George Billingsley Dies at Age 73
by August 5, 2002 12:00 am 1,231 views
George Billingsley of Bella Vista, owner of International Tours of Northwest Arkansas and former chairman and CEO of Pacific Resources Export Ltd., died July 31 after a battle with cancer.
Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., hired Billingsley in 1989 to find factories for Wal-Mart overseas.
Billingsley and a partner bought PREL in 1991. By 2001, the company was inspecting 5,000 overseas vendor factories for Wal-Mart each year. About half of those factories were in China.
Wal-Mart took over PREL’s duties in February.