Interview: Martin McCourt, former Chief Executive of Dyson

WHENEVER Martin McCourt needs to be reminded of his successes at technology firm Dyson, all he needs to do is pop into a public toilet.

“Creating a hand dryer that actually dries your hands was a real highlight,” says McCourt as he reflects on his 15 years at the company, which he helped turn from a vacuum cleaner maker into a £1 billion business.

“Developing the blade-less fan and smaller vacuums were also really proud moments for me and the team.”

During his time as chief executive, McCourt changed Dyson from focusing on one product, its bag-less vacuum cleaner, and just a single market, the UK. The firm now sells some 80 per cent of its stock outside the UK, serving 52 countries.

“The figures are very flattering but the best bit of the job was allowing James Dyson, who founded the company, to step down as chief executive so he could concentrate on inventing again,” says McCourt.

Now the Glasgow-born business leader is ready for a new challenge and has joined private equity firm Montagu as a director at its London head office.

However, when he gives his first interview since joining the firm in March, McCourt is a little further afield.

“I’m in Beijing and it’s absolutely bustling,” he observes. “I’m still finding my feet and learning about the business but I’m also out here familiarising myself with the market.”

McCourt will put the experience gained at Dyson – and in his earlier posts with Duracell, Mars and Toshiba – to good use at Montagu, helping the management teams in the businesses that the private equity firm owns and running the rule over potential acquisitions.

Montagu backs management buy-outs, typically in the range of €100 million (£80m) to €1bn, and currently has about €4bn of assets under management. Last year, it raised a further €2.5bn.

While some of Montagu’s UK businesses are household names – including Jemella Group, which makes the GHD hair styling tongs, and high street electronics store Maplin – others are less well known, such as waste management firm Biffa and motor racing transmission maker Xtrac.

Internationally, the private equity firm’s investments take in France, Germany, Hungary, Norway and Poland. Moving across markets does not faze McCourt, who travelled the world with Dyson.

Such an international outlook can sometimes come at a price.

McCourt was vilified in some parts of the media during 2002 after taking the decision to close down Dyson’s factory in the UK and shift production of its vacuum cleaners to Malaysia.

“When I joined Dyson it was doing well, but it only had one product and would eventually have withered,” he says. “What we did was put the firm on a much firmer financial footing and it allowed us to create more high-value jobs in research and development in the UK than jobs that were lost when the factory closed.”

Shifting production overseas also brought financial benefits for the UK economy, with Dyson’s profits rising from £5m per annum to more than £250m during McCourt’s 11 years.

While he is a strong believer in the UK becoming a knowledge-based economy – developing ideas and products rather than trying to compete with cheaper mass-production manufacturers in emerging economies – McCourt supports the efforts of the Scottish and UK governments to entice offshore wind turbine and wave and tidal device makers.

“If you’re going to sell luxury cars in the German market then it makes sense to make those cars in Germany,” says McCourt. “The same is true for larger machines like wind turbines.”

While McCourt is in favour of giving the Scottish Parliament more powers, he does not support the case for independence, arguing that the talk of separation from the rest of the UK raises questions that politicians seem unable to answer.

Moving production abroad also helped Dyson to break into the lucrative Japanese market.

“It’s a bit of a coals-to-Newcastle tale,” says McCourt. “Why would the Japanese want to buy a British-designed vacuum cleaner when they have such a strong domestic electronics market? But now they do, and Dyson is the third highest-selling brand in Japan and that’s thanks to us adapting the vacuum cleaner for their market, making it smaller and lighter.”

Inspiring young people to come up with similar innovative technology is a key theme for McCourt.

“We need to encourage more young people to study engineering and science subjects at university,” he argues. “China and India are churning out more and more graduates and we need to be able to keep up.”

One of the ways of encouraging young people into business and engineering is to celebrate success stories, McCourt believes. In 2010, he was named business leader of the year at the National Business Awards, for which The Scotsman is the media partner.

Now McCourt has joined the advisory board for the scheme and is busy encouraging companies to enter.

“It sounds like a horrible cliche but, although my name was on the award, just the fact that we had entered the competition brought a real buzz to the whole business.

“Business people are very competitive by their very nature and some entering the awards is a great way of bringing out that spirit.”