Lord-Lieutenant of Lancashire Lord Shuttleworth has officially opened ecommerce website provider EKM’s Preston offices, while visiting in respect of the company’s exceptional growth and contribution to the local economy.
Lord Shuttleworth was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Lancashire in 1997 and has served as chairman of the Association of Lord-Lieutenants since 2008. He was a Member of the Council of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1998-2014 and served as Chairman of the Council from January 2006 until December 2014. He was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in the 2011 New Year Honours, in addition to being a Knight of St John (KJStJ). In June 2016 he was appointed by The Queen as a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
Lord Shuttleworth’s visit took place on Tuesday 18th September at EKM’s award-nominated, custom-built, self-financed £3.5 million Fulwood offices opened in 2017, which took four years to design, plan and build.
Features include a giant three-storey slide which runs from the top floor to the dining area, a meeting room inside an original Airstream caravan, state-of-the-art office technology, an expansive kitchen, relaxation area and gym. The 23,500 sq ft facilities provide capacity for over 250 employees to support anticipated growth.
Established in 2002, EKM was the first cloud-based ecommerce platform in the UK. Today it employs over 80 at a single site in Preston and is still the UK’s biggest, having helped set-up over 70,000 online shops worldwide.
Founder and CEO Antony Chesworth said: “It was fantastic to welcome Lord Shuttleworth and show him around our offices. We did a tour, showed him behind the scenes of what goes into making an online shop and spoke to him at length about the importance of the digital economy in Lancashire.
“We were very proud to show him our offices and introduce him to our team. Our view is that a happy workforce means happy customers. Our vision is that everyone should be able to do something they love, and providing a great place to work is all part of making that a reality.”
