A HAMPSHIRE firm which helps businesses set up online stores was picked to represent Britain at a major trade show in the US.

Kong, based in Chandler’s Ford, was selected by the UK Trade & Investment department (UKTI) to be a UK Tech Ambassador, representing the best of British creativity and innovation, at the recent South by South West (SXSW) conference and trade show in Texas.

The firm empowers anyone to sell online for free.

Neil Crookes, tech director at Kong, said “Being selected as a UK Tech Ambassador is a huge honour and recognition of what a great platform we have built. We hope this opportunity helps to spread awareness of our new platform, so we can support more British businesses and the UK economy.”

Kong’s freemium service is made possible by selling advanced themes/designs and features for when a business grows to need them. In time these will include the facility to make the website multi-lingual and give prices and take payments in foreign currencies.

Since launching in August 2015 and more than 4,300 businesses from over 100 countries have signed up with Kong and around 250 have set up stores on the Kong platform.

“It’s about opening up e commerce to small and medium bricks and mortar businesses which have been unable to exploit it in the past because they have found it too expensive or too complicated,” explained Neil, 36, who spent eight years as head of development with digital marketing agency Five by Five.

The firm’s start up has been funded by Parcel Monkey.