Early in my career, I spent time managing international accounts, working with importers and exporters across different countries and time zones. I was dealing with buyers who were making decisions about shipments they’d never physically see until they landed.
I think about that often now, building Shriyam Global.
An architect finalising a spec sheet in London at 6pm their time is reaching out to us in India, where the day’s already wrapped up. A distributor in Dubai is placing an order without ever stepping into a quarry to check it themselves. The stone matters, obviously. But what actually earns their confidence, order after order, has very little to do with the stone itself.
Everything gets written down. Nothing stays verbal.
Across years of managing distribution and supply chains, I learned that a verbal understanding rarely survives the gap between two people who don’t share the same context. It’s the same across borders. What one supplier calls “premium grade” and what a buyer in a different market expects from that term can be two different things entirely. So every specification, every dimension, every finish gets confirmed in writing before we move an inch.
A quiet two days feels like a red flag, even when it isn't.
This is the one that took me longest to learn. A buyer working across an 8-hour time difference can’t call and check in the way a domestic client can. If they don’t hear from you, they assume something’s wrong. I’ve made it a habit, across every business I’ve run, to flag a delay before anyone has to ask about it. Silence is the most expensive thing you can offer an international buyer.
Show them what they can't walk in and see.
A buyer thousands of kilometres away will never inspect our quarry or watch a slab being cut. So we send what we can, a photo of the actual stone before it ships, a video of the consignment being packed. It’s not a nice-to-have. It’s the closest thing we can give them to standing there themselves.
Respond like the order already depends on it.
Because it does. An international buyer has no other way to gauge whether they can rely on you. The speed and clarity of a single reply often tells them more than anything else in the relationship.
None of this is really about stone. It’s about whether someone feels they can trust a process they’ll never physically see. I learned that early in my career, moving shipments across borders. I’m applying the same lesson now, at Shriyam Global, one order at a time.
