# Michael Callachan

Michael Callachan publishes Beyond the Basket, a free UK ecommerce newsletter that reports on retail and marketplace news and explains what it could mean for online sellers.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/michael-callachan/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcallachan
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, ecommerce, supply-chain
- Based on 14 dated posts, latest 2026-10-08

## Summary

Michael Callachan is most useful for UK ecommerce news and practical implications for online sellers.

- Best for: A UK ecommerce software company co-marketing listing or ad tools to marketplace sellers.
- Not for: A direct-to-consumer brand wanting a creator to show a physical product and drive purchases.
- Check first: Confirm newsletter subscriber count, UK share, open and click rates, and commercial terms.

### Takeaways

- Google can rewrite your Shopping ad title and drop your brand.
- M&S uses Zalando's Zeos after a Poland pilot cut logistics costs 50%.
- The Q3 UK Ecommerce Pulse Report draws on 26 newsletter issues.

## Main ideas

- **A company's job listings say what it will do next**: Michael Callachan argues that hiring posts are among the earliest public signals of a company's direction because a role describes capabilities the business does not yet have. The method is to read the job specification as a list of missing pieces, then test it against what the company already owns.
- **Growth can hide where the margin is leaking**: Michael Callachan's recurring test for a company announcement is whether the numbers underneath the headline hold together. Strong revenue growth alongside falling profit points to a structural cost problem rather than a demand problem. The fix may be to rent infrastructure someone else has already built instead of building it market by market.
- **A platform change matters only once you know what to check**: Michael Callachan reports rule and feature changes across commerce platforms, then names the specific report, setting or listing detail a seller should inspect. The focus is the operational consequence, including cases where a platform metric improves without benefiting the seller.
- **Agent-run ad campaigns are becoming standard, not experimental**: Rather than treating each ad-platform launch as a novelty, Michael Callachan places it in a pattern across the major platforms. The practical emphasis is on the controls a seller keeps when AI tools run campaigns: who approves, which account access runs through, and whether anything goes live without a human.
- **Personalisation is where online card and gift demand is going**: Michael Callachan reads an individual company's results for a wider signal about where demand sits, then turns it into a small, testable move rather than a strategy statement. The test is deliberately cheap: one bestseller, one variant, compare the two.
- **Refund fraud has moved from fringe to normal**: Michael Callachan treats shopper behaviour as an operational risk, using research figures to show how widespread a problem is and how rarely it is caught. The argument is about scale and normalisation, and flags AI as a tool that makes fraudulent claims harder to detect.
- **Coverage should end in something a seller can do**: Michael Callachan's newsletter pairs each news item with an implication or an action. The quarterly report extends that into a structured briefing built from the newsletter's own back catalogue and reader polls. A distinctive part of the method is grading the previous quarter's calls in public rather than only presenting new ones.

## Work to read

- [Google can rewrite your Shopping ad title—and drop your brand](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcallachan_in-todays-issue-of-my-uk-ecommerce-newsletter-activity-7500496815423651840-AIWg)
- [The Q3 UK Ecommerce Pulse Report draws on 26 newsletter issues](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcallachan_the-q3-uk-ecommerce-pulse-report-from-beyond-activity-7511420106057371649-ABZG)
- [M&S uses Zalando's Zeos after a Poland pilot cut logistics costs 50%](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcallachan_ms-is-hitching-a-ride-with-zalandos-zeos-activity-7499058958242897920-By1l)
- [Reading JD.com's Joybuy job listing as a grocery strategy signal](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcallachan_jdcoms-joybuy-is-hiring-for-fresh-produce-activity-7500873982359937024-n_1T)
- [Card Factory's online revenue falls as Funky Pigeon points to personalisation](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcallachan_interesting-data-out-this-past-week-that-activity-7511741773359194112-W5jv)
- [UK refund fraud: 37% admit or plan it, and 98% get away with it](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcallachan_brits-are-europes-worst-refund-abusers-activity-7508140189001662464-EkNm)
- [X launches an Ads MCP server for agent-run campaigns](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelcallachan_etsys-new-ad-features-ms-zalando-expansion-activity-7499097140955193344-DT8F)

## Brand relationships

- **Beyond the Basket** (owned_business)

## Partnerships

Michael Callachan's posts show them publishing Beyond the Basket, a free UK ecommerce newsletter issued twice a week, but document no sponsorship or partnership offer. None of the seven posts sets out advertiser formats, rates, editorial rules for sponsored placement or a way to make a partnership enquiry, so marketers should ask what a partner could buy and how to start a conversation. The posts show the shape of the asset a partner would attach to. Issues follow a steady structure: one main story with context and an implication for sellers, then four or five short secondary items, with the sign-up link in the comments rather than the post body. Several main stories close with a practical action, such as testing a personalised version of one bestseller against the standard listing for Q4. Coverage concentrates on UK marketplace, retail and advertising-platform developments — Google Shopping title rewrites, Amazon listing-image checks, X's Ads MCP server, Etsy ad-group tests — and offers decision input for online sellers rather than general retail news.

## Alternatives

- Laurie Kacinski: Choose Laurie Kacinski when the co-marketing campaign is about protecting a catalogue rather than writing better listings. The two posts set out a control-first framework for brands selling on Amazon, Walmart and other marketplaces: unauthorized sellers, pricing violations, Buy Box loss, inventory diversion and listing changes. Worked examples include a health and wellness brand that arrived with 3,395 unauthorized sellers and a household goods brand whose third-party offers averaged 41% below its own everyday price. The second post argues that Amazon's new multichannel selling tools, which connect eBay, Shopify, TikTok Shop and Walmart accounts, make those problems spread faster across channels. For a partner whose product detects resellers, tracks price erosion or monitors listing edits, this is the closest match to its subject matter, backed by numbers brands recognise from their own dashboards.
- Hassan Raza: Choose Hassan Raza when the co-marketing campaign should target TikTok Shop rather than the Amazon and Google Shopping workflow. Both posts document hands-on shop operation across European markets. One describes building personal TikTok Shop stores from zero, testing products, working with affiliates and creators, then repeating the process for client brands. The other reports a client store's country-level performance over one month, with Germany strongest by orders, followed by Spain, France and Italy, and argues that each market needs separate product, pricing, content and affiliate decisions. A partner selling TikTok Shop tooling, affiliate management or multi-market shop operations gets a practitioner describing exactly the workflow the tool sits inside, plus a concrete reason why a single-market approach fails.
- Vincenzo Toscano: Choose Vincenzo Toscano when the campaign is specifically about Amazon advertising and the buyer wants event-stage credibility alongside written output. The posts place them on the programme of Amazon's EU seller events. One recaps hosting a packed Amazon EU Accelerate meetup in London, with the Q4 message to use AMC and DSP to see who is buying rather than who is clicking, build audiences before peak so CPC spikes do not eat margin, and retarget into January. The other reports being a main keynote speaker at the first Amazon Ads EU Business Accelerator and having their agency sponsor the event, covering European and US expansion, AI in advertising and operations, and fulfilment changes such as FBA Select and AWD. For a co-marketing push that needs a speaker, a live event tie-in or an agency-side endorsement of Amazon Ads tooling, this is a stronger route than a written newsletter placement.

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