The Woman Behind The Stone | Meet Maryse, Natural Stone Consultant | Stonari
Stonari is a natural stone advisory and sourcing consultancy practice led by Maryse UCHINO the Principal Natural Stone Consultant. Working from Réunion Island — at the convergence of the Indian Ocean’s geological, cultural and trade currents — shapes how this practice sees stone. Not as a commodity to be procured, but as a material with its own logic, its own constraints and its own capacity to define what a finished space becomes. That perspective took fifteen years to build. It is what every engagement draws on.
01 — Understanding the customer
Beauty industry · Sales activation & PR
Where product meets perception.
Early experience with L’Oréal, combining in-store sales activation and brand PR, introduced her to customer behaviour, product positioning and the discipline behind a global brand.
02 — Service before transaction
Wood industry · Procurement
A different understanding of service.
Working in Japan’s wood industry reinforced the importance of discipline, attention to detail and putting the client relationship before the transaction.
03 — From specification to reality
Natural stone industry · Sales & Procurement
Where material decisions meet reality.
Thirteen years working within a stone fabricator in the Caribbean alongside projects involving 5-axis CNC fabrication, gave her a perspective that specifications and samples alone cannot provide: seeing what happens when material decisions meet fabrication, installation, client expectations and real project conditions.
International exposure added another dimension : similar stones and decisions can encounter very different contexts across markets.
04 — From experience to company
Natural stone · From execution to advisory
Moving the thinking upstream.
STONARI began with a simple question: how could more of the thinking that affects natural stone outcomes happen earlier in the decision process?
The idea became a company focused on bringing independent natural stone thinking upstream.
05 — From experience to exchange
Natural stone · Education & professional engagement
Listening to the questions behind the decisions.
Education, professional sessions and STONARI Dialogues created a new source of insight: the questions being asked by architects, designers and other project professionals across different markets.
Those conversations continue to reveal where natural stone decisions create uncertainty and where greater decision confidence is needed.
06 — From knowledge to decision intelligence
Natural stone · Structured decision-making
Turning experience into a structured approach.
Today, those experiences come together in a structured approach to natural stone decision-making.
LOOK → BENCHMARK → DECIDE™
LOOK — What should we consider?
BENCHMARK — What does the evidence tell us?
DECIDE — What is right for this project?
The objective is not simply more information about stone. It is greater confidence in the decisions involving it.
Her practice draws on over end-to-end experience across import-dependent stone markets, spanning design intent validation and feasibility, stone sourcing, international logistics, site coordination and execution oversight. This includes projects across the Caribbean, with contexts such as Saint-Barthélemy, Turks & Caicos and Anguilla, where material selection, logistics and execution conditions mirror those found in other regions facing similar constraints. Those fifteen years built the end-to-end fluency that allows Stonari to speak every language in the stone supply chain: design, technical, logistical, contractual.
For thirteen of those years, Maryse worked closely with projects involving 5-axis CNC stone fabrication. That sustained proximity to advanced processing technology and craftsmanship shaped her understanding of how fabrication capabilities influence material decisions, expand design possibilities and ultimately determine what can be successfully executed on site.
The practice was built on one reflex: identify the point of exposure before it becomes visible to everyone else.
That reflex was formed in logistically fragile environments — where the margin between a good stone decision and a costly one was measured in days, not months. No local correction capacity. No second shipment window. No room for optimism about lead times that did not hold. The first discipline those environments teach is this: name the risk before the project does.
Those conditions do not leave you. They become operational memory — the kind that activates before the question is even formed.
The practice serves ultra-luxury residential projects and boutique hospitality developments, with a deliberate upstream positioning — engaging before stone specifications, contracts and logistics lock projects into irreversible paths. This is the only point in a project where stone expertise can prevent a crisis rather than manage one.
Stonari holds no commercial agreements with suppliers, no supplier pays to be recommended, no inventory to move, no quota to meet. Technical performance, material quality and logistical reliability drive every recommendation. Nothing else does.
Working languages: English and French. Also speaks Japanese and Spanish.
Stonari holds membership in the Natural Stone Institute and serves on its Women in Stone Mentorship Committee — active involvement in the profession that natural stone advisory serves.