Natural stone or ceramics? Not just a matter of marketing…

It’s a popular opinion that the biggest obstacle to override for architectural and interior design products made of natural stone is the competition of ceramics, providing alternative solutions.

Stone companies are sharing views in order to find the best way to face the new challenges coming from this competition, and one of the most accurate webzines on the stone sector, stone-ideas.com, has recently started a blog to provide companies with the possibility to discuss the theme. A very important point to ponder about is the popularity of stone itself; in particular, we wonder how much stone companies have to focus, in their marketing strategies, on the added value of design and branding , instead of working on the very identity of this natural material.

As we come from our recent experience at the Euroluce 2013 fair, fully convinced that natural stone itself is the basis of the great beauty of our products, we have joined this fascinating discussion with a message we would like to share also in this space of ours, with the usual passion that we, real stone lovers, always have towards our amazing material.

We took part in Euroluce presenting our brand new collection, Pietre Luminose, a line of three-dimensional backlit modular marble claddings, and I can say it was a real success. Apart from the huge attendance to our booth and the thousands of contacts we collected, much more than any other event we took part in, the greatest and most fulfilling aspect was that of perceiving, day after day, how much amazement and interest a high-level stone design product like ours can stir in an audience which was much broader than the one you would normally meet during the stone sector fairs. Such a material, natural stone, which anyone has seen, touched and stepped on thousands of times, is not expected to be so fascinating and intriguing as it can be when you propose something new like our ‘Le Pietre Luminose’ collection; people is starting to think about marble as a key player in their daily environment, no longer for bare utility or ostentation purposes. A true culture of stone as a natural element closely related to human history passes also through these consciousness raisings.

Taking part to Euroluce was not only a marketing and communication strategy to us, and not only a sales opportunity, either; it meant to us a further, important confirmation of the excellence of the work we have been doing and the path we have undertaken in stone design: a path along which stone, design and constant research are inextricably linked.

Follow the discussion on www.stone-ideas.com