Daughter’s TikTok post saves dad’s 30-year-old London shoe shop

London: A single TikTok video turned things around for a struggling East London shoe shop — and now there are lines stretching out the door.

For over 30 years, Rachid Lazraq has run Rich Collection Italia on Hackney Road in Shoreditch. But with the rise of online shopping and an aging customer base, the vintage Italian shoe store was struggling.

That changed when his 25-year-old daughter, London journalist Ms. Lazraq, saw a French influencer call the shop a “hidden gem.”She decided to post about it herself. On July 7, she shared a video featuring her dad’s Y2K kitten heels. It got 300,000 views overnight. Within days, there were two-hour-long lines outside the store.“

My dad has been running this shop since before I was born, so we were all sad to see it suffering,” she said. “He usually had older, regular clients, but they’d been petering out over the years. Now he has a whole new set of clientele, with streams of young people coming to the shop every day.”

The family first noticed the shift when Rachid messaged the group chat about “some young French girls” coming into the shop — something unusual. That’s when they realized the influencer’s video was driving traffic.

“By highlighting the shoes that would appeal to people my age, we had lines out of the shop in no time,” Ms. Lazraq said. The turnaround peaked when Mr. Lazraq tore down his ‘Closing Sale’ sign to applause from customers. The shop is so small they now have to limit how many people can go in at once.

At retirement age, Rachid hopes to eventually “go out with a bang” and move back to his hometown. For now, the family is considering taking the shop online to reach the new, younger customer base.

“It’s so small inside, we have to limit the amount of customers in the shop at any given time, but that doesn’t seem to deter people!” Ms. Lazraq added.