters, juicers and food mixers. They are all of a tall cuboid design, allowing them to be stored next to each other maximising counter space.
The designs also seem to allow for connectivity between the devices, suggesting that they could all be run off a common power supply.
The Dyson team said: ‘Due to their various different shapes and sizes, these appliances cannot be closely packed together on the counter, resulting in an amount of wasted counter space between the appliances which can’t be used for other purposes.’
A Dyson spokesperson abated speculation on the company entering the small kitchen appliance market by stating: ‘We file hundreds of patent applications every year to safeguard our inventions. We can’t reveal any more for now.’
You have to question the logic for doing this – apart from the obvious aim of creating a new product range capable of carrying with a massive profit margin, all benefits to Mr Dyson. Of course there are some good reasons why small domestic appliances such as kettles, toasters, liquidisers etc are separated by some distance when in use, including convenience in use, ease of cleaning and safety (liquidiser/kettle overflowing or leaks, heat transfer). And also why they are not all cuboid in shape – ease of cleaning, mixing efficiency are just two.
But it will be interesting to see what they come up with, and I wonder how well made and robust and long lasting these things will be. It does sound like the kind of thing you could pick up from the “Ideal Home” exhibition – you know those gadgets that demonstrated well but lasted 5 minutes after you start using them.