Roger Milliken
Academy of Achievement
Roger Milliken (October 24, 1915 – December 30, 2010) was the President and Chief Executive Officer of Milliken & Company, the largest privately owned textile and chemical manufacturer in the world with $4 billion in annual sales. He led the company for 71 years, and was heralded as the greatest leader in American textiles in the 20th century. Roger Milliken graduated from Yale in 1937 and immediately entered the family business. He started out in New York City's Mercantile Stores, in which his family had an ownership stake. There he made the rounds of suppliers, seeing to it that coats and suits ordered by the stores were delivered. He, at times, pinned up the hems of women's coats, all the while learning the business from the ground up. In 1941, he was given the stewardship of three small woolen-producing mills in Maine. When his father, Gerrish Milliken, died in 1947, the 32-year-old Roger Milliken succeeded him as President of the company. In 1954, he moved his family to Spartanbur