Sartain Lanier

Sartain Lanier (1909 – November 30, 1994) was an American businessman and philanthropist from Tennessee. With his brothers, Lanier co-founded The Lanier Company in 1934, an office products company currently known as Lanier Worldwide, a subsidiary of Ricoh. In 1942, Lanier acquired the Atlanta, Georgia-based Oxford Manufacturing Company, later known as Oxford Industries. He served as its chairman and chief executive officer, and took it public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1963.

Early life Sartain Lanier was born in 1909 in Winchester, Tennessee. His father was John Hicks Lanier and his mother, Nettie Sartain. He had two brothers, Hicks and Thomas, and a sister, Eleanor.

Career Lanier and his brothers co-founded the Lanier Company in Nashville in 1934. However, Lanier retorted that businesses had become more profitable thanks to those products. In 1963, the Oxford Company was listed as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange, with an annual revenue of US$60 million, 6,000 employees, 20 factories, 10 warehouses, and facilities in New York City. By 1968, the Gaffney subsidiary was known as the Carolina Apparel Co. That same year, the company reported record sales and profits. By 1971, Sartain predicted that men were unlikely to return to wearing "the grey flannel suit and the conservative tie", preferring to wear colors and special fabrics.

Lanier served on the Boards of Directors of Standard Brands (now Nabisco), the Trust Company of Georgia (now SunTrust Banks), the Genuine Parts Company, and Southern Airways. They had three children, including J. Hicks Lanier. Claudia died of cancer in 1972, and in 1976 Lanier married Elizabeth Moorman Tuller.

Lanier died on November 30, 1994, at the Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, aged 85. His funeral was held at the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint Philip in Atlanta.