The name and some of the assets of St1 Ltd, which traded as Stonell and went into liquidation on 1 February, have been bought by a new company incorporated on 14 February called Stonell Ltd.
Stonell Ltd is being run by Carlos Zanarotti, who ran the London company of Limestone Gallery (in SW8) that blamed bad debts for going into liquidation in May last year with the loss of 30 jobs.
With the help of his wife and a sleeping partner, Carlos is now back with the well-respected name of Stonell that Tim Rudd of St1 bought in 2004.
Carlos says the impressive Stonell shops are still there, but are not open and he does not believe that is the way to sell stone in the 21st century, when what is required is to be “light and agile”.
Although Carlos would like a showroom in London, he thinks the internet has a far greater role to play in trading now and among the assets he has acquired from St1 are the stonell.com and englishstone.co.uk websites.
The English Stone domain is not currently in use but Carlos quite likes the idea of it.
He also says he would not have been averse to working with Tim Rudd but at the moment “Tim’s wounds are a little bit open still”. He told NSS: “I feel very sorry for him. I have been through that and I know how hard it is.”