Dangdang's shares jumped 87 percent on their first day of trading in December 2010. China's biggest online bookseller had been started in 1999 by a married couple, Peggy Yu and Li Guoqing. They bet that Chinese readers would order books online, even if few of them had a credit card, and pay the courier in cash at the door. When Dangdang filed to go public, it had grown well past books into a broad online store.

Cash on Delivery

Few Chinese shoppers had credit cards in 1999, and many did not trust paying online. Dangdang let them pay when the package arrived, so the risk sat with the company instead of the customer. It built its own warehouses and delivery network in cities across China. Books came first because they were cheap to ship, hard to break and easy to search. Over time the company added clothes, electronics and home goods to compete with a general store.

From Wall Street Back Home

Dangdang priced its ADSs at $16 in December 2010 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as DANG. The shares closed the first day up 87 percent. Then Alibaba's Tmall and JD.com spent heavily to win the same shoppers, and Dangdang's growth slowed. Its stock fell for years. In 2016 Yu and Li took the company private at $6.70 per ADS, less than half the IPO price.

Cover: The Artist's Father Reading, Mary Cassatt. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a man reading (books).