Top 10 Entrepreneurs from French-speaking Switzerland: Portrait 4/10 - Sheldon Jacquet, co-founder of SIRADIS
Every 5 seconds, somewhere in Switzerland, someone consumes a product distributed by SIRADIS. Based in Nyon, the company selects entrepreneurial brands in the eat-better, drink-better space, then places them in more than 4,000 points of sale, from Coop to Manor, by way of Globus and Migros.
Distribution is a behind-the-scenes profession, little known to the general public, yet it is an essential pillar of the consumer goods value chain. Behind most of the products you find on a shelf, in a café or a cafeteria, there is a distribution company. The company doesn’t make products: it handles their commercialisation on behalf of the brand owners.
Yet it is on its own name that it has bet everything, and the way it protects that name is what struck us most in the interview. Not the volumes, not the list of retailers, but a number: “We have to turn down around ten brands a week.”
Stepping out of the shadows
The adventure begins at university, among four friends who want to start a business. They start from an observation: in Switzerland, there is a gap between the deep trends of eating and drinking better and the kind of products you actually find on the shelves. So they create a platform to make these products accessible and give a voice to entrepreneurs who do things the right way. The company has grown a lot and will have some 40 employees in 2027, but Sheldon insists it has stayed close to its original intuition: what we eat should be good for our health as well as for the environment.
One big problem remained: the profession itself. Wholesalers and distributors don’t invest in their image, and the public doesn’t even know they exist. So the founders decide to take the opposite approach: take an old-school business and bring it up to date. From day one, they choose to be “ultra vocal,” to go all in on social media and to give themselves an identity of their own, so they would never depend on that of the products they resell.
The launch of their B2C e-commerce in 2019 was a key element in SIRADIS’s success. Although it represents around 10% of the company’s revenue, it is a true laboratory serving its B2B distribution. In a profession used to silence, speaking up is already a strategy.
A catalogue as an identity card
A distributor has no product to show. So SIRADIS made itself known through the ones it chooses. The catalogue first built its reputation, then strengthened it, and that reputation now allows it to decide what gets in.
This catalogue has a distinctive feature: 85% of the brands in it are still run by entrepreneurs, each with a strong story. They have their own universe and their own codes, but speak to the same audience, in a comparable environment. That common ground is what makes its promise: only entrepreneurial, innovative projects in the eat-better, drink-better space.
Online, the selection includes more than 900 products from over a hundred names, from snacks to drinks by way of breakfast, almost all vegetarian and mostly vegan. It already reaches beyond food, with natural skincare and a wellness section, and that is the direction in which it plans to diversify, with the same identity and a rethought approach. The core, for now, remains rooted in food and drinks.
When you don’t make anything, what you choose helps shape who you are.
Ten refusals a week
This principle comes at a price. Every week, around ten brands get a no. The most common reason is simple: the project doesn’t share the company’s values or vision. Next comes a more down-to-earth question: would the product have potential in its distribution network?
Saying yes is just as much of a commitment. Sheldon puts it this way: “We have to do marketing for our brands AND for our own brand.” The investment goes to both, and above all to the latter. The end goal, though, remains very concrete: for the products to achieve the best possible performance.
What you turn down says as much about you as what you put on the shelf.
The holy grail
Sheldon and his team have given a face to a profession that didn’t have one, turned their catalogue into an identity card, and are willing to give up around ten brands every week to keep it clear.
What remains is the ultimate goal, which he states plainly: for a customer to buy a product at Migros and associate it with SIRADIS. He calls it the holy grail. With one product consumed every 5 seconds, the opportunity comes up thousands of times a day.
“We have to turn down around ten brands a week.”
This portrait is part of the series “10 entrepreneurs from French-speaking Switzerland who turned their brand into a weapon,” produced by DARE, a branding and consulting agency based in French-speaking Switzerland.
