Diane Wang, Chinese name 王树彤, is the founding CEO of DHgate.com, the leading fast trading marketplace serving global buyers from 230 countries.  As one of the few beautiful female CEOs in the IT industry and the founder of such a fast growing company, Diane draws a lot of attention from the industry.

Diane Wang was born in Beijing in 1968.  She has been serving in Microsoft and Cisco for many years before starting Joyo.com in 1999.  She was the CEO of Joyo.com from 1999 to 2002.  Joyo.com grew into one of the biggest B2C website in China and later on got acquired by Amazon.com.

Diane started DHgate.com in the end of 2004, and the website went alive in 2005. Its first year sales was less than 1million USD, and by 2008, annual transaction on DHgate.com already surpassed 200 million USD with the prediction to break 300 million this year.

“Made in China” concept has already generated some big companies, among them Alibaba is the most famous one.  Back in 2007, when Alibaba first filed IPO, it had a market value as high as 28billion USD.  Diane Wang didn’t want to create another Alibaba, but the 2nd generation of B2B website.  The first generation of B2B websites offer product listings and rely on merchants’ membership fees, and Diane wants to take one step further. Besides product listing, DHgate.com also offers escrow, transaction and delivery.  Also DHgate.com’s main revenue is from transaction commissions, merchants can list products on DHgate for free.  Unlike Alibaba aiming for mid to big clients, DHgate.com targets smaller buyers as a fast trading marketplace.  It is the first website entered this field, and later on followed by TradeTang.com and Beltal.com, etc.

Recently, Diane started her own blog at TheGateWayBlog.  Her blog updated at least twice a week, and  provides practical tips on running, growing and evolving micro and small businesses.  I recommend it to all entrepreneurs interested in wholesale ecommerce.