# Hamish McKay

Hamish McKay is a co-founder of Order Editing, a Shopify app for order editing, checkout and post-purchase upsells, and customer retention.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/hamish-mckay/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamish-mckay
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIuMsyuR5k1SMbaS_2lK5Uw
- Topics: ecommerce, startup
- Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-10-06

## Summary

Explaining Shopify post-purchase and retention problems through Order Editing product examples and founder lessons.

- Best for: Campaigns selling retention or post-purchase tools to Shopify merchants and founders.
- Not for: Consumer lifestyle sponsorships or campaigns needing broad consumer reach and published rates.
- Check first: Confirm audience analytics, media kit, rates, and whether the 10.7% upsell result is typical.

### Takeaways

- A cancellation is usually a problem with an alternative, not a lost customer.
- Post-purchase offers run on a very short clock.
- A text-message test for Bobbi Brown reported a 10.7% post-purchase upsell rate.

## Main ideas

- **The valuable part of a Shopify store is after the buy button**: Hamish McKay says describing an order-editing tool as a single feature undersells it. Clients assumed the product handled self-service order editing and nothing more; correcting that changed how buyers understood the app. The full post-purchase stack — checkout upsells, personalisation and A/B testing, address validation and autocomplete, one-click post-purchase upsells, network offers, and self-service order editing — is where merchant revenue and retention are decided.
- **A cancellation is usually a problem with an alternative, not a lost customer**: Hamish McKay says cancellations should be handled with flows that address the customer's actual reason, not a single screen asking them to stay. Wrong address, changed mind, slow shipping and a missing discount each have a concrete fix that can keep the order alive. Reporting each save lets the merchant see recovered revenue rather than guess at goodwill.
- **Post-purchase offers run on a very short clock**: Hamish McKay says the minutes after payment are the useful window for an upsell. The offer should arrive by text with a deadline, rather than wait for a later email campaign. They see the tactic as repeatable across a client base and tie it to the retail calendar.
- **Teach each feature where clients already talk**: Hamish McKay says product education should reach clients through the channels they already use, rather than sit in a changelog or wait for a public funnel. Their method: one short video per release, sent directly to client Slack channels, so existing customers learn what changed and new buyers arrive better informed. They credit this with improved demo bookings and a clearer picture of what the app does.
- **Profit and ownership come before growth at any cost**: Hamish McKay says running the business profitably and keeping it founder-owned matter more than scaling for its own sake. They were told repeatedly that margin would not matter and to grow at all costs. Positive cash flow, they argue, gives the company freedom to invest in the team and enjoy the work, rather than chase a growth rate.
- **The first paying customer is a distribution channel**: Hamish McKay says early customers who get real results can bring in more customers, especially within founder communities. With no network, it took six months to get a first paying customer, so the first one to talk publicly about the product is worth more than the revenue they bring. McKay credits first investor Dean Leibbrandt with sharing the app with eCommerce Equation, described in the post as Australia's largest community of Shopify founders. Dean and his brother Jaryd, now angel investors, later recorded Facebook ads for the company.

## Work to read

- [Rebuilding the app to turn cancellations into recovered revenue](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hamish-mckay_i-forced-my-co-founder-to-rebuild-our-entire-activity-7506205880124698624-Kpjx)
- [Texting customers after they pay: a 10.7% upsell rate](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hamish-mckay_shopify-activity-7505074902111002624-LD2b)
- [Recording a video for every new feature — and what changed](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hamish-mckay_startups-activity-7507602698398240768-2k1-)
- [The first investor to introduce the app to a Shopify founder community](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hamish-mckay_three-years-ago-dean-leibbrandt-rung-me-activity-7508768756270030849-2x_v)
- [Why the company chose profitability over growth at all costs](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hamish-mckay_i-booked-a-20-bed-mansion-in-thailand-for-activity-7508268911243685888-ZXVy)

## Brand relationships

- **Order Editing** (owned_business)
- **Shopify** (mention)
- **Dean Leibbrandt** (investment)
- **Jaryd Leibbrandt** (investment)
- **eCommerce Equation** (mention)
- **Oz Hair & Beauty** (client)
- **Summer Fridays** (client)
- **Gymshark** (client)
- **Showpo** (client)
- **Ridge** (client)
- **Mous** (client)
- **LSKD** (client)
- **Comfrt** (client)
- **Oh Polly** (client)
- **BabyBoo** (client)
- **Jones Road** (client)
- **The Body Shop** (client)
- **Bobbi Brown** (client)

## Partnerships

Hamish McKay's posts here do not mention a sponsorship offer, media kit, rate card or partnership inquiry route. The brand relationships shown are commercial, not promotional placements: Shopify merchants such as Gymshark, Summer Fridays and Oz Hair & Beauty use Order Editing's features, while Dean Leibbrandt and Jaryd Leibbrandt invested in the business and later recorded Facebook ads for it. There is no published format or operational specification, so buyers would need to scope any creator arrangement directly.

## Alternatives

- Jacques du Plessis: Choose Jacques du Plessis for a retention-and-upsell campaign aimed at improving merchant retention through account relationships rather than checkout mechanics. The posts show du Plessis writing directly about merchant success: a merchant apologising for booking too many strategy calls, du Plessis saying every AMER merchant has a calendar link, and the team being complimented for being more attentive than other apps on the Shopify App Store. Another post places the work in a shared context, naming OSP/Order Editing v5 and an in-person team week in London. For a campaign aiming to raise retention by getting merchants to use the product more, this is the better voice: the posts argue that attentiveness and proactive account management keep merchants, and speak to merchants who already pay. That is a different lever from Hamish McKay's cancellation saves and post-purchase upsell tests.
- Joe Wyatt: Choose Joe Wyatt when the campaign needs post-purchase retention at platform scale rather than a single app's order-editing mechanics. Wyatt's posts describe seven years building AfterShip in North America, running sales, support and success solo, and a product that grew from a shipment tracking API into tracking, EDD, returns and exchanges, warranties and exception handling, used by over 20,000 brands. The second post reads the Adobe holiday forecast and distinguishes a gift buyer, who cares about one delivery date, from an essentials buyer deciding whether to buy again in three months. It argues that an exception or a late delivery without updates loses the replenishment customer. For a campaign about reducing churn after a bad delivery experience, that is a stronger strategic frame than order editing alone: it links retention to delivery visibility, returns and exceptions.
- Stavros Symeonidis: Choose Stavros Symeonidis when the retention problem is operational stock and order accuracy across Shopify, marketplaces and an ERP, not customer-facing upsell or cancellation offers. The two posts examine the buyer decision from the operations side. One describes a wholesaler whose Shopify dashboard looks healthy while about four in five orders never reach Shopify, because phone, rep and invoice orders live in the ERP. It explains how total sales, order count, average order value, sessions and conversion rate are calculated differently, and recommends matching systems on a unique ID. The other describes a Walmart order sitting unacknowledged in Cin7 Core while the same unit remains available to Shopify or Amazon, risking an out-of-stock cancellation, Walmart's 2% cancellation threshold and automatic stock reservation. For a campaign about merchant retention through fewer stockouts, fewer cancelled orders and reliable multichannel selling, this is the better alternative: the retention mechanism is preventing the failure before it reaches the customer.

---
AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/