Have you got a minute? Because that is all it will take to understand what Stoneasy is about. Just watch the video at www.stoneasy.com (actually it is one minute and five seconds).

Stoneasy is a separate entity established by Belgian stone wholesaler Beltrami, as you may have discovered at the Natural Stone Show in London at the end of April, where Bram Callewier, the son of Beltrami owner Herwig Callewier, and Liam Lissemore, who will be helping British customers, launched the service into the UK.

The idea is that Beltrami’s vast experience of sourcing stone – both polished slab and paving – from overseas can be accessed by anyone in the trade as long as you buy a container load of stone at a time.

It is all done on the website, although help is available at the end of a ’phone should you need it. You establish an account, choose what you want from the 1,900 (and expanding) range (all priced in pounds) and sit back to allow Stoneasy to take care of the logistics of getting it to you.

That includes sourcing, language barriers, quality control, shipping and transport, customs, exchange rates... all those aspects that eat into management time and can introduce the occasional shock when the stone you expected turns up as something else or a sudden exchange rate hike increases the price.

It might seem strange that a wholesaler such as Beltrami, which has a major outlet in  the UK in Halesowen, should be helping potential customers to import directly. But Bram reasoned that some companies would do it anyway, so why shouldn’t a company with strengths in logistics get involved with supplying a service to make it more successful for others rather than looking at companies importing directly as competition.

Although Stoneasy was launched into the UK at the Stone Show, the service has been rolling out across Europe steadily since 2010, having been launched in Belgium in 2007. The first three years were used to perfect the service and the website that feeds it.

Since then, scaling up from a Belgian-only operation has required an investment of €500,000 ​over three years to reach the point where it is supplying stone sourced from eight countries to companies in seven countries (Poland will soon bring that up to eight as well).

Stoneasy is currently achieving an 89% success rate on delivery times.

Perhaps you think it should be better than 89%, but at least with Stoneasy you can track your order so you know where it is. And if it is going to be delayed you will know at least a month in advance and can make provisions.

When the stone lands in the UK, you can collect it from the port (although Stoneasy will always clear customs) or have it delivered to your door.

In each of the past ​three​ years, the value of stone being bought from Stoneasy has increased by 50%. In France, the increase this year is 150% and it will be even more in the UK because it is starting from practically nothing – although a few companies have already been using the service.

Last year Stoneasy imported 700 containers. That is not up to the Beltrami level of 3,000 containers but it enjoys the benefits in prices and quality that the Beltrami buying power gives it.

Just as when you buy from a wholesaler, the price you pay will depend on the quantity you take, although Stoneasy believes the Beltrami buying power will mean customers taking between one and 30 containers a year will get a better price through Stoneasy than they could achieve on their own​ by going direct. There will also be discounts for early payment, with up to 2% off if you pay at the time you place an order.

And Bram says Stoneasy is not like a shipping company – it will not walk away if there are problems. “Just this morning we had this customer in Paris. He didn’t like the quality of the stone he had received. It was resolved in one hour with replacement stone from Beltrami in Belgium. But these cases are exceptional. It’s really rare. Quality wise we hardly ever have any complaints.”

If any UK customer does have a complaint or a problem, Liam Lissemore will be available 24 hours a day (although he asks you to be kind unless it really is an emergency). Otherwise, the whole transaction can be carried out by internet and you can watch the progress of your order online once it has been shipped. Not that you have to because you will be kept up-to-date with any developments by email or by using an app that is available.

You even have the comfort of knowing the stone you receive is being as ethically sourced as possible because Beltrami is one of the companies signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and TFT, a non profit organisation that helps companies source their products responsibly.

Yet Bram says: “We don’t want to call the product ethical. I don’t believe you can say any stone from India is ethical. The country is so vast and the problems often very complex. There is no point us trying to be more Catholic than the Pope.​ We rather prefer to be true to our customers and partners while emphasising the progress we make, one step at a time."

Beltrami and Stoneasy are doing more than most to try to achieve that. They set​ up ​a project two years ago in co-operation with a Dutch NGO in order to create ​ what are called ‘child labour free zones’. Bram: “We just want to make sure children are going to school, not working in the quarries. We’re not building new schools – they already have schools. We’re trying to revive the infrastructure that’s already there and get them to use it.”