Wholesale-to-retail spreads are narrowing on natural stones

As wholesale natural prices firm at smaller sizes, the gap between wholesale cost and typical retail asking price has narrowed from where it sat during the two-year slide.

• During the period of falling natural prices, retail asking prices adjusted more slowly than wholesale, which widened margins for sellers holding older stock.
• With natural prices turning up from the small end, that gap is closing as wholesale cost catches up to, and in some cases overtakes, retail prices set before the turn.
• Sellers still pricing off stock bought during the slide are the most exposed, and some are re-pricing older inventory upward to protect margin.

For buyers, this means older retail listings advertised as discounted may no longer represent as large a saving against current wholesale cost as they did earlier in the year. Comparing an asking price against current market, not last year's, is worth doing before treating a listing as a bargain — our trade desk can give a same-day read on where a specification sits.