Stone-Ideas.com 
For several years now, environmental considerations have played an increasingly important role in purchasing decisions. As a result, marketing and sales strategies are placing greater emphasis on sustainability arguments.
Natural stone is inherently well-positioned in this regard, sustainability is quite literally built into the material itself. Still, it remains essential to have a clear set of “Green Pluses” ready to share with consumers during discussions.
To support this effort, Stone-Ideas.com, in cooperation with the Natural Stone Institute (NSI, USA) and the German Natural Stone Association (DNV), has developed a compact PDF that summarizes these key arguments.
The document is designed to be freely downloaded, shared, and reused, and we actively encourage doing so. Download links can be found below.
At first glance, it may seem unusual for national associations to openly share some of their strongest selling points with potential competitors. Yet in the case of the global natural stone industry, the real competition does not come from other suppliers or associations, but rather from manufacturers of man-made materials such as ceramics and artificial stones.
There’s a nice story about this, and we’d like to tell it here (even if it’s not true, but rather a well-invented one):
When the automobile became popular in the USA, it eventually became clear that the poor condition of the roads was the biggest bottleneck for the growth of the automobile industry, and that the existing roads urgently needed to be upgraded.
But who would pay for it:
* The car manufacturers whose vehicles operated in a region?
* Should tolls be levied on the roads?
Henry Ford is said to have spoken out, stating that road upgrades should be a joint effort by everyone. His reasoning is often quoted: “What is good for the automobile as a whole is also good for the Ford Motor Company.”
That quote never actually existed. We’ll include it anyway because it’s also applicable to the stone industry and its current situation: What helps the image of natural stone helps every supplier and every association everywhere.
The Natural Stone Institute has long pursued this strategy. The German Natural Stone Association was the first association to conduct a study on the ecological footprint of natural stone, had it translated into English, and made it available to everyone.
But there’s a real and valuable quote from Henry Ford that can be included here. It states that convincing customers requires long and hard work: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said: Faster horses.”
