The Diary Of A Natural Stone Supplier

Being a natural stone paving supplier is quite an interesting job. It takes you to all sorts of places, brings you into contact with many different types of people and drops you into a whole range of different scenarios. Everyones got a camera phone thes days and I am no different to anybody else in that I am constantly snapping away. I though it might be an idea to keep a weekly diary of events at London Stone, so here it is

Week starting 20th May

Monday
The week when Chelsea opens its doors to the world. I didnt have time to go this week, but I encouraged as many of my team as possible to pay a visit. Chelsea is at the forefront and its a goood education for them to see first hand, some of the amazing designs and show gardens

Tuesday
We took delivery of a load of Portland stone blocks. We are atttempting to build up some stock of our indigenous British stones. The blocks weigh approx 7 tons each so are not huge but on the other hand they are regular shapes which will, reduce the amount of wastage. We recieved some monster blocks of Yorkstone last week which weighed about 14 tons each. With blocks, big is best. Less wastage and less downtime changing the blocks over on the saw.

Wednesday
We announced on the LJN forum a few weeks ago about our new trade sample box. I am glad to say its been a real success. In fact we have really struggled with keeping up with demand. We are currently working through a large back log of sample box requests. Here is a picture of our bridge saw chopping up the Yorkstone & Portland stone samples for the boxes

Thursday
Coming from hard landscaping backgrounds, the London Stone team have a genuine conection with the industry and are passionate about its success and development. As part of this commitment we have teamed up with the KLC school of garden design. When the KLC gets a new intake of students, we will go down and talk to them about the use of natural stone in garden design. Yesterday, Rebecca (our West London showroom manager) and I were at the KLC in Hampton Court talking about natural stone paving. We always enjoy these events as we feel its important to put something back into the industry. Its also a real eye opener to meet these young designers. Some of these guys WILL be the stars of the future

Friday
We have been making changes to our West London Showroom. We have extended the size of the display to showcase some of our new sawn paving products and we have also relaid some of our existing natural stone products. The hard landscaping has now been completed and we did all the planting this week. Here is a picture of the ladies from Landart getting the plants laid out

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