Company Overview

About Ninetowns

Ninetowns was founded in 1995 and listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange since December 2004 under the symbol "NINE" as the first listed Chinese software company by then.  As the leading provider of online solutions for international trade, Ninetowns enables over 130,000 enterprises to accelerate the declaration process by using its import/export e-filing services and occupies about 90% market share.  In order to further leverage our unrivalled market intelligence to extend the services on the value chain of international trade business, Ninetowns formally launched tootoo.com in May 2007, which is the cornerstone of our new B2B strategy of providing leading-edge, quality-driven vertical search and value added services.  As of the end of December 2007, tootoo.com provides information on more than 15 million products and over 8 million Chinese suppliers.

Our Company Name

Our name, Ninetowns, was initially created by our founders for several reasons:

(1) The inner city of old Beijing was reconstructed during the early period of the Ming Dynasty, during which nine city gates were built, namely the Qianmen Gate, Xuanwumen Gate, Fuchengmen Gate, Xizhimen Gate, Deshengmen Gate, Andingmen Gate, Dongzhimen Gate, Chaoyangmen Gate and Chongwenmen Gate. The area inside these nine city gates became known as the "Inner Nine Towns" of Beijing. Therefore, our name "Ninetowns" indicates that the founding of the company occured in the heartland of Beijing.

(2) The word "Nine" in Chinese has two meanings: a) "Nine" in Chinese symbolizes fortune and auspiciousness because the number nine is the highest single digit number. In ancient China, "Nine" could be found in many structures, such as the famous "Nine-Dragon Screen" in "Beihai Park" of Beijing; and b) In Chinese, "Nine" is homonymous to the Chinese word "Long", implicating long lasting prosperity. Therefore, it is our wish that our continued efforts will assure long lasting fortune and prosperity to our company.

(3) The word "Ten" in Chinese means perfection, thus the word "Nine" represents almost perfection. Our founders want us to always remember that we must strive for perfection, but as we are all only human and not infallible, we must all be realistic and continuously assess and improve ourselves.