After three years there she was offered a promotion but it would have meant moving to England so, at the age of 25, she decided to move back to Stirling. Then, with the help of £5,000 borrowed from her parents and uncle, she opened a nail and tanning salon.
She said: “I thought nails would be the next big thing. I had to work really hard at it but it became the best salon in the area.”
By the age of 32, in 2000, she had six staff but the work involved long hours and when she had her first child she decided it was time to reassess her life.
At the time the only professional tanning lotion being used in Britain was a product called St Tropez, which McClumpha used in her salon. She decided that, with the growing demand for fake-tan products, there was room for a competitor in the market.
After trying out about 20 tanning products from around the world, McClumpha read about Fake Bake, which stood out from the rest because the cream was a dark-brown colour instead of being clear or cream.
She called the manufacturers and asked for some samples, then tried out Fake Bake on her staff.
“The girls in the salon didn’t tan because they were typical Scottish girls with white skin and freckles and red hair. So I thought, if I can tan them I can tan anyone. I tanned them and the effect was just amazing,” she said.
Convinced she had found a product to rival St Tropez, McClumpha flew to America to ask Fake Bake’s manufacturers if they would give her the distributorship for Britain and continental Europe. They refused, saying she would have to prove herself first.
McClumpha returned to Britain determined to rise to the challenge. She quickly realised that it would be impossible to commit to both selling Fake Bake and running her salon – as well as looking after her small child – so she would have to make a choice.
She sold the salon for £120,000, despite having no guarantee that her interest in Fake Bake would ever amount to anything. Then she got to work trying to drum up enough sales for Fake Bake to prove she was capable of taking on the distributorship. She said: “I thought, I can do this if I do it properly.”
She set up a makeshift office in a bedroom at home and used the money she had made from selling the salon to employ a public-relations company to promote Fake Bake.
At this point McClumpha became pregnant again, but by now she was without an income and so had little choice but to keep on working.
When Fake Bake came top in a comparison test of tanning products in a magazine, however, the phone began to ring with inquiries from customers and she knew she was on to a good thing.
She started importing Fake Bake products from the US manufacturers, but had nowhere to store them. So she begged people she knew who ran tanning salons to take the products on a sale-or-return basis so that she had somewhere she could send people to buy them.
Fortunately, her self-belief and determination paid off. After three months she was at last given the distributorship for Fake Bake in Britain and continental Europe.
Her company, Fake Bake UK, is now set to have a turnover of £4.5m and has 25 staff and three training schools.
McClumpha also plans this month to open two Fake Bake salons called Brown Cow.
Now 38 and married with two children, she has this advice for budding entrepreneurs: “Research your market and know your competition because that gives you an edge. And don’t expect to make any money for the first couple of years if you are really serious about it.”
She puts the secret of her success down to the belief and “sheer determination” that she could combine running a successful business with raising a family. She said: “Women can lose a lot of confidence and identity when they have children. I’ve been determined not to do that because I’ve seen so many of my friends lose their confidence.
“It can be done. I think I’m a better mother than if I was at home 24 hours a day. And if I’m happier, my children are happier. You can have it all.”
