The women on the steps outside the Tunnock’s factory in Bellshill look all-in.
They smoke their fags sitting down, their pallor testimony to a Scottish
summer and a job in which the main perk is a never-ending supply of
sub-standard Caramel Wafers. Within teacake-lobbing distance, however, is
the new, exfoliated face of post-industrial Scotland. Flawless, tanned and
framed by glossy blonde tresses, Sandra McClumpha represents a breed of
kitchen-sink entrepreneur which is challenging the established order and
making the macho business models beloved by Scottish Enterprise and bankers
look as outmoded as a penny-farthing in a velodrome.
McClumpha’s Fake Bake self-tanning empire, set in 100,000 square feet of
unprepossessing warehouse on a Bothwell industrial estate, harbours a
workforce which looks as if it has been transplanted from Biarritz. Even the
men are bronzed to within a millimetre of their epidermis. As Fake Bake’s
“live the lie” advertising attests: “People in the real world don’t look
like this.” It’s as if a colony of exotic butterflies has been dropped into
an ant hill.
Having secured the European distribution rights to Fake Bake products in 2002,
McClumpha bought the company for £10m earlier this year and has embarked on
a programme of global expansion. Rather than pay high agency fees to find
the right candidates to help her expand the business, she is fronting an
online version of The Apprentice. The Hirer, which starts on September 5,
will select eight candidates, one of whom will join her team of 45. The
concept, developed by McClumpha’s friend Greta Hill-Jones, who runs a
recruitment advertising agency, differs from The Apprentice in that the
candidates will be helped along the way by Fraser Murray, a life coach.
“It’s hard to get really good staff,” says McClumpha, 39, whose television
credits include a stint as a judge on Britain’s Next Top Model. “I’m looking
for someone a little different. If they’ve got experience and
qualifications, that’s great but if they have common sense and are hard
working, that’s even better.”
Unlike The Apprentice, the candidates for The Hirer will not be pitted against
each other or ritually humiliated. So far the website has registered more
than 250,000 hits and at least 8,000 potential candidates have signed up.
They will be whittled down to 200 and face-to-face interviews will take
place to determine the final eight. The winner will be announced in early
October.
In keeping with McClumpha’s unconventional and forward-looking approach to
business — she gained valuable publicity when she sent a team to Germany
during the World Cup in 2006 to tan the England Wags — the series has not
been pitched to mainstream TV channels. Instead the producers have teamed up
with Moviecom TV, of Cumbernauld, to produce the show online. “We looked at
the demographics and the people we are interested in are all online,” says
McClumpha, over tea in her spotless office. “It’s a big growth area.” She
has already been approached by other companies keen to use the model.
The Hirer has also benefited from that most traditional of marketing tools,
the tabloid cat fight. The programme was attacked by Michelle Mone, the
woman behind the Ultimo lingerie brand. The two women were pitted
head-to-head in the press for a little blonde-on-blonde friction.
In the early days of the business McClumpha had a year-old baby, was pregnant
again, and was running a successful beauty salon in her home town of
Stirling. It had been a tough year: her son Luis had been born 10 weeks
prematurely and weighed 3lbs. “It was traumatic,” she says of Luis’s birth.
“I thought I was losing him. He was tiny and in hospital for five weeks. I
was on autopilot. Being tied to the salon was difficult. I had to get my mum
to help me. I realised I couldn’t do that job with such a small baby, so I
was already looking for something else.” She was also having doubts about
the long-term safety of sun beds. Her growing disillusionment coincided with
her mother's diagnosis of melanoma and McClumpha began searching for a
product which would allow Scots to tan without endangering their health or
looking as if they bathed nightly in Irn-Bru.
Having persuaded her computer-literate sister, Maggie, to research the market,
which was then dominated by St Tropez, McClumpha set about ordering samples.
Her salon assistants acted as guinea-pigs. One woman, with the archetypal
Celtic colouring who burned easily and had never tanned, was particularly
impressed with an American brand, Fake Bake. McClumpha visited the
manufacturers in Dallas.
Fake Bake’s owners Joe and Mary Cooper, who have since become surrogate
parents to her, educated her in the product. She asked for the UK
distribution rights. As an untested unknown, she was told she presented too
much of a risk.
McClumpha’s response was to set about proving she could build a market for the
product in the UK and Europe. It meant selling the beauty salon and
ploughing £90,000 into building the Fake Bake brand. It was a huge risk. To
complicate matters McClumpha had barely started on the new venture when she
discovered she was pregnant with her daughter Natalya, now five. “I’d had
endometriosis for years and I’d been told that I couldn’t have children,”
she says. “I was worried. I’d given up the security of the salon and I had
terrible sickness all the way through the pregnancy.”
Within a year she had built up sales of £1m and turnover now exceeds £9m. The
male business establishment was, however, deeply unsupportive. “We didn’t
get any help,” she says. “My biggest problem was funding. The banks weren’t
helpful. To get a man excited about a self-tanning product was nigh
impossible. It may be sexist to say it, but it didn’t help that I was a
woman. It was a female product being fronted by a woman and they just didn't
get it.”
One Scottish bank manager came back to her after weeks of poring over the
business plan only to offer her a £500 overdraft. It was the ultimate
insult. In the end she had to go to England to find a bank who would take
her seriously.
“A friend banked with the HSBC in Liverpool and said there was a female bank
manager there who was dynamic,” she says. “I went down to meet her and she
was excited by the product. She came to exhibitions with us, totally
supported us and really stuck her neck out.” McClumpha believes Scotland is
a good place to do business, however. “I could never have done it anywhere
else. After we were established, a big London company phoned the Americans
and told them that being represented by a small Scottish company was bad for
business and damaging to the brand. The Americans were deeply insulted.”
The stigma once associated with self-tanning products has evaporated, she
says, and the boom in male grooming products has led to the recent launch of
a Fake Bake range for men. But there is still plenty of snobbery. Royal
Ascot outlawed streaky fake tan in the Royal Enclosure this summer and
earlier this year the head teacher at Baines School, a comprehensive in
Poulton-le-Fylde, near Blackpool, Lancashire, banned pupils from wearing it
to school.
But what England sees as a social faux pas, Scotland views as a health
product. McClumpha, who counts Madonna and Lindsay Lohan as clients, worked
with Thomas Muir High School in Glasgow, giving lessons in applying fake tan
after teachers became concerned about the number of pupils using sun beds in
lunch breaks.
“The school nurse invited us in,” she says. “We’re working with a number of
schools and we’re planning to do something bigger next year.” She adds:
“Some 2,400 people died of skin cancer last year. Teachers telling girls not
to use fake tanning products shouldn’t be teaching. It’s not sending a good
message. It may push them towards using sun beds. But parents have a
responsibility. They should be educating children about the dangers.”
Success has brought her a Bentley and a pad in Lanzarote. She separated from
her boyfriend Kevin more than a year ago. The family has just moved from
Stirling to a new home in Uddingston.
Irrespective of English snobbery, you sense that McClumpha’s future, if not
orange, is certainly bright.
The Hirer is at www.thehirer.tv
