World Stonex (www.worldstonex.com), an Online Portal to Promote the $14 Billion Natural Stone Industry, Announces Alliances with Leading Organizations. New Services will Help Improve Collaboration.

World Stonex today announced that it has entered into agreements with several trade associations, government organizations and trade fair organizers to help improve information sharing, and provide new services to companies in the highly fragmented natural stone industry. Key alliances inlclude United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Italian Trade Commission, All India Granite and Stone Association (AIGSA), Centre for Development of Stones (CDOS), Indian Monuments Manufacturers Association (IMMA), Stonetech China, Xiamen Trade Fair China, Batimat Russia, LITOS Spain and Natural Stone Turkey.

Austin, TX (PRWEB) June 11, 2004 -- The new alliances are going to combine the technological capability and industry expertise of the World Stonex team with the global reach of the alliance partners. The anticipated benefits include accelerated aggregation of industry data, products and supplier information, and easier adoption of the new Internet Portal technology. The announcement was made at the quarterly company board meeting being held June 9-12 in Beijing.

World Stonex will work with its alliances to refine its current offerings and provide new services in the coming months. The new selection of services is intended to address customer pain points such as the need to market globally at a reasonable cost, standardize product data in the industry, bridge the language gap between non English speaking countries such as China and the rest of the trading world, and in particular provide a single platform where buyers come and search for information based on their specific need. The new alliances will help speed up the process of marketing and promoting the Portal globally. The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between buyers and sellers spread around the world producing thousands of varieties of marble, granite, sandstone, limestone, and other natural stones, stone monuments and artifacts, and machinery and tools used in the industry.

Commenting on the alliance Dilip Bagla, Global Managing Director, World Stonex said, "We are delighted to announce these alliances, which will help provide the natural stone industry and its observers with a one-stop shop for products, suppliers, and research. Since the Portal went live in January of this year, our goal has been to stay in the forefront of providing innovative and unique Portal solutions to the industry and we are excited about partnering with these organizations, all of whom are industry leaders."

"The difficulty for a mid size supplier in being able to market their company and products at a reasonable cost, and for a buyer to have easy access to supplier and product data in this industry is becoming of paramount importance," added Dilip Bagla. "As industry leaders in their respective fields, World Stonex and its new alliance partners clearly understand our business and have come up with a plan for offering solutions through the worldstonex.com Portal to help the industry address these issues."

"As the organizers of the biggest Trade fair in the building and construction industry in China, we are pleased about working with World Stonex to offer our clients new and innovative services that will permit unprecedented access to the various sectors of the global stone industry. The fact that the Portal is offering a Chinese version in addition to English is going to be very beneficial in China since the majority of us are still not comfortable with English," added Samuel Miao, Director of the Stonetech China trade fair.

World Stonex and its alliances intend to work together to offer services on the worldstonex.com Portal to address the current pain points faced by buyers and sellers. The vision is to improve collaboration, communication and access to information in a localized fashion.

"The goal of our current solutions and planned future offerings is to enable companies in the natural stone industry to have the right tools, implemented in the right ways, to meet the incredibly complex challenges they face," said Nishant Bagla, World Stonex Operations Director. "This latest announcement is another step in bringing together all the parties with the required industry knowledge and implementation skills."

Buyers are seen to benefit from functionality such as access to supplier and product information in a standardized manner with powerful search capability. Request tools that allow a buyer to request information and quotes from multiple sellers, are going to cut the time that it currently takes using traditional communication methods such as fax, mail and phone. Sellers shall derive benefits from existing and planned features such as storefronts in multiple languages such as English and Chinese, access to a global buyer base, and savings in the marketing and publicity costs.

"In light of the array of demanding issues currently facing companies in our industry, our customers need the best professional advice and the right tools to connect to buyers globally," said Vinay Poddar, immediate Past President of All India Granite and Stone Association and an Advising Director at World Stonex. "With the combined experience of World Stonex and our new alliance partners in the natural stone, building and construction industries, we are in a unique position to respond to those needs. Today's announcement builds upon World Stonex's growing portfolio of services with specialized solutions that are designed to enable our customers to realize further success."

About World Stonex
World Stonex is devoted to excellence in providing services to help buyers connect with sellers in the global stone trade. We are focused on providing technology solutions that deliver business benefits in terms of improved information access, better collaboration tools, and cheaper marketing methods. The World Stonex platform and its offerings are unique to the Stone Industry. World Stonex provides a platform to find marble, granite, sandstone, limestone, slate and other natural stones from leading suppliers in one location. Product catalogs of monuments & artifacts, stone processing and quarrying machines, diamond tools & spares are also displayed. Buyers can also view detailed supplier profiles and seller sites that are designed and maintained on the Portal. The goal of the Portal is to make the stone trade simpler and create new exposure in the world stone markets. World Stonex operates a Portal in English and Chinese and provides full range of translation services to its customers.

For more information, please visit World Stonex's Web site at www.worldstonex.com