anons52.ru — the website of the trading company Anons (Announcement), a wholesale supplier of motor oils and automotive chemicals from Dzerzhinsk in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, which had entered, as the home page reported, “the Nizhny Novgorod market”[1]. The site opened on 20 April 2004[1]; by 2017 the address hosted the site of OOO StandartOil (Standard Oil), with an address in the Vostochny industrial district of Dzerzhinsk[2]. The last snapshot in the web archive is dated 15 April 2018[3].

The 2004 site: wholesale automotive chemicals

The first surviving snapshot of the home page was taken on 25 August 2004[1]. The news feed on it consisted of two entries. The first, dated 20 April 2004, announced: “The website of the Anons trading company has opened. On the site you will be able to find the fullest information about the company and its products.” The second, dated 22 July 2004, reported that a fresh price list had been posted and that “our online shop has begun operating, in which you will be able to order any of the products presented”[1].

The same page set out the history of the firm. The Anons trading company was formed in early 1998 in Dzerzhinsk, which the page called “the capital of Russian chemistry”; several wholesale firms, each with its own line of business, were brought together under this trade mark. Initially the company intended to trade wholesale only in automotive chemicals made in Dzerzhinsk, but, by its own account, it seriously expanded its product range within a short time and entered the Nizhny Novgorod market[1]. By 2004, according to the site's own figures, the range permanently held in its warehouses alone came to more than two thousand items sold wholesale; the main lines were motor oils, coolants, brake fluids and washer fluids, oil and fuel additives, and car accessories[1].

A separate block described the company's “own system of product quality control”: visits to the production facilities of suppliers, spot analysis of quality, and feedback from buyers which, the page claimed, made it possible to identify substandard goods while they were already in use and either to get the manufacturer to improve the product or to drop it[1]. The reader was invited to enter an email address in a subscription form: “Company news is supported by the Subscribe.ru system”[1]. The footer carried the developer's credit — “Website created by Max KLM Design”[1].

The later site: OOO StandartOil

By the snapshot of 11 September 2017 the site had completely changed its appearance and its corporate details: the name Anons had disappeared from the home page and was replaced by OOO StandartOil, presented as an official dealer of LIQUI MOLY, TEXACO, VMPAUTO, RUNWAY and AGAT and a representative of the ARECA, OEM and Rosneft brands[2]. The menu consisted of the sections “Home”, “Oil selection”, “Products”, “Price list”, “News and promotions”, “Forum” and “About the company”[2].

The address given was: 603158, Dzerzhinsk, Vostochny industrial district, Orgsteklo, 5 km from the Igumnovskoye highway, building 7/1267 — along with four telephone numbers: +7 (8313) 24-99-17, 24-99-19, 24-99-20 and 24-99-30[2]. The terms of business came down to two points: cash and cashless settlement with the possibility of deferred payment; free delivery by the company's own vehicles for orders from 5,000 roubles, with a delivery time of two days[2]. The contact address was info@anons52.ru, and in the footer of the page, next to StandartOil, stood one more name — OOO NovoOil[2]. The snapshot of 15 April 2018 shows the same page unchanged[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site came into the field of view of the regional internet in the year it opened: in December 2004 it took part in the voting of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in the category “Best corporate website”, where it was entered as “Anons Trading Company”[4]. The result was modest: the final table credited the site with four votes by email and none by SMS — 38th place among the 97 entrants in the category, whereas the leader of that category, the site of Aprel Servis (April Service), had 159 votes by email and 28 by SMS[4]. No position of its own in the Counter.nn.ru rating has survived for the site. For the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the mid-2000s this is a usual picture: the corporate site of a wholesale firm served not as a source of traffic but as an electronic shop window for regular customers — both surviving versions of the home page give a prominent place to the price list and the terms of supply[1][2]. More on the methodology for counting such sites is given in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

The snapshots of the address anons52.ru in the web archive — 28 of them in all — fall within the span from 25 August 2004[1] to 15 April 2018[3]. In the last of them the site is still working in its OOO StandartOil version — with a price list, a forum and oil selection[3]. A check made while this article was being prepared did not find the domain anons52.ru: there is neither a working site nor a placeholder page at the address. Of the fourteen years of work of the Dzerzhinsk wholesaler's site only archive snapshots remain: the early version of 2004 and the late one, taken thirteen years later.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2017 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2018 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting, 2004 (archive)