The retail park, previously a pet food factory left vacant for 15 years, has undergone a £15 million transformation, set to accommodate a plethora of well-known retail and food outlets.

The high-spec salon is among the first businesses to commence operations in the complex, following a £350,000 investment by Indigo Sun. The new venue, decked with 13 state-of-the-art sunbeds and a high-end beach club design, joins a cluster of salons within a 10-mile radius including Paisley, Linwood and Glasgow. This expansion boosts the company’s presence in Scotland and provides 24 staff positions across the four locations.

Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor, founder and CEO of the family firm, said: “The Barrhead site is perfect for us. It serves a large catchment area, offer extensive parking and the variety of businesses based here ensures that it will be a hugely popular destination built around customer convenience.

“Everything now is about location. We are looking for retail sites in towns that are on main arterial routes, offer free parking and have access to a diverse range of other outlets – Barrhead Retail Park ticks all of the boxes.

“We’re thrilled to be part of this rejuvenation of such an important site for the town. It gives us a really tremendous presence in this part of Scotland and we intend to build on that.”

The Barrhead site also boasts notable tenants including a new Lidl, B&M, Starbucks, Gateway Health, and the first Scottish branch of US food outlet, Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, making it an attractive and vibrant hub for the community.

Indigo Sun, which operates over 100 salons across the UK and employs 950, reported its most profitable year in its latest financial year, with a turnover exceeding £26m and almost £5.6m profit. Fueled by smart investments, Indigo Sun emerged from the pandemic robustly, serving up to 140,000 people a week at peak times.

The strategy for Indigo Sun, headquartered in Stirling, is to focus expansion on towns or population centres of at least 100,000 people. In larger cities, it aims to create clusters of salons for streamlined management.