Sustainable design is a hallmark of Piana Technology, a family-owned company that has roots going back to 1582.
Piana Technology’s heritage as part of the family-owned Tintoria Piana group extends back more than four centuries in Italy. But the mindset of this Cartersville, Georgia-based company rests solely on the future as its team works to lead the sleep industry into a new era through innovative and sustainable design.
Last summer, Piana Technology introduced a new division, Piana Sleep, and Rinnovo, its first mattress line. Until this point, Piana Technology had been known in the United States mostly as a supplier of FR fiber solutions and for its high-performance, fiber-based nonwoven technologies such as V/Smart. Engineered through a unique process in which recyclable fibers are vertically oriented into a high-loft nonwoven design, V/Smart is nontoxic, odor-free and can be used for bedding, furniture, automotive and aviation products.
“V/Smart can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 70% compared to polyurethane foam,” says Andrea Piana, CEO of Piana Technology and Piana Sleep. “It’s up to 10 times more breathable than PU foam, up to 60% lighter and doesn’t retain moisture and is self-extinguishing.”
Piana’s new Rinnovo line blends its proprietary V/Smart vertical fiber technology with several layers of bio-based foams to create a more sustainable and comfortable mattress, Piana says. With its vertical fiber process, Piana laps a fiber web vertically instead of in the traditional horizontal or cross-lapped format. According to the company, this process offers a true upright fiber orientation in the nonwoven, providing benefits such as higher compressional resistance, greater thickness and lower weight, while still delivering the performance of heavier cross-lapped materials.
“V/Smart behaves like memory foam, changing shape to match the form of the object it comes in contact with, without the negative impact on the environment,” Andrea Piana says.
The technology also enables Piana Sleep to infuse chemical compounds into the fibers, changing the density of the molecules and delivering extra benefits, such as active cooling, customizable aromatherapy and antimicrobial protection. On the top of the mattress, layers are infused with lavender molecules for dust mite protection, and proprietary SmartSilver technology offers protection from bacteria and mold.
At the end of a mattress’ life, the fibers can be reclaimed and reused in a variety of applications, Andrea Piana says.
“We are dedicated to breaking the status quo of how mattresses get made,” he says. “We developed Rinnovo to demonstrate how V/Smart can be used to deliver a much more sustainable sleeping surface without sacrificing comfort and performance. Our goal is to be the catalyst for sustainability and the circular economy while also providing mattresses that deliver quality sleep.”
Expanding Sales: Piana Sleep’s Retail, Hospitality, and B2B Channels
The company sees two markets for the Piana Sleep line: retailers, who will sell its finished mattresses to consumers through their stores and websites, and the hospitality channel, for use in hotels. In addition, the company is pursuing partnerships with other bedding producers — both current customers and new prospects — where V/Smart technology offers potential benefits.
comfort of foam with the benefits and
cooling of breathable fiber.
On the retail side, Piana Sleep has partnered with Woodstock Furniture and Mattress Outlet to bring the Rinnovo mattress to five locations in the Atlanta area. The company sells three models of Rinnovo, retail priced from $2,199 to $2,799 for a queen size, with firm, medium and plush options.
“We are thoroughly impressed with Piana’s history of innovation and the forward-thinking to help solve an industry-wide concern of sustainably made products,” says Brian Aaron, executive vice president of Woodstock. “The quality of the Rinnovo mattress, as well as the fit and feel, is very distinctive.”
Andrea Piana says Rinnovo is off to a good start at Woodstock and that a growing number of other retailers are showing interest in the line. But since Rinnovo is still in its early stages, with production just ramping up, it will take time to build awareness among potential customers, he adds.
In the hospitality market, Piana Sleep has teamed up with Reveille Hospitality, a hotel, restaurant and resort developer and consultant based in Miami. Reveille is led by Marco Roca Sr., who revolutionized the industry 25 years ago with the release of the iconic Heavenly Bed, made for Westin Hotels and Resorts by Simmons and available for consumer purchase exclusively through Westin.
“Marco’s expertise is unmatched,” Piana says. “Working with Reveille, Piana Sleep is poised to redefine comfort for hotel guests worldwide while also contributing to the health of our planet.”
The fact that Rinnovo mattresses weigh 30% less than a typical mattress also holds benefits for hotel employees, he adds. “There are a lot of injuries among hotel workers when they install or replace mattresses. Rinnovo mattresses are much easier to lift and maneuver, so we expect our customers could see a big reduction in workplace injuries — and workers’ comp claims.”
Piana Sleep is also pursing a third sales channel: the mattress manufacturing community. Piana already sells V/Smart nonwovens to a range of U.S. bed makers, for use in both consumer and hospital-oriented products, and it expects that its new Rinnovo line will build more awareness of the technology among potential customers.
“We are eager to work with additional bedding companies on developing new ways that V/Smart fibers can be used to replace foam,” Piana says. “Through such collaborations, we expect to continue to enhance the performance of our products and make the sleep industry more and more sustainable.”
Growth and Investment: Piana’s Expanding Footprint
Piana Sleep produces its new mattress line at its Cartersville headquarters, where recent expansions have grown the site to a campus of five buildings covering more than 1 million square feet. Piana Technology built its first nonwoven plant with vertically lapped and cross-lapped capabilities in Cartersville in 2015. In 2018, it added a second nonwoven plant in San Luis, Arizona, creating a national footprint from which to serve its national bedding customers. At these two plants, Piana produces FR fibers and barrier fabrics for bedding using carded and thermal-bonded nonwoven technologies.
“Our patented, proprietary technologies for making molded nonwovens enable complex geometries that previously weren’t possible,” Piana says. He adds that he sees this as “the future of molding” — a process in which porous sheets of fibers such as polyester or recycled materials are bonded together into specific shapes — and that these molded nonwovens are totally recyclable.
In 2021, Piana Technology also built a digital printing facility in Cartersville. The wide-web digital printing line focuses on adding function and value to its nonwoven substrates. Capabilities include FR, dye, bleach, antimicrobial and scour treatments.
“Over time, we’ve evolved from being a basic textile supplier to an R&D company that adds value and performance to fibers,” he says. “The shift toward focusing on technology and sustainability guides much of our work today.”
Piana Technology, Piana Sleep’s parent company, traces its roots to 1582, when the Piana family opened a textile business called Tintoria Piana in Biella, Italy. In 1950, the company evolved its business model to focus on dyeing cotton fiber for the apparel industry. It opened its first U.S. dye house in Cartersville in 1995 and invented SaveDrop technology, which pretreats cotton before dyeing. The process reduces energy consumption as much as 75% and water consumption as much as 90%, according to Piana.
The company’s fabric dyeing business grew steadily in the United States until 2000, when China entered the World Trade Organization. At that point, garment manufacturing largely migrated from the United States to sources in Asia, Central America and Mexico, and Piana’s customer base “literally disappeared overnight,” Andrea Piana says.
Meeting Safety Standards: Piana’s Sustainable FR Technology
Andrea Piana, who moved to the United States in 1995 to open Piana’s first facility, led the company’s transition in the early 2000s from fabric dyeing into a new product segment: FR fibers for the bedding industry. That change in direction proved highly successful, as the entire U.S. bedding industry was scrambling for solutions to meet the tough new 16 CFR Part 1633 standard phased in at the federal level in 2007.
“We developed our own patented FR solutions that are effective and sustainable,” Piana says.
Built from food-grade inorganic salt, Piana’s FR technology uses no harmful chemicals, making it both safe and nontoxic, Piana says. Applied in a closed-loop system, there also is no chemical loss into the environment.
The treatment is suitable for all types of natural fibers, including bleached cotton, scoured cotton, kenaf, jute, flax, wool, cashmere and recycled shoddy, as well as synthetics such as rayon. In addition to the sleep market, Piana also sells a large volume of its FR treatments to the furniture and automotive industries.
“FR fiber treatments are a core part of our business,” Piana says. “In the auto industry alone, we process 20 million pounds of recycled garment scraps each year to make them FR compliant. Customers turn to us for FR because our treatments are functional, reliable and extremely sustainable.”
Piana’s patented closed-loop system enables the recycled fibers to be treated with formaldehyde-free FR chemistry, without any solution leaving the system, Piana says, adding that the company achieved Zero Discharge verification for the process. “Our Zero Discharge achievement documents the commitment we have made to consider the health and safety of both people and the planet in the way we operate our business.”
In 2022, Piana also received UL formaldehyde-free validation for its FR-treated fibers. And in 2023, it received ISO 14001 certification from NSF-ISR, an independent environmental management company.
Leading Sustainable Innovation: Piana’s Environmental Stewardship
Sustainability is clearly much more than a buzzword at Piana Technology. Starting in 2021, the company made sustainability a core part of its mission and established benchmark metrics that set it on a course to reduce its organizational, facility and product-level environmental impact, especially its greenhouse gas footprint. Its 2023 Environmental, Social and Governance Report, issued late last year, highlights the progress the company has made in implementing new programs and systems that lessen its environmental impact.
1. Rinnovo’s cover, made of Repreve performance yarn, features a mandala representing how Piana Sleep’s products work in harmony with both the human body and the planet.
2. Infused lavender molecules promote relaxation and protection from dust mites, while phase-change material manages body heat.
3. V/Smart’s moisture-repellent fibers deliver breathability, moisture control and comfort, while its SmartSilver technology offers antimicrobial protection.
4. The responsive design of Rinnovo’s foam layers ensures proper contouring and pressure point distribution while effectively absorbing movement.
5. Rinnovo’s multilayered V/Smart support structure combines a high level of breathability with advanced moisture management properties that
prevent the build up of bacteria and fungi.
In December, for example, the company announced that its newly expanded photovoltaic power system at its nonwovens facility in Cartersville offsets energy consumption by 100%, the net zero energy level. The system will enable the company to avoid producing 920 tons of CO2 emissions this year, equivalent to the carbon sequestration of 250 acres of trees. In addition, any solar overproduction generated by the system is fed back to the city’s grid, contributing to the local energy supply.
“This project not only advances our environmental goals but also strengthens our relationship with our community by contributing to local energy production,” Piana says.
Piana Technology is dedicated to leading change through example and working with those who share its vision, he adds. “We know we’re creating a blueprint for other companies and manufacturers to follow. This is the future: You can do it better and do it greener. The future of our industry lies in responsible stewardship of our planet’s resources.”
Piana’s Recycling Leadership: Driving Circular Economy Solutions
In addition to cutting its carbon footprint, Piana Technology has been a leader in the realm of recycling. In 2021, the company’s nonwovens facilities achieved Recycled Claim Standard certification, an internationally recognized protocol developed by the Textile Exchange that verifies recycled content and tracks it through the supply chain to the final product. The certification process requires partners to meet compliance standards at each stage of the supply chain, beginning with raw material (or recycling suppliers) and ending with the final seller.
In 2023, Piana’s nonwovens business unit also gained certification for meeting the Global Recycling Standard. This standard includes criteria to prevent the use of potentially hazardous chemicals and verifies that Piana’s facilities meet specific social and environmental benchmarks with its production.
“The RCS and GRS certifications were a great step forward in Piana’s overarching goal to achieve sustainability in our materials and the circularity of our products,” Piana says. “We now have peace of mind in knowing that the materials we source have fewer impacts than their conventional counterparts, pushing us forward in our sustainability mission.”
Building on this achievement, which enabled Piana’s nonwovens facilities in Georgia and Arizona to integrate a volume of recycled raw materials into its manufacturing that exceeds 50%, the company is moving quickly to add its own recycling capabilities at both locations. The new recycling centers, set to open later this year, will enable Piana to recycle used mattresses on site, for both its hotel and retail customers. To keep used mattresses out of landfills, the company promises that for every mattress it sells it will take back one bed for recycling at the end of its useful life.
“With V/Smart, we’ve built a tech platform for the circular economy with renewable materials that can be upgraded as technology improves. Along the way, we can dramatically reduce the volume of foam that currently goes to landfills,” Piana says.
The Mattress Recycling Council estimates that in the United States alone, 50,000 mattresses are discarded into landfills every day. “These mattresses would form a daily stack taller than Mount Everest,” he says.
Driving Innovation: Piana’s R&D and Product Development
As it moves forward, Piana Sleep will be looking for new ways to improve the carbon footprint of its products — as well as the role it plays in delivering quality sleep. Currently, Piana Sleep is working on a new model of Rinnovo that would contain no foam. Piana expects to introduce this addition to the line by the end of this year.
“It’s always been our objective to bring out a foam-free mattress for consumers,” he says. “We started with a hybrid of foam and V/Smart because we saw an immediate need for that type of product, and now that we’ve rolled that out, we’re going to take the sustainability of this line even farther.”
Piana acknowledges that some of the company’s ideas and practices relating to sustainability may be ahead of the market, but he is confident that demand for sustainably made products will grow as the public’s awareness of the need for action on the environment deepens.
“We are fully committed to the direction in which we are heading,” Piana says. “We have no doubts that this is where we need to go as a company, and we expect others eventually will follow our lead.”
The company’s relentless focus on innovation also extends beyond sustainability. Currently, the company is working on the refinement of pressure sensors that it can integrate within V/Smart layers to enhance sleep quality and personalize the sleep experience. The sensors can be used to improve posture while sleeping, to deliver customized cooling levels or to enhance mood via aromatherapy.
“We are developing this technology to act as a diagnostic tool in hospital settings,” Piana says. “Combined with our digitally printed molecules, this technology can adapt to a wide range of consumer requests for a more personalized sleep experience.”
As this technology is perfected, Piana Sleep sees an application for similar sensors that would help consumers enjoy a better night’s sleep in their own homes.
“The technology we are exploring — including digitally printed molecular chemistries and embedded biomarker detection — have the potential to change how we view our relationship with the environment around us, from mattresses to smart cars to yoga mats and everything in between,” he says.
To maintain a steady stream of new ideas for its products and production processes, Piana Technology has R&D teams at all its American and Italian facilities. The teams are focused on specific business segments, such as home furnishings and automotive, with ideas shared freely across the company.
Building Piana Sleep’s Brand
As Piana works to establish itself as a new source for sustainably made mattresses, the company will look for creative ways to build its brand among retailers and consumers. On the communications side, the company will be ramping up its outreach efforts with new public relations and social media campaigns. A new consumer-facing website dedicated to the Piana Sleep line also has been launched.
On the sales side, it has established a new sales force for the retail channel headed by Craig Leffew, a bedding veteran who joined the company from GhostBed in the fourth quarter of 2024. Leffew serves as director of sales for Piana Sleep, reporting to Chris Henning, vice president of business development.
Another hire brought on in 2022 to help Piana Technology launch its new mattress division was Silvia Galasso, vice president of operations. A former longtime executive with Magniflex USA, Galasso helped Piana build the infrastructure and team it needs to grow the business and is now transitioning out of her role to pursue other opportunities.
“We’ve put all the pieces in place for a strong year in 2025,” Piana says. “We’re very excited about the opportunities we see.”
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