Choosing Your Role When You Buy and Sell Stone

Choose your role around the work you will do

Natural stone businesses rarely fit neatly into buying or selling alone. A producer may source a material it does not quarry. A fabricator may buy slabs for a project while supplying finished pieces to other businesses. When creating your MarbleMap account, the useful question is not simply what your company does, but what you intend to do on the platform.

MarbleMap is a commission-free, sealed-bid B2B request-to-offer marketplace for natural stone, operated by Fusapp OÜ. Buyers publish their requirements as requests, suppliers submit offers, and buyers compare the offers received before making a decision. Your role should reflect the side, or sides, of that process you intend to use.

Choose Buyer if you will use MarbleMap only to source stone. Choose Both if you also intend to submit offers against other buyers' requests. Supplier is the option for businesses joining only to supply. Selling stone elsewhere does not, by itself, mean your procurement team needs to choose Both.

For example, a quarry using MarbleMap solely to find complementary materials can approach the platform as a buyer. If that same business also wants to pursue requests from other companies, Both better describes its intended activity. This practical distinction is more useful than choosing a role based on your company name or position in the supply chain.

Understand what changes during company setup

During email registration, you provide your name, work email, company name, and password, then select your role. Your account is created when you verify the code sent to your email, not when you first submit the registration form. You then sign in and complete your company details. Using accurate business information helps keep that process consistent.

The role affects the remaining application steps. With Buyer, you move from company details directly to the application summary, without a stone-category step. With Supplier or Both, you are also asked for the stone categories you work with. Both is therefore more than a profile label: it includes setup information relevant to supplying stone.

The account creation and email verification guide explains the registration sequence. Keep account creation, email verification, and company application status separate in your planning. Verifying an email address does not mean every platform action is available; what you can do also depends on your application status and plan.

Company admission is also distinct from the separate Verified Business / KYB badge. Neither admission nor a supplier profile certifies a particular stone order. Profiles, portfolios, and supplier-provided certificates are information to examine, rather than independent proof of material origin, quality, capacity, or delivery. Your procurement process still needs order-specific confirmation.

Separate account roles from subscription access

Your role describes how you participate. Your plan determines the features and usage entitlements available to you. Selecting Both does not automatically unlock supplier access or every paid tool. Equally, choosing Buyer does not prevent you from considering a paid buyer plan. Treat these as related but separate decisions.

Buyers can start free, and paid Pro and Business plans exist. AI assistance for request titles and descriptions is a Pro feature, not a free tool available to every buyer. Begin with the purchasing workflow you need, then check which plan includes the relevant capabilities rather than expecting the role selection to provide them.

Suppliers operate on subscriptions. An active seller package is required to view marketplace requests and submit offers, including when you use the supplier side of a Both account. Seller packages include offer allowances. Creating a purchasing request and bidding on another company's request are therefore different activities with different access requirements.

For current options, sign in and go to Settings → Subscription → Change plan. The Plans & pricing page separates Buyer, Seller, and Suite plan families. The guide to finding plan prices explains where to look. Review the included features and allowances for the relevant family, rather than relying on a remembered price or assuming Both is itself a subscription package.

Keep purchasing and supplying in their own context

The top menu is the same across account roles, but the content of screens varies by role. For example, buyer and supplier sections on My Dashboard appear accordingly. My Demands contains the requests you create, while My Marketplace Offers gathers the offers you submit as a supplier. This distinction helps a dual-purpose business keep sourcing needs separate from sales opportunities.

One rule remains unchanged: you cannot submit an offer on your own request. Both does not create an exception, and the Make an offer button does not appear on your own request. Do not plan to have your company's sales side bid against a request created by its purchasing side.

Sealed bidding also applies when you have both roles. Suppliers cannot see one another's offers, offer amounts, the number of offers, or who submitted them. Each supplier sees its own offer, while the buyer sees the offers submitted to its request. Having a buyer role does not expose competing offers on another buyer's request. The MarbleMap workflow guide provides the broader process.

Start with a clear purchasing requirement

Once your role is settled, focus on a request suppliers can evaluate. Describe the stone, intended use, finish, dimensions, quantity, delivery needs, and relevant documents. Clear requirements help you understand what each offer includes and where further confirmation is needed.

Web chat is available on the request before an offer: entitled sellers start threads, and buyers reply to existing threads. This is separate from phone and contact details opening after a deal. You do not need to treat that later contact-details rule as a barrier to clarifying technical questions through an existing web conversation.

Before deciding, confirm the specific stone, documents, quantity, shipment, and payment conditions with the supplier. MarbleMap charges no sales commission, but payment does not pass through the platform and there is no escrow. Choose Buyer for sourcing alone or Both for sourcing and supplying, then prepare your first request around the actual needs of your project.