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Welcome on your new side.fr !
The company
SIDE is an SME created in 1980 by a French-Turkish couple. Now based in Sucy-en-Brie (94), it is a BtoB book distributor specialising in Import-Export.
We import foreign language books (UK, USA, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Russia) and sell them to bookshops, schools and companies in metropolitan France and its overseas departments.
We export every French book from every French publisher to around one hundred countries across 5 continents. SIDE is the primary independent exporter of French publications.
This international aspect is embedded in the company’s name chosen by its founders.
Indeed, SIDE (Société Internationale de Diffusion et d'Edition) is not only an acronym that describes the activity of our company, it is also the name of an ancient city on the southern coast of Turkey that remains a tourist destination of choice.
Aerial view of the city of Side
Side's offices in Sucy-en-Brie
In 2009, SIDE was sold by its founders to Frédéric Guyomard, its current Managing Director.
His guiding principle to strengthen SIDE is developing its core business as an importer-exporter of BtoB books, bolstered by specialised teams and a constant dedication to improving customer service for our customers.
SIDE’s main activity was comprised of its exclusive distributorship with Oxford University Press until 2010 when the company developed its expertise in foreign language literature, a field in which it has become the main distributor in France in just a few years.
In 2016, SIDE rescued from bankruptcy Attica, distributor and bookseller well known by teachers and schools across France.
In 2019, Horizon Education, the main independent exporter of French books just ahead of SIDE, decided to shed its book export business. SIDE took it over to allow continuity of service for Horizon customers.
Our teams
The majority of our teams work at our offices and warehouse in Sucy-en-Brie.
Some of our employees, however, prefer to live elsewhere. There is one in the South of France, another in Lyon, another in Brittany and a fourth one in Haute-Saône. This organization allows us collectively a greater proximity with all our customers in metropolitan France.
Our customer service department is comprised of a dozen people, managed by Ali Dahmane. The import and export divisions are led by Erick Renaud and Thomas Delannoy respectively. In addition, the service of some of our oldest customers is provided by Dominique Tremsal, who is also in charge of the quality of our offer on literature in V.O.
Courtney Heuwinkel, Carl Guilcher et Pascal Joly visit and advise our customers.
Our logistics department is managed by Fayçal Matoug, who is responsible for a dozen warehouse employees.
Finally, our administrative team is headed by Francis Pierson.
Our team
The bees
We seek to contribute to projects that are beneficial for the environment. The protection of bees, damaged in particular by pesticides, is one of them.
The beekeeper is accompanied by one of SIDE's employee
We work at this together with Apiterra, a company that develops the presence of bees by installing and operating hives in urban and industrial environments.
Our premises are located in an area with many trees, thus an ideal place for bees to forage. Since 2020, we have had two beehives installed on the roof of our warehouse. They are regularly monitored by a beekeeper who also makes us aware of the role of bees in biodiversity and willingly shares his knowledge and know-how with our teams.
Each year the honey is harvested in August. We take great pleasure in having our teams, our customers, suppliers and other partners taste our honey. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit www.apiterra.fr for more information on the issue of saving bees.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Beyond our modest contribution to the protection of bees, we also care about the impact of our activity on the environment.
The key phrase in this regard : avoid waste.
Whether it's in the number of kilometers traveled on our supply and delivery routes (for which we pool as much as possible), in the quantities of cardboard boxes used for our packages (which we reuse as much as possible and size as small as possible), or in the energy used to heat our workspaces (in 2019 we invested in the installation of a heat pump heating system to replace electric radiators).
We also care about our contribution to our employment area.
Whenever possible, we recruit locally. We have also established partnerships with schools and training organizations located near us, such as the Ecole de la Seconde Chance, which allow young people in training to build or enrich their experience of the professional world at SIDE.
Finally, we care about doing our job well without imposing unnecessary stress on our teams.
All of this is done on our scale. We are not perfect, but try to regularly improve.