MarbleCleaning.org

Marblecleaning.org is a consultation service offered to end-users of stone, or end-users-to-be of stone. What this service consists of is addressing questions, problems and gripes coming directly from the consumers and consumers-to-be of stone. The answers and advice dispensed comes from a panel of the utmost recognized stone experts at an international level and can be considered unbiased due to the fact that none of the experts is involved in quarrying, selling, fabricating or installing stone; they are all involved in its maintenance requirements. The organized gathering of all these questions, problems and gripes, will constitute the most logical input and credible database possible from which to elaborate and propose standards and guidelines to be submitted and hopefully approved and implemented by the current stone industry establishment along with the ISC itself. In order to give some needed muscle to the reality of the problems and the consequent elaboration of their solutions in the form of proposed standards and guidelines, marblecleaning.org aims at becoming the advocacy group of the end-users and end-users-to-be of natural stone products and consequently to represent them within the current stone industry establishment in a way that their voice can be heard.

It is a fact that the only real cause of the all too many problems plaguing the natural stone industry stems from the widespread specific ignorance about stone and its requirements displayed by the vast majority of the industry operators. The only requirement to become a distributor, or fabricator, or installer, or restoration contractor of what’s possibly the most complex natural product on earth is to be alive. It is also a fact, that no real stone education is available to the stone operators that would like to get educated. No official training and certifications are mandatory (or even offered, for that matter), as well as comprehensive courses on true stone education spanning from its specification, its installation and its maintenance. The latter phase, maintenance, is in fact the most important of them all, but gets into the picture only after the cutting of the ribbon when, in all too many instances, difficult or even unsolvable problems have been already created. The scarce and insufficient standards are mere toothless recommendations.

Keeping this in mind, it is apparent that marblecleaning.org is the entity presenting the problems to the industry.

ITCS - International Training Centers for Stone

The ISC doesn’t want to be exclusively the bearer of bad news, however; it is much better offering solutions also, rather than problems only. Hence the ITCS, which is an actual school that’s currently offering comprehensive three-day classes on stone restoration and maintenance in two countries (USA and Australia). The offering will be soon expanded to stone fabrication and concrete treatments, as well as to a series of one-day educational seminars about stone specification and maintenance catering to specifiers and stone industry operators at every level. A separate set of one-day seminars will be also produced to cater more specifically to the cleaning industry. Two levels of certification will also be elaborated and offered to the all contractors who have attended or will attend one of the ITCS hands-on professional courses. The ITCS will also produce books, manuals and educational literature on all subjects regarding natural stone, which will be published by the ISC alone or in conjunction with other interested parties.

As for the specific functions of the ISC – besides coordinating the activities of its two operative branches above, and publishing the books and educational material produced by the ITCS, as well as being their public relation means – it will also publish a magazine, Stone Advisory Magazine (SAM), which will be designed to be an interactive medium between the ISC and all interested industry operators who want to participate to it.

While the ISC is in fact and formally a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, DC, it doesn’t mean that it will not need revenues for its support and promotion. Some of the revenues will come from the sale of the books and other publications, some from consultation services that some of its founding members constituting the panel of experts will be offering, some from the part of the fees that will be charged for the hands-on courses and one-day seminars, some from part of the fees that will be charged for mineralogy tests on different stones in order to properly classify them, some from the sale of advertising space in the magazine, and some from annual membership fees. Actually, to have the whole structure started, the seed money will be represented mainly by the membership fees.

Of course, as an immediate reaction to the solicitation of membership money, the prospective members will want to know how belonging to the ISC will benefit them.