ADRIENNE MacAulay can trace the roots of the Ness clothing and accessories chain she co-founded to the difficulties she had finding a very particular type of handbag in 1990s Edinburgh.

"I walked down the Royal Mile and I thought there is nobody here I want to buy from," recalls the entrepreneur, who hails from Canada. "I said all I want is a pink tartan handbag and there was nothing like that back then."

Ms MacAulay's subsequent efforts to fill a gap in the market only she may have spotted set her on a path that led to the creation of a brand that is set to become an increasingly familiar sight on the UK's shopping streets.

Ness, which sells women's clothing and accessories designed by the Edinburgh-based firm, raised £2.5m funding from YFM Equity Partners in April ahead of a big push for growth.

The company plans to triple the size of its estate by opening 20 stores over the next five years. The bulk of the new stores will be in England where Ness has three outlets currently. The other seven are in Scotland. The expansion will potentially allow millions more shoppers to sample an offer that involves taking quintessentially Scottish items and putting a modern twist on them.

The range extends from chic tweed blazers to glasses cases and handbags ... in pink tartan.

Sitting in her compact office, with antique prints on the walls around her, Ms MacAulay shows real confidence in the potential for Ness to build a UK-wide following.

"It's at this point that we really need to, and I feel that I want to be able to accelerate the growth, to be able to open enough shops in the UK that everybody knows us, " says the 46-year-old, who has retail in her blood.

Growing up on Canada's west coast Ms MacAulay made regular after school visits to her mum's antiques store.

She says the three established stores in England have done really well. The company is preparing to open a fourth in June, in the Yorkshire market town of Ilkley.

Part of Ms MacAulay's confidence may be due to the fact the company has spent years carving out a profitable niche in a very competitive retail market. She opened the first Ness on the Royal Mile in 1997 with her husband Gordon. This is not your typical tale of a young private equity-backed firm targeting breakneck growth.

"We had a lot of babies in the beginning," laughs the mother of three. "It was a slow start which was fine, it was a mom and pop business and it gave me the flexibility to be able to have children and raise them. But as soon as they all got to grade (primary) school I was back behind my desk, which was a nice change."

Nonetheless, Ms MacAulay developed a clear vision of what Ness should be about soon after opening the first outlet. This was found by Gordon, a Scots chartered surveyor whom she met at a ball in Kuala Lumpur's swish Shangri La hotel in 1995 while working on US retailer B.U.M. Equipment's Asian expansion drive.

"That was it we fell in love completely and just over three months later I had moved to Hong Kong."

The couple started Ness with a £500 investment which Ms MacAulay drew on to stock up with gift items like soaps and postcards bought from others, only to decide she needed to focus on something that would mark the business out as more special.

"We thought it was a fantastic idea to create a brand that was accessible but also Scottish."

After spending years working with retailers in areas such as Asia, the marketing expert was able to draw on an encyclopaedic knowledge of the clothing trade when looking for inspiration.

"There's a lot of brands that are iconically from their own country and that are really great clothing brands... Roots of Canada, R.M. Williams of Australia, Mad Dogs of South Africa."

Finding the goods needed to stock a Scots version of such a store involved journeying with Gordon through the remains of Scotland's once mighty textiles industry.

"So we went to the isle of Harris bought some end runs of some rolls of fabric, brought it back to the mainland and made skirts in Bathgate and handbags in Kilmarnock and then we complemented the range with knitwear."

Ness still has as much of its stock as possible made in the UK.

The range of goods designed and sourced by Ms MacAulay sold well from the start and Ness built up what she describes as a passionate customer base in Scotland.

The move into England, where Ness opened its first store in York in 2008, required some tweaking of the range to suit local tastes.

Customers in England are much more interested in clothing. "They do want pink tartan handbags but only in the winter."

Based on the success of the English outlets, including stores in Bath and Cambridge, Ms MacAulay has high hopes for the growth push.

She recognises completing such a big expansion will involve challenges, not least in articulating what Ness is about for a wider audience.

Ms MacAulay struggled when asked recently to give a presentation about a brand that she says has always been in her gut.

"We are going to have to do more of that and we are going to have to have a brand identity and brand voice and a brand image and a brand ethos and we're working quite hard on that right now."

But having resisted the idea of producing traditional "Scottish" items like brown tweed jackets for the sake of the brand, Ms MacAulay has no fears that growth will require compromising what Ness is about.

She is evidently proud that the company's designs are produced in house by a small team.

"Everything that we do is organic and all the inspiration comes from Scotland and that can be everything from out in The Highlands to very much about Edinburgh city centre."

The Canonmills fabric, for example, features the clock tower that is a familiar landmark in the district in Edinburgh of that name.

The design process involves consulting guides to what colours are expected to be in fashion in coming seasons, then coming up with stories that provide the inspiration for the final products.

The involvement of YFM Equity Partners as stakeholders is not expected to impact on the work.

But Ms MacAulay is pleased to note that, besides helping fund store openings, the investment will allow Ness to upgrade its IT systems and web presence. This will help the firm keep pace with the increasingly sophisticated demands of shoppers in the click and collect age.

The appointment of former finance head Kenny Baillie as managing director will leave her free to focus on strategy.

She is obviously excited about the prospect of working with her husband on the next chapter of the Ness story.

"For me I have my dream job. At this moment in time I have the best job in the whole entire world and I'm very, very grateful.

"I'm able to spend time with my kids; work with my husband, but we both have very definite jobs within the business so we don't step on each other's toes like we used to; I get to travel ... and I get to be creative. And it's been 20 years getting to this point but it's really the best time for me."