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Sliced Bread

Dough - Vacuum Cleaners

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6634 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why do we buy so many vacuum cleaners?

Dough is a new series from BBC Radio 4 which looks at the business behind profitable, everyday products and considers how they might evolve in the future.

In this episode, the entrepreneur Sam White speaks with experts from the world of vacuum cleaner manufacturing, including:

Grahame Capron-Tee - who has seen many significant changes during his long career in the industry;

Nick Grey - the inventor and founder of Gtech;

Anthony Williams - a global director at the data insights company, GFK.

Also joining them is the technology expert and applied futurist Tom Cheesewright, to offer his insight and predictions on what might be coming beyond the current production pipeline.

Together, they explore how vacuum cleaners went from exterior, horse-drawn contraptions to interior, automatic robots scuttling around on the floor, explain why UK households buy so many vacuum cleaners and give their expert views on game-changing - and pointless - product innovations.

There's a debate about bagged versus bagless vacuum cleaners and a discussion on when robotic vacuum cleaners might be able to clean more than just the floors.

Dough looks at where the smart money's going now and what that could mean for all of us in the years ahead.

Produced by Jon Douglas. Dough is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in August when Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread.

In the meantime, Dough is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, podcast fan.

0:03.0

Consider this your invite to the UK's biggest podcasting party.

0:06.7

We're heading to Sheffield from the 4th to the 6th of July

0:09.0

for the BBC Sounds Fringe at the Crossed Wires Festival.

0:12.8

We'll be joined by some of the biggest names in podcasting,

0:15.3

including Sarah Cox, Charlie Hedges, Russell Kane,

0:18.4

and some bloke called Greg James doing his Radio 4 show called Rewinder.

0:23.2

You can watch live shows of your favourite podcasts, and the best part is free.

0:28.0

To book your free tickets, go to crossedwires. Live, forward slash fringe.

0:34.4

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

0:49.0

Hello and welcome to Doe, the BBC Radio 4 series that looks at profitable, everyday products, and considers how they might evolve in the future.

1:06.1

I'm Sam White, an entrepreneur that's always up for a chat with industry insiders, and we're going to hear from some of them on how our chosen product has developed, the business behind it, and then get some ideas on where it might go next.

1:11.2

In this episode, we're checking out the thing that transformed the way we clean our homes.

1:13.2

Forget brooms and dust pans.

1:17.8

Who needs those when you can use a vacuum cleaner?

1:21.5

Tom Cheesewright is back.

1:24.6

He's an applied futurist and technology expert.

1:25.8

Tom, hi.

1:26.8

Hello, Sam.

1:28.8

Nice to be here in this nice, clean studio.

1:33.1

Well, your side might be clean. I'm not sure that mine's as clean as it could be.

1:35.7

I think we might need to get some of this equipment in.

...

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