In less than two years, Barry Eyre, 40, and his partners have established a solid foundation for their business, SaintJohnStone, in North Kingstown.

There are now 12 employees, up from the original 3. They recently moved to a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in the West Davisville Industrial Park, after outgrowing a 10,000-square-foot building. Sales, which were $500,000 in 2005, are projected to reach about $3 million by year’s end.

The company imports and distributes slabs of polished granite, marble and onyx, plus jade and other semiprecious or exotic stones. Eyre said that SaintJohnStone’s indoor “stone gallery” of 3,000 pieces, some 6 feet by 10 feet and weighing about 900 pounds each, makes it the largest stone yard between Central Connecticut and metropolitan Boston.

Lucy Minturn, left, and Barry Eyre, two of the three partners in SaintJohnStone, stand in the company’s North Kingstown warehouse. Around them are polished stone slabs. The company also makes and sells stone tiles, below.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Bob Breidenbach

“This was an underserved market,” Eyre said of Rhode Island, Southeastern Massachusetts and Eastern Connecticut. Sales to developers and designers of commercial properties and high-end residential units in the region have helped to fuel its rapid growth.

The company also owns a production plant in Shanghai, China, where natural stone tiles of varying sizes used for flooring, wall covering or other decorative purposes are made. They are sold through a network of upscale interior-decorating shops throughout the United States, including at the Boston Design Center and the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.

Selling rocks and minerals was not Eyre’s intention after high school. He started college at the University of Rhode Island in 1984, but received an undergraduate degree from New York University after transferring there. He worked for investment firms and banks on Wall Street for a few years, but then enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a master’s degree from its Wharton School of Business.

After graduation in 1996, he took a job in England. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was working as a derivatives trader for Deutsche Bank in its London office.

“[The events of] 9/11 made me decide to come home. I watched the whole thing happen on the trading floor in London,” said Eyre. His wife, Jody, and son, Maxfield, then 2, were in the United States at the time and couldn’t get home for several days. Their son had been born in England, but the Eyre family had been considering moving back to the states before 9/11, so they could raise him in Rhode Island and Jody Eyre could resume her career as a marriage and family therapist.

Returning in 2002, Eyre began buying properties in Providence and South County, fixing them up, and selling them for profit. While procuring granite and other stone for kitchen and bathroom renovations, he found the selection at smaller, local yards to be limited.

In 2004, sensing a market downturn, Eyre left real estate development and looked into starting a building-materials business. Most materials are sold as commodities, at high volumes and with relatively low prices, but not decorative stone. “It’s more about design and art, and finding things that are aesthetically pleasing,” said Eyre. Supplies are scattered throughout the world, often in lots that must be sorted through to find the best slabs, he said. He learned that the burgeoning Chinese market, another of his investment interests, has a strong stone-processing industry.

A relative introduced him to Erich Heilmann, 36, a Charlestown native and investment banking veteran who was moving to Shanghai with his wife, a Chinese public-relations executive. Eyre and Heilmann formed a partnership and launched their company in January 2005, using Eyre’s middle name, St. John, after their first choice, “Granite Planet” ran into trademark hurdles.

From China, Heilmann oversees the company’s Asian operations, while Eyre runs the headquarters and travels to Europe, South America and other markets to buy stone. They recently brought a third partner into the business, Lucy Minturn, 39, a New York investment banking colleague of Heilmann’s.

At present, stone slabs account for about 80 percent of their sales, “but our goal is not to become the largest slab seller in the country,” Eyre said, since the biggest growth potential is in tile production. With proprietary designs that continue to gain favor, the potential to create private-label tile products for some customers and the expansion of distribution channels, SaintJohnStone hopes that tile sales will outweigh slab sales within the next few years, he said.