Last May, Fiona Scott Thomson lost her production and research manager. Although he had been heavily involved in all aspects of the business, she resisted the temptation to panic, rush out and hire someone else.

Instead, she decided to rely on her policy of bringing graduates into her company, Scottoiler, whose lubrication products save bikers from the messy chore of removing their chains if they want to clean them.

Scott Thomson’s coolness paid off. Although she found some weak points in the business, her management team coped and sales have smoothly motored up to £1m.

Eight years ago it was a different story for her father, a biker and inventor-turned entrepreneur, when he lost his general manager. ‘He went into a tailspin and decided the whole thing was going to the wall, and nobody could cope with it all, she says.’

Scott Thomson, who was working part time in the business after training as a physio, decided to give it a shot. ‘I had always wanted to become more involved once my two kids went to school full time,’ she says.

She learnt as she went along. ‘My most important lesson was that it is great to have a good idea, but it takes a lot of hard work and determination – bordering on obsession – to get it into the market,’ says Scott Thomson. ‘The spark is important, but you have to follow it up with hard work.’

Scott Thomson owns 75 per cent of the company and her father, who at 71 remains actively involved in developing new products, holds 25 per cent. ‘We decided on the split right at the beginning as a way of protecting the firm. My dad happily admits that he tends to give things away,’ she says.

With a full sister, a half sister, a step sister and three step brothers, Scott Thomson, who is now 43, admits that there have been the usual storms as in any family business, though there has never been any debate about the 75/25 ownership split.

And what would happen if anything happened to her? ‘It would continue. I consider myself a caretaker, not an entrepreneur,’ she says. ‘I’m not looking to sell out. Our export manager, who is 27, has the vision and the personality to be the probable next in line – as long as he does not throw himself off the side of a mountain on his bike.’