Shirley Tan is an ecommerce enthusiast who started as an early pioneer of internet retailing. She has boots-on-the-ground experience in establishing and building ecommerce businesses. She comes from a family of entrepreneurs and has personally been in the retail business for over 20 years, and specifically in ecommerce for more than 14 years. She started two businesses while in college and grew both of them into successful companies enterprises. Now after having sold one of her businesses, Americanbridal.com to the publicly traded company, Shirley offers her expertise as a consultant to small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses. Her specialized emphasis on ecommerce business process improvement and marketing strategies makes her a frequent invited speaker to retail conferences. Shirley is also a contributing author at PracticalEcommerce.com. She is also the winner of the 2007 MBDA Regional Retailer of the Year. Shirley fields frequent questions about the title of her book. Why Ecomm Hell? She says, "I believe business success is a combination of strategic planning and excellent execution, helped often by a heavy dose of optimism. I understand the value of optimism as it carries many an entrepreneur through a rough day or two. However, I also believe is anticipating worst case scenarios to avoid them at all costs. This is the impetus behind Ecom Hell: I'll help you face the pitfalls that can be part of ecommerce business building; and give you the best practices to use to navigate your way around these potentially hellish situations. Ecom Hell is going to help you build your own ecom heaven!"