In America everyone wants something new and distinctive, while in the UK what they want is what their neighbours have. It means there is a limited opportunity for stone wholesalers to differentiate themselves with unique ranges of granite, so they have to try to distinguish themselves by providing quality and service. Branded quartz products also help, as well as a range of stones other than granite.

Shekhar Agarwal and his wife Bina of Stone World in Park Royal, London, know about the market in the USA because they started there, moving into the UK during the recession of the early 1990s – and many of those earliest customers still regularly buy from them. “We try to look after our customers,” says Shekhar.

Few people really benefit from a recession but at least they do take some of the slack out of markets. This latest downturn has brought some customers back to Stone World who had started buying directly from abroad and got their fingers burnt with the fall in the value of Sterling. They are now more inclined to let the wholesalers take the currency risk.

In any case, with credit tight, fabricators do not want to tie money up in stock and are happy to buy what they need when they need it from Stone World, who they trust to carry sufficient stock and who they know can deliver promptly using their own fleet of lorries. “We try to accommodate customers desperate for same-day delivery,” says Shekhar, and to do so they have 20,000m2 and nearly 1,000 slabs in stock at any one time.

Competition is putting a downward pressure on prices, yet the UK remains fussy about quality. Stone World aim to get that juggling trick right by having contacts on the ground checking the stone before it is shipped from its country of origin – and, of course, the stone comes from around the world – and by stocking 3m x 1.8m slabs as far as possible so fabricators get as much product from them as possible.

The quartz brand offered by Stone World is from Stone Italiana, Italian pioneers of engineered quartz since 1979, who aim to lead the market with their colours and finishes. Stone World are the official UK distributors of Stone Italiana’s quartz.

Latest from Stone Italiana is the Oro Collection. Oro is Italian for gold and the gold coloured version of the sparkling range gives it its name, although there are also dark brown, black and light grey options. It is available as slab and as 10mm thick tiles in sizes from 300mm square up to 1.2m square. There is also a recycled range called StoneRoc that carries the American Greenguard label for safe interior use.

As well as granite and quartz, Stone World added stocks of marble and limestone and some exotics because customers asked for it. Marble now accounts for 30% of their business.

They also sell tiles, which was how they started in the stone industry, although today tiles only account for about 20% of their business. The internet has reduced the value of tiles to such an extent that they now only carry them as part of their service.

Their website (address below) is part of their story, but not as big a part as Shekhar and Bina think it will be, especially for reaching the end user. “The ideas are hundreds,” says Shekhar. “I feel there’s a lot of potential yet for our website.”

Stone World welcome visits by architects and clients who want to see the wide range of materials available rather than just copying whatever the neighbours choose.