EKM: the ecommerce software company on Caxton Road, Preston

The one business entry in this directory that people search for by name, and a reminder that Preston has a tech sector.

EKM is an ecommerce software company based in Preston, on Caxton Road. It is the most searched business entry in this directory, which is unusual: business directory entries normally attract almost no search of their own.

That it does is worth noting for what it says about the city. Preston's economy is usually described in terms of retail, the university and public administration, and a locally-headquartered software company with national reach does not fit that description. The invest section covers the wider economic picture.

This entry records the company and its location only. It makes no claim about the business, its products or its current status.

Where Preston's business floorspace is

Preston's commercial geography has two distinct parts and they behave differently. Professional and civic occupiers are in the centre, in the Georgian and Victorian stock around Winckley Square and along the main streets. Everything needing modern floorplates — technology, logistics, manufacturing — is on the estates east and west of the built-up area, where the sites are large and the road access is direct.

That second group is the one that has grown. The eastern estates in particular sit close to the motorway and to the ground the regeneration programme is working on, which is why they appear in the invest sheets, not in the visitor ones.

Why a software company here at all

The university is the short answer. UCLan sits immediately north of the city centre and produces a graduate supply that a city of this size would not otherwise have, and Preston's costs are a fraction of Manchester's an hour down the M61. That combination is the argument the Preston Partnership makes to inward investors, and a company like this is the evidence for it.

For the schemes changing the commercial centre itself, the key projects index is the place to look.

What is nearby

The eastern estates sit close to the motorway and to the Ribble corridor, which means the industrial geography and the city's best landscape are within a mile of each other. The corridor carries six nature reserves and the eastern arc of the Guild Wheel.

Towards the centre the same side of the city carries Deepdale and the north-eastern retail parks, and beyond them the university campus running into the commercial streets.