Frédéric Sofia was born in Lyon in 1967.
Self-educated and impassioned by design, he studied mechanical engineering (1988) before obtaining a diploma in marketing and management in 1991.
It was in 1992, in the course of a one-year trip to Australia, that he found his vocation as an industrial designer.
In 1995, he founded Wombat, a small company specialising in the self-production of lighting and objects. His Bozo, Nestor and Elvis lights, inspired by character design, and the organic Extrait de Naissance, attracted numerous awards and were selected by Starck for the International Design Year Book 96.
In 1998, he joined the global design agency Cent Degrés as project leader and development manager. For two years, he collaborated on projects from fields as diverse as cosmetics, medicine, sport and leisure and mass market electricals.