Jon Goldsmith struck upon gold when he discovered an abandoned jewellery warehouse in west London. Now Tiktok’s changed the game again, writes Anna Moloney
“We had an Instagram… every now and again my wife did a bit, I did a bit” are not exactly the words of a social media mastermind. Yet Jon Goldsmith, the owner of West London jewellery wholesaler Accessories of Old, is now counting Tiktok – along with a 90s fashion comeback – amongst his lucky stars after a viral video catapulted his business into exploding success this year. “It has completely changed my whole outlook for the rest of my life,” he told me.
The business in question, Accessories of Old, sells vintage costume jewellery, mostly dating from the 80s and 90s, from its overflowing warehouse in Parsons Green – formerly an in-the-know spot for vintage jewellery traders and film set dressers, now a pilgrimage site for the East London fashion set. “They all come down trooping. Even from Broadway, half a mile away, I see them coming. They all have these huge long eyelashes and headphones on, all looking very individually dressed, they think.”
I knew it well. Just weeks before I’d been among the think-they’re-so-unique troop myself, after suggesting to my friend we go make charm necklaces at this “amazing jewellery warehouse I’d seen on Instagra—” no need to explain, she cut in, the algorithm had served it to her too. And indeed almost every other 20-something, female, London-dwelling friend I told about it already knew exactly what it was. And off we went to find the promised treasure trove, with the warehouse home to over 10m pieces of vintage, gold-plated jewellery, many glittering with original Swarovski crystals.
Finding Tiktok fame
“Last year, a customer was so excited by our stock that she posted a video on Tiktok which went viral and we got a huge amount of interest. Since then, numerous other customers have posted videos about us on and we have now, in the last nine months, had nearly 9m plays from these videos on Tiktok and Instagram,” Goldsmith says.
Accessories of Old itself hasn’t paid for any influencer content to boost its profile; in fact, the reverse is true, with many influencers visiting the depot to purchase their own bangles in the hope of boosting their online profile with a video, though they might get a free bit of jewellery and a “nod and a wink” to make a post at checkout, Goldsmith says.
Thanks to the online buzz, the business’s model has completely flipped: with retail going from representing five per cent of the business, thanks to a few “drift-by” weekend customers, to nearly 70 per cent, with the depot now open seven days a week to the public. With over 10m pieces in his inventory, Goldsmith is confident he is set for life, telling me he’s probably only about five or six per cent through the stock.
The jewellery’s not only cheap but en vogue due to the 80s/90s fashion revival – and, thanks to the return of layering, one necklace sale has now been turned into two or three, Goldsmith tells me. Quite the turnaround: when he first bought his sparkling empire, all the pieces were deemed rather unfashionable.
Between the business’s two Parsons Green sites, it can now often expect up to 300 customers a day on weekends, with all spending roughly the same amount (around £20-£30), Goldsmith says. The in-person visits have also been a boon to the wider area, with Goldsmith saying he had recently been thanked by another person on site for having revived the industrial depot with the trade he was drawing in, not to mention the fact it was now full of “gorgeous girls”. The business doesn’t sell online – “too much work and too boring” – and it doesn’t need to, with visiting the Aladdin’s cave part of the whole appeal.
Striking gold
And indeed, the history of the jewellery itself has been one of treasure-finding. Before the Parsons Green depot, Goldsmith was already in the vintage jewellery trade thanks to his wife Lisa, whose grandfather had found his fortune trading jewellery in Johannesburg. The business boomed, was passed onto Lisa’s father, before closing in the 1990s, when high street stores started importing from China instead and the stock, passed down to Lisa, had become more of a burden than a boon. By 2014, however, the stock had aged enough to become ‘vintage’ and fashionable, and the couple began operating a trade business out of a showroom in Parsons Green, filled by bi-yearly trips to Johannesburg to get more stock.
Accessories of Old now operates from two sites in Parsons Green
That was before Goldsmith was taken on a mystery trip by a jewellery designer client during the pandemic. “She had this secret.” She took him to a warehouse near Richmond and opened the doors to present 10m pieces of pristine vintage jewellery, which – in a parallel fate to its Johannesburg counterpart – had been left untouched for decades.
“I made an offer, and they very, very politely said, ‘I don’t think you understand the value of this stock’,” Goldsmith tells me, admitting in retrospect that the offer was “ridiculously low”. “How do you make an offer for 10m items of high quality gold-plated Swarovski crystal? Even if it was a pound an item, it doesn’t bear thinking about.” He had moved on, but four months later was sent a revised offer from the owner – who wanted an “easy life” but had also been charmed by Goldsmith’s South African tale. With the help of some trade customers, promised significant discounts in exchange, the treasure was his.
Millions of pieces of jewellery and now, thanks to Tiktok, millions of eyeballs to peruse them. “There’s always a great bit of luck,” Goldsmith remarks.