bobrov.org — the website of the Nizhny Novgorod producer of salads and convenience foods OOO "Bobrov i Kompaniya" (Bobrov and Company), also known as "Bobrov i Ko" (Bobrov and Co), whose production complex was located in Nizhny Novgorod on Moskovskoye Shosse[4]. The earliest snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 16 August 2003, the latest 8 September 2024. In between, in a snapshot from 2011, the same domain carried the website of an entirely different business — the furniture workshop of the sole proprietor Aleksey Bobrov[2].

Salads "to Healthy Choice standards": the 2003 website

The earliest surviving version of the site was titled "Bobrov i Kompaniya: high-quality food products"[1]. The menu consisted of eight sections: "About the company", "News", "Products", "Price list", "Place an order", "Promotions and projects", "Our partners", "Contacts"[1]. The products were listed in four lines: salads sold by weight, packaged salads, marinades, prepared dishes[1].

As the home page announced, the enterprise was "one of the few domestic food producers that has worked to Healthy Choice standards from the moment it was founded", while the production complex, "located in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, was designed to Western European standards" and certified by the State Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance Service and by Gosstandart of the Russian Federation[1].

The news feed on the home page held two entries from the same year. On 12 May 2003 — "Salads take off!": the launch of a new salad production line. On 12 July 2003 the company marked its birthday: the staff celebrated with a boat trip on the Oka, where the best employees were also given certificates of merit and bonuses[1]. The home page carried the promotion "A birthday gift": for the points they collected, buyers of salads were promised a year's subscription to Cosmopolitan or Men's Health[1]. The copyright line in the footer read "(C) 2003 'Bobrov i Ko'"[1].

The furniture interlude and the empty domain

By June 2011 the address bobrov.org opened not a food site but a furniture one: "About the company • Aleksey Bobrov, custom-designed furniture, sole proprietor"[2]. The menu ran "Home", "Projects", "Contacts", "Clients"; the company advertised turnkey furniture supply, its own production and a registered trademark, and, by its own account, had been in business since 1995[2]. The page carried selected quotations from Pablo Picasso and Giorgio Saporiti, the copyright read "© Copyright 2008 Aleksey Bobrov", and at the bottom stood the multi-channel number 8-800-100-07-88 ext. 207 and "Your manager Valeriya Bobrova"[2]. That same number, 8-800-100-07-88, later appeared in the contacts of the salad business[4].

In November 2015 the domain showed a placeholder: "site under construction. Dear visitors, the site is under development and will start work shortly"[3].

The second "Bobrov i Ko" website

By February 2020 the domain had returned to salads — with a new single-page site, "Bobrov i Ko", and the sections "Products", "Delivery", "Production", "About the company", "For partners", "Contacts"[4]. The header was taken up by the telephone number 8 (831) 270-07-88 and a "Request a call" button[4]. The headline declared: "We have been making salads for you since 1995. In that time we have produced 50 million kilograms of salads and fed hundreds of thousands of people"[4].

The product showcase listed salads with their full ingredients: "Olivier", "Stolichny" (Capital), "Cheese", "Atlantik" (herring, beetroot, potato, carrot, mayonnaise, spices), cabbage rolls, potatoes with meat[4]. The delivery section offered "ready-made salads and other dishes at shop prices with delivery" and asked customers to place their order 24 hours before an event[4].

The "About the company" section stated that OOO "Bobrov i Kompaniya" had been founded by Aleksey Georgiyevich Bobrov in 1995, had started out as a small shop and had remained a small family enterprise staffed by the owner himself, his wife and long-standing workmates[4]. Particular emphasis was placed on the absence of "middle management" and on work according to HACCP principles[4]. The "Production" section described an English Deighton line with 90 % automation of the technological processes[4]. The contact footer gave: production — 603079, Nizhny Novgorod, Moskovskoye Shosse, 213 A; office — Dzerzhinsk, Skukharenko Street, 8; telephone 8 (800) 100-07-88 and the e-mail sales@bobrov.org; the city number 8 (831) 270-07-88 stood in the header and in the "For partners" section[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the Nizhny Novgorod Internet the site was not a noticeable presence. It entered this census by way of the nn.ru catalogue, and the catalogue line repeats word for word the description on the 2003 home page: the enterprise "produces salads, convenience foods, deep-frozen products and instant foods"[1]. At the same time bobrov.org has a score of zero in the Counter.nn.ru rating, and it is absent from the sites that gathered votes in the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day competition[6]. The site remained a manufacturer's corporate calling card rather than a participant in the city's online life: neither the counter nor the competition noticed it. More on the measurement methodology can be found in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

The last saved snapshot is dated 8 September 2024. The structure of the site is the same as in 2020, but the signs of decay are visible in the text itself: in place of the feedback form the page displays the message "The form could not be loaded. Contact the site administrator" — twice, in the header and in the "For partners" section[5]. The city number 8 (831) 270-07-88 in the header had given way to the mobile number +7 (910) 121-48-08, although the contact footer still kept the former addresses on Moskovskoye Shosse and in Dzerzhinsk and the number 8 (800) 100-07-88[5]. The showcase had changed too: instead of "Olivier" and "Atlantik", the front rank was now held by "Vegetables with noodles" made with rice funchoza glass noodles, "Crab", "Champignons" and "Vinegret"[5].

A liveness check on the domain, carried out while this census was being prepared, returned nothing: bobrov.org is listed among the closed sites. The web archive index for the 21 years of the address's existence — from 2003 to 2024 — holds 63 records of saved pages.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2011 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2015 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2020 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2024 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)