It all started before the unification of Italy, in Noicattaro, a small town in Bourbon Puglia, with Vito Sciannameo and his son Nicola, owners of land and vineyards as well as merchants in home textiles.

Their business took place locally until Francesco Sciannameo (born April 27, 1867), Nicola's son, on a business trip, had to pass through Terni, then in full economic and demographic boom thanks to the recent opening of the Regia Fabbrica d'Armi (inaugurated in 1880) and the start-up works of the iron and steel industry (the founding act of the Society of High Furnaces and Foundries of Terni is from 1884).

A small-sized city with a predominantly agricultural vocation, Terni was then starting early towards heavy industrialization, also thanks to its strategic position. Terni was in fact far from the sea, but with enormous potential given the presence of the Marmore Falls, whose strength was soon harnessed in one of the first hydroelectric power plants in Europe, placed right at the service of the steel mills. Terni, then, was one of the most modern cities of the young Italian nation and experienced a real economic boom that lasted for almost fifty years. Production development was followed by a demographic one, due to the attraction of workers from all over Italy: in fact, if in 1861 Terni had about twenty thousand inhabitants, in 1880 it counted twenty-four thousand souls, to rise to over forty thousand twenty years later.

It was thus, in a happy meeting of "supply and demand" as we would say today. that the destinies of the city and those of the Sciannameo family, fatally crossed.

Francesco Sciannameo, sensing the potential of the Umbrian city and with paternal blessing and help, left for Terni together with his wife Santa Abbruzzese, which was not unusual in a newly established country and with strong social disparities between regions previously belonging to different states.
In the years immediately after 1880, the first shop for the sale of fabrics and linen was opened: business went immediately well. Their children were soon routed to their father's business which, in the meantime, had also expanded into wholesale sales in the areas surrounding Terni.

The five sons of Francesco and Santa Sciannameo in turn married and the family grew, always continuing the paternal trade, which did not stop even in the dark period of the Second World War when, in one of the 108 bombings that Terni suffered, the premises of both the living quarters and the shop were hit and severely damaged. After the war, one of Francesco Sciannameo's sons, Nicola, remained to assist his father until his retirement and, in 1947, the generational turnover was completed.

Nicola and his wife Donnina Fratoni remained personally engaged in the business until 1970-1972, when they retired to private life. In the meantime, their four children Paolo, Giuliano, Francesco and Sergio had continued their ancestral enterprise, dividing amongst themselves responsibilities for the different branches of the company.

It was from this budding that Soff-Art was born, first in the form of the individual firm of Giuliano Sciannameo and then, in 2008, through the establishment and transfer to SOFF-ART S.r.l.
SOFF-ART specialized in the production of cushions and mattresses, an activity that continues today in its factory in Via Maestri del Lavoro with the same passion as in the beginning.
But a vital transition occurred in the early 90s of the last century, when Giuliano Sciannameo's intuition led him to devise and patent an innovative spring cushion, named Morpheus Spring. It was a worldwide success that, in the turn of a quarter of a century, led SOFF-ART to be present, with its own cushions, in the best showrooms of almost thirty countries in the world, from the America’s to South-East Asia.
The production remained entirely in Italy, in its own factory in Terni, using the best human resources in the area, true expert craftsmen: today 27 people are employed by the company, in addition to the new generation of the family, Alessia and Martina Sciannameo who, with passion, renew a tradition of over 150 years and six generations, ferrying a historical enterprise towards the global horizons of the 21st century, in a perfect combination of innovation and tradition.