When asked if he grew up in Western Mass., Alex Sajkovic, owner of ASN Natural Stone, paused to think about his answer.

“I’m still growing up here,” said the 49-year-old entrepreneur, who did, in fact, spend his childhood in the region, and returned to the area three years ago to bring his successful, San Francisco-based stone-importing company to the East Coast. “I left, I started a life and a business somewhere else, but I always wanted to be bi-coastal. Now I’m back, and I’m learning what it’s like to live here all over again, but I’m also learning what it’s like to do business here.”

In a sprawling warehouse in Chicopee that holds row upon row of massive stone slabs and tiles in an array of colors, Sajkovic runs his hand over the smooth finish of his own stone conference table, and reflects on the path that brought him here. It’s a road that’s had many unexpected turns, and the destination is still off in the distance.

He’s seen some of the finest stone that Italy has to offer just miles from where it was harvested, and stepped cautiously into the world of Portugal’s stone quarries. He’s supplied stone for celebrity homes, sprawling shopping malls, and boutique stores, and he said this industry is one that never fails to surprise him. That includes the present, as he continues to build the East Coast arm of ASN Natural Stone in Western Mass., realizing more each day that the way things are done in California don’t always match the sensibilities of stout New Englanders.

But he said he plans to persevere, bringing the world’s stone to the U.S. and, more specifically, to the Pioneer Valley, one slab at a time.

That’s Amore

It all started with a love for Italian craftsmanship.

Walking out of a store in California in the mid-1980s after searching for some new Italian shoes, Sajkovic spotted an Italian car, a Fiat, that looked a lot like his own. He stopped to check it out, and shortly, the car’s owner returned.

“It turned out the owner was a sales rep for an Italian marble company,” he said, “and I was in between jobs.”

Sajkovic interviewed with the company, GB International, after having a conversation about marble and Italian cars in a parking lot, and soon was “completely immersed in stone,” he said.

“All of a sudden, I was in the stone business. I fell into it by accident. But at the time, there was a ton of money around, and a lot of people were remodeling with stone.”

His first job in the industry was introducing and selling GB’s marble products, most of which were imported from quarries in Italy and Spain, to architects, designers, contractors, kitchen shops, and other entities in Marin County, one of the wealthiest areas of the U.S.

As he continued to test the waters of this burgeoning business sector, Sajkovic later moved on to work with another company in a similar position, and then a third, before a prolonged recession hit California in the early 1990s and he was laid off.

“There’s no school for this kind of industry, but by that time, I had all of these ideas in my head, and one of my clients suggested I try being a broker.”

Essentially, Sajkovic created a new career for himself in the stone business in 1992, contacting various suppliers in the San Francisco area and bringing their bids to designers for jobs in both residential and commercial buildings.

He called his endeavor the Alex Stone Network, or ASN Natural Stone Inc., and began building his client and contract lists in his bedroom. As the business grew, he moved ASN to a shared kitchen showroom, and by 1998, had secured his own showroom.

A Classic Import

By the early years of this decade, ASN was doing well, but there was another shift in the business plan ahead. Sajkovic said that, despite working in many different capacities within the stone industry and meeting with various suppliers from around the globe, he’d never imported stone — but that was about to change.

With just one residential client open to the idea of buying imported stone from him, Sajkovic embarked on a global search for the perfect product. Lacking the Google, E-mail, and Blackberrys of today, he started sending faxes to several stone suppliers, identifying and interviewing a host of companies over the course of six months. He traveled to the number-one stone show in the world, in Verona, Italy, and then flew to Portugal to meet with other potential partners.

He admits he was improvising frequently along the way; without a rental car, he asked a company representative to give him a lift to the quarries and, later, to give him a ride to that representative’s competitor. He recalls being referred to as “that Americano” more than once.

But Sajkovic’s perseverance paid off, and he was able to secure a shipment of Portuguese limestone for his client.

“All of a sudden, I was an importer,” he said. “I started bidding on larger jobs, both commercial and residential. San Francisco has a lot of designers and architects looking for something unique, and I think I earned a good reputation for servicing high-end designers.”

Working on high-priced projects also helped ASN grow because, as Sajkovic explained, such jobs are more recession-proof than others.

“Plus, there’s no better time to remodel than when times are tough, so I was very lucky to plant seeds in the right places,” he said. “In fact, some of the seeds I planted have been wildly successful.”

As ASN continued to mature, Sajkovic and his wife, Rose Garcia, who joined the company in 1995, began selling their various types of imported stone to some notable names. They supplied stone for flooring in two high-profile Four Seasons hotels, in Boston and in Whistler, Colo., and for the massive Galleria shopping mall in Dallas, Texas.

They’ve also supplied stone to a number of private homes, including those of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, actor Robin Williams, and singer Chris Isaak. Billy Joe Armstrong, front man for the band Green Day, had green marble installed in his home — at the time, Sajkovic joked, he and his staff were less excited about the commission and moreso about catching a glimpse of Armstrong’s guitars.

“We’ve done a bit of international work, too,” he said, “plus tons of clients that we’ve never even met. The success definitely gave me some confidence.”

Go East, Young Man

By the mid-2000s, however, life was about to present another fork in the road to Sajkovic — this one leading him to his childhood home in South Hadley. He returned to care for his ailing parents, and while in the region began mulling a new idea for ASN.

“Making the business bi-coastal is something my wife and I had talked about in the past, and I started looking around to see if there were any opportunities in this area,” he said, adding that he wanted to not only bring ASN to another part of the country, but also expand its capabilities.

In California, he said, the company is architecturally focused, supplying specialty stone building materials largely to designers, but on the East Coast, he hoped to be more consumer-based, selling massive stone slabs for a wide variety of uses in both residential and commercial properties.

ASN Natural Stone East (ASN LLC) was launched in 2005 with Sajkovic at the helm; Garcia stayed in California to manage the West Coast division, of which she now owns 51%. The duo split their time on both coasts.

The local business has two locations: the Chicopee warehouse and a design showroom in Northampton intended to give consumers as well as architects and contractors a better idea of their options. Sajkovic has a regional map in his office peppered with tacks, representing key sales areas and potential growth areas. While he originally suspected that Connecticut’s wealthy Fairfield County would provide some positive returns, he said sales have been less concentrated in any one area and more scattered, spanning across the Pioneer Valley into the Berkshires, and both east and west toward Cape Cod, Vermont, and New York.

Still, the initiative hasn’t been without its issues. Sajkovic said that, despite drafting a new business plan and conducting market research to prepare for the move to Massachusetts, he’s still navigating the economic waters of the “frugal, thrifty Yankees.”

“I didn’t know what the business climate was like when I started — but the motto of this state should be ‘prove it to me.’”

Sajkovic said that, while stones such as limestone, granite, and marble have long been used in the high-end homes and commercial properties in the West, they’re still a relatively new material for construction in most areas of the Northeast. In addition, while many West Coast consumers have moved on to prefer stone materials with a natural finish, the high-gloss, polished look is still preferable in the East, and he’s had to tailor his stock somewhat.

“Most people still want polished stone here because, for most, it’s their first time installing stone, and that shiny granite look is what they know,” he said.

There are now plenty of polished slabs in his storeroom, as well as a number of new imports from around the globe, including Peruvian Travertine, pink Italian limestone, red marble from Canada, and green marble from Vermont. But the expense of stone — or rather, Sajkovic said, the perception thereof — is a stumbling block he’s still working to overcome.

“We have all sorts of different stone and different finishes,” he said, holding up an additional array of samples that includes quarried stone from Sicily, Greece, and Egypt. “We’re going into our third year, and I want to bring this company into the black, but I need the support of Western Mass. first.”

School of Hard Rocks

He said the Northampton showroom, which opened in 2006, is just one way he’s using education to draw in clients. He said he’s recognized that when it comes to more expensive materials such as granite for countertops or limestone for floors, explaining the benefits goes a long way, especially here in the Commonwealth.

“As the area’s first stone importer, I’m forced to think outside the box more than I used to,” he said. “We opened the showroom to sell tile, but also to draw people in to view the slabs. We also do a lot of outreach, and we’re launching an educational campaign.

“Many people don’t know that stone is good on floors, it’s sanitary, easy to maintain, and durable,” he offered. “Stone never changes, while wood must be refinished, and laminants need to be replaced. It’s also the greenest building material there is, because it’s not scarce, it doesn’t need to be manufactured, and it’s minimally processed. Essentially, the rock cycle is recycling in its purest form.”

And although ASN’s natural stone has been more difficult to move here than in the West, Sajkovic said he remains optimistic. The slower start has led him to evaluate different materials, such as the high-end ceramic tiles that are more popular in New England.

“If stone had been a 100% win here, I never would have tried ceramic, and who knows where that will lead,” he said.

Judging from the path he’s taken so far, Sajkovic’s next success could come to him anywhere, at any time. Maybe he’ll be standing on a ledge in a deep quarry in Northern Africa, or maybe he’ll be in a local parking lot, on his way to find some new walking shoes.

Jaclyn Stevenson can be reached at

stevenson@businesswest.com