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Managers Marcelo Carvalho (left) and Manuel Almeida. They say the success of the business is based on keeping the customers happy.
The market has changed a lot in the 16 years since MgLW first started supplying stone in London. Most noticeably, it has grown enormously, with many more companies processing and installing stone in interiors now than there were in 1992.
One thing that hasn’t changed is MgLW’s reason for existing – it’s because they are needed as much today as they ever were.
Communications might have shrunk the world so it is easier and less daunting to buy from abroad, but there are still a lot of advantages to buying locally, as many masonry companies in London can testify.
MgLW are selling substantially more now from their recently expanded warehouse in SW8 than they were from their original premises in the early years after Joao Moutinho established the business.
But for MgLW it is no longer just a case of buying slab from Italy, Spain or Portugal and selling it on to masons in London. These days the stone has to be sourced directly from the quarries in order to be competitive – and increasingly the quarry the stone is coming from is not in Europe.
Joao spends much of his time abroad, always looking for what is going to come along next so that London remains in the front line of developments in the stone industry.
Joao’s brother, Rogerio, also spends much of his time travelling, securing and maintaining the vital relationships with quarries in South Africa, Turkey, Israel, Angola, Vietnam, China, India and all the other countries in the world that the stone comes from. As Joao says, a wholesaler’s relationship with its suppliers is as important as its relationships with its customers.
MgLW have always been considered friends by their customers and they also want to be friends with their suppliers to ensure they get the best stone and the best service for theri customers.
With Joao and Rogerio spending so much of their time in the essential pursuit of the sources of the materials they sell, customer contact at MgLW these days is with managers Manuel Almeida and Marcelo Carvalho.
Manuel is Portuguese, as are Joao and his brother Rogerio. He has been in the UK for 13 years, 10 of them at MgLW, at first part-time but for the past seven years full-time. Marcelo comes from Brazil. He has a degree in geography (with his studies including geology) and has been in the UK for 10 years, the last three at MgLW.
Manuel told NSS: “Customer satisfaction is our motto – having Joao and Regorio sourcing the best material available and insuring a timed delivery, we are able to sell with confidence, particularly if it is a specially ordered item such as a specific size tile or a different thickness material.”
MgLW have only recently started buying from China because of inconsistencies of supply which they felt could threaten their reputation. But Rogerio told NSS: “I have no choice but to go to China. We did an entrance hall mosaic for a customer. We got quotations from Italy, Turkey and China. From Italy and Turkey the prices ranged from 76,500 to 74,000 (£4,500 to £2,800). The Chinese company said $1,500 (£750). We shipped it by air cargo for £400 and it was still cheaper. And it was perfect.”
An increasing number of masons these days want finished product rather than slabs, and while MgLW say they will never process stone themselves, any more than they will ever own quarries themselves, they can and will get it produced for these masons and are happy to act as intermediaries and consultants.
“If a customer wants 1,000m2 I don’t mind acting as an agent for him,” says Rogerio. “If you have a good supplier behind you, you can do it well. And it benefits you with the supplier. I can take the client to the quarry. There’s this openness now that there wasn’t in the past.”
But that has also led to increased competition in the market and MgLW can now be competing with companies on the Continent that used to supply them, which was why they had to look further afield for sources of stone.
Not that they have abandoned Continental suppliers altogether. As the bathroom market expands there is an increasing demand for marble and MgLW are still buying it from Italy, Spain and Portugal, as well as further afield.
Rogerio says they can compete because they are buying and shipping every week and holding stock in the UK. That helps iron out the fluctuations in price that have become greater and less predictable lately as China buys increasing volumes of marble from Europe, especially the most popular materials such as Statuario and Crema Marfil.
There are also the fluctuations in exchange rates – again, a particular problem lately with the value of Sterling having fallen against most currencies. Even in Europe the pound has fallen 10% against the Euro since September.
At the same time, shipping costs are increasing – up as much as 40% from the Far East in the past year – and outside of Europe suppliers usually demand payment before the material is shipped.
And shipping is only part of the journey. It often spends longer and costs more going from the quarry to the docks than it does on a boat getting to Southampton or Felixstowe. It can easily be two months or more before it can start earning money in the UK.
Add to that the logistics of getting stone moved and it is not difficult to work out why wholesalers are still considered such an important part of the supply chain by the UK stone industry.
And if there are any problems at the end of the journey, they will not be easy to resolve, whereas if a customer does not like a particular slab from MgLW it will be exchanged quickly and without fuss.
Rogerio: “From us, the customer gets the best of all worlds: the best product at a really fair price without any problems. The message I try to put across is that, yes, you can import, but if you add it all up, are you saving anything or just giving yourself more work for no benefit?”
It is clearly a message that a good number of stone companies have taken on board because MgLW’s sales continue to grow year-on-year.
In order to satisfy that growing number of customers, MgLW have to hold an increasing amount of stock – and they have just increased to 700m2 their warehouse space to accommodate it, as well as taking over an extra 350m2 opposite their site as a tile store.
As well as natural stone, MgLW also sell man-made quartz slabs, in their case under the Compac brand. And they have made it available to everyone, not joining in with the common practice of restricting supplies to one mason in each area to restrict competition.
Compac has proved popular, but not at the expense of granite. “Granite isn’t losing ground,” says Rogerio. “Quartz is just complementing the granite. Certain people aren’t able to live with the variations in a natural material. I’m a stone person, but we had to adapt to the way the market was going. People want Compac.”
Other stone substitutes have also been added to the MgLW range. Ecopiedra, for example. This is a man-made walling product designed to look like rustic stone. It comes in three sizes that interlock to make building a wall quick and simple. Rogerio: “A lot of restaurants like to have a feature wall that gives them this mix of chic and rustic.”
Another development just being introduced by MgLW is a ceramic laminate tile with a 5mm natural Portland limestone face.
MgLW are already distributors for Albion Stone’s Portland limestone in London and have changed its perception so that it has become popular for flooring, but believe the lighter weight, thinner, stronger and less expensive product from CamburnStone that was introduced at the Natural Stone Show at ExCeL London this month will, once again, find a ready market. Camburn say other British stone-faced tiles will follow.
But can the stone market hold up in the face of a nervous City and concerns about a general downturn in the economy?
“That’s the million dollar question,” says Rogerio, although he believes that compared with the other major economies of Europe the UK figures still look good. “And we have the Olympics feel-good factor.”
MgLW hope to supply some of the hard landscaping directly associated with the Olympic development as well as some of the stone that will inevitably be used by hotels and restaurants to smarten themselves up for the Olympics.
For now, MgLW are busier than ever with customers reporting full order books. “We have very good indicators for this year,” says Rogerio.
