An Aberdeen hairdresser has credited the city's Union Square shopping centre with keeping the business alive after its former Union Street salon, in the owner's words, "died a death."

The account, reported by the Press and Journal, frames a relocation from Aberdeen's historic Union Street retail axis to the Union Square development as the decisive factor in the salon's survival. The owner's blunt verdict — that the Union Street site "died a death" — stands as the sharpest concrete fact in the story.

What does the relocation signal for Aberdeen salons?

Union Street, long the city's principal shopping thoroughfare, has faced well-documented pressure from rising vacancies as retail footfall has migrated toward destinations such as Union Square, the shopping centre adjacent to Aberdeen's rail station. For service businesses such as hair salons, which depend directly on passing trade and stable walk-in volume, the shift in where shoppers spend their time translates quickly into chair occupancy and, ultimately, viability.

The hairdresser's account places the salon among the businesses that followed that footfall rather than fighting it. Moving into a managed shopping-centre environment typically brings a different cost structure from a traditional high-street lease — service-charge and peak-trading obligations in exchange for consistent footfall — although the report does not specify the salon's lease terms, staffing model or pricing.

Why the high street question matters for the sector

Salon owners across UK city centres have faced the same calculation since the pandemic-era shift in working and shopping patterns: hold a traditional street-front lease with declining passing trade, or relocate to a destination site where footfall is measurable and marketed. Aberdeen's case is sharpened by the energy-sector downturns that have emptied parts of its office stock and reduced weekday trade in the central shopping district.

The Press and Journal report does not name the salon, its owner or the dates of the closure and relocation, and it does not provide revenue or client-volume figures. What it does provide is an owner's direct testimony that the Union Square site — not the Union Street original — is the operation keeping the business in trade.

For Aberdeen's independent hairdressing sector, the testimony adds a data point to a wider pattern: salon survival in the city increasingly depends on where the clients are, not where the salon has historically been. Further owner accounts from Union Street and Union Square operators will show whether that pattern holds across the sector.