Jake Dyson Lighting

Looking at what Flos and Artemide lamps go for, there's definitely a market at that price point. Whether it's worth it to you or me, well, probably not. But hey, you can cover a lifetime or three of petrol for the cost of a Tesla, and folks are forking over the cash left and right.

It looks kick-ass. That’s plenty. All the rest doesn’t matter. If you like the way this looks you gotta pay the price. (And what exactly is wrong with looking kick-ass?) I’m sure you will be able to buy some cheap imitation soon enough. If you are lucky this might even be picked up by some talented designer at Ikea and you might get a really honest and well-made imitation, not something that doesn’t even get the point of this design.

I also don’t think you ever bought an upscale lamp like this. $600 for a desk lamp is a completely middle of the road price for the category this lamp is competing in. It’s not even extraordinary. The competitors in this market segment have the same or higher prices.

For example, Elane from Serien costs roughly the same or even more and doesn’t even have any fancy heat pipes: http://serien.com/en/produkte/elane/table/

(I mean, look around the products of this brand and you will also find these technological innovations and unique materials and all that jazz that doesn’t amount to much in the end. It’s a justification game for the prices – but in the end it’s all about the looks, really. The drama of home furniture is that you can often get something decent but not very special for an ok price, but then … then you see this really cool looking thing right next to it that would add that little bit extra … but costs an order of magnitude more. I’m not sure why prices are so weird when it comes to that. I mean, someone like Ikea is sort of attacking that market and those prices in some weird way, but those upscale places still exist. And you definitely lose the uniqueness with Ikea – because their well-designed stuff will soon be everywhere.)

And ignoring how it looks for a second, the Dyson Air Multiplier is kind of mediocre anyway (and VERY mediocre for the price point).

The rest of the electric fan market has shifted over the last ten-ish years to noise-efficiency. Meaning the most air movement for the least amount of noise. So we've seen new blade shapes, smarter motor designs, enclosures that attempt to dampen the noise, and so on. And Dyson's Air Multiplier could, in theory, have done well in that competition but they care more about form than function, so they stuck this tiny little motor with a higher RPM in the thing which has made it extremely loud for the amount of air that it can move.

In terms of noise-efficiency, it sounds as loud as fans from the 1990s and before.

At what point does a product last "too long"? It seems that designing an expensive lamp and marketing the fact that it lasts 37 years seems kinda...dumb.

First there is the issue at the business level. Returning customers are the easiest and cheapest sells...but if your customer only buys a product every 30+ years...not great for business.

Then there is the technology. Why make something last that long with current technology when in 10 years or less, something more efficient and "better" will come along.

I'm not sure many people can even keep track of a lamp over that long. Between moving, things breaking, etc.

Well, one point is purely as a marketing tool. I doubt very few of these lamps will ever last 30+ years, due to moving, accidents etc, and probably dyson doesnt either. however its effective to say that in marketing.

Outside of that, people expect certain pieces of hardware to just 'work' forever. Generally they don't expect a lamp to ever 'require' an upgrade. Yes it will probably be replaced for some reason in that timespan, but not generally due to 'failure'