How to Import Marble from Turkey: A Step-by-Step Buyer's Guide

Importing marble from Turkey raises the same questions for every first-time buyer: how do you find the right supplier, how do you make offers genuinely comparable, who pays the freight and who clears customs? The good news is that the process breaks down into clear steps once you take them in the right order. This guide walks the road from defining your need to recording the order.

Step 1: Define your need as a demand

MarbleMap is a commission-free request-for-quotation marketplace that brings natural stone buyers and suppliers together: the buyer publishes a need as a demand, suppliers submit offers against it, and the buyer compares what comes in and decides. Before you start, you register your company, verify your email and submit an application; every company is reviewed before it is granted access. That review is why suppliers see your requests as demands from vetted buyers.

The demand wizard guides you step by step: title and description, category, delivery, pricing currency and an offer deadline. The delivery step asks for a delivery country and a delivery point at city or port level, because hauling the same stone to a different port produces a different cost — this detail lets suppliers price freight by calculation instead of guesswork. If you build your demand as an itemised product list, each product line can also carry optional export information: an HS code, the origin and a brand. The HS code is the classification number your product receives at customs; entering it lets the supplier work out duty and shipping against the correct tariff line. Origin is where the stone was produced or extracted, and in natural stone it is usually written together with the quarry region. None of these fields is mandatory, but filling them in makes the offers you receive both more reliable and easier to compare. The HS code and origin article covers the details.

Step 2: Collect sealed bids

MarbleMap runs on a sealed-bid principle: suppliers never see one another's offers, nor how many offers arrived or who sent them. Each supplier sees only its own bid, while you see every offer submitted to your demand. That structure encourages pricing based on real cost and capacity rather than on a rival's number. The supplier side works on subscription packages with a weekly offer allowance, so every bid on your demand comes from a supplier who chose to spend part of that allowance on your business. Starting as a buyer is free; when you need the advanced fields, the paid Pro and Business plans are laid out on the pricing page .

Step 3: Read the Incoterm, not just the price

An Incoterm is the delivery term of international trade: it sets where responsibility for shipping, insurance and customs passes from seller to buyer. The four most common terms read roughly like this: under FOB the seller delivers and loads the goods onto the ship, and everything from there on is yours; under CIF the seller also pays freight and insurance; under EXW you collect the goods from the seller's premises and all shipping and customs fall to you; under DDP the seller delivers to your door with duty paid. The same figure means an entirely different total cost under a different Incoterm, so when you assess offers, look not only at the amount but at which delivery term that amount covers.

In the demand wizard's options step, the accepted Incoterms field lets you signal which delivery terms you accept; it hints suppliers rather than binding their offers, and it unlocks on the Pro plan — on the free package it appears locked. The supplier, in turn, picks a single Incoterm in the offer, and on general requests that term shows up as its own row in the comparison table next to the total and the lead time. The Incoterm article shows where the term appears across the platform.

Step 4: Who handles shipping and customs?

A frequent question deserves a straight answer: MarbleMap does not move freight or clear customs — it is not a carrier, a forwarder or a customs broker. Shipment, clearance, insurance and invoicing belong to the commercial relationship between buyer and supplier, and payment does not pass through the platform either; it is settled directly between you. What the platform does is make clear from the outset who carries each responsibility: because the delivery point, the export information and the Incoterm are stated on your demand, you know which quote includes transport and clearance before you decide. Anything still open, you can ask the supplier directly in the demand's bilingual messaging. The shipping and customs article draws the full boundary.

Step 5: Compare, decide and record the order

Offers line up side by side on the demand screen, made comparable on one shared EUR basis and on the delivery term each of them covers. You shortlist the strong ones, ask for a revision where needed and reject what does not fit. When you have decided, accepting an offer concludes the demand; splitting the lines across several suppliers is possible too. Once the order exists, the supplier confirms it or proposes a change, and everything moves forward on a single record both sides can follow. Your import from Turkey becomes a traceable file rather than a negotiation scattered across email threads.

Open your first demand today

If you are planning to buy marble from Turkey, the first step is neither a contract nor a payment — it is writing your need down clearly. Create a free buyer account at marblemap.co, publish your demand and let sealed, comparable offers come to you. If you supply Turkish natural stone, the same address takes you to a marketplace where you can place sealed bids on demands from vetted buyers.