oooestet.boom.ru was the website of a Nizhny Novgorod wholesale trading firm, OOO "Estet", known from web archive snapshots from December 2000 to November 2002. The site had no domain of its own: its pages sat at a third-level address in the boom.ru zone, and that same address was printed on the page itself as the firm's network address[3]. The office was located in Nizhny Novgorod, at 63-A Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street (postal code 603155); the header also listed the number (8312) 32-79-37 and the email oooestet@mail.ru[3]. The first saved snapshot of the home page is dated December 4, 2000[1], the last — November 23, 2002[4].

Over two years the site changed genre: it began as a company showcase with several product lines and ended as one long page — a commercial offer with a price list of over a hundred items.

The 2000 showcase: from greenhouse film to a banknote counter

The home page from December 2000 opened with the line "OOO 'Estet' welcomes you!" and the subheading "OOO 'ESTET' — WHOLESALE TRADE," below which were listed "various areas of the firm's activity" (spelling as in the original)[1]. The only thing connecting them was the wholesale form of trade: heat-shrink and greenhouse film, packing and wrapping bags, and polyethylene raw material; metal ("in the metal price list we have placed only the main items. Supply to order is possible"); workwear; a banknote counter; goods "for the population and organizations of Russia"; car tires; paints and enamels. One more item remained in the surviving text without a stated subject — only a note survived from it: "This line is still only being developed by us — so the prices are still low — we are studying demand!"[1].

The page addressed the buyer directly. On workwear: "the price list shows prices without discounts. For serious clients — serious discounts!" On car tires: "We have practically all types of car tires from Russian manufacturers. We work only with large batches" (as in the original). As a separate item the firm promoted the "Integral MSK-4" banknote counter: "In its 6 months of existence it has proven itself well in Nizhny Novgorod! We created a separate website for it!" It all ended with a counter-request to send proposals "for the purchase and sale of various raw materials, consumer goods"[1]. The menu had an item "*OUR CONTACTS*" and a link "Download the full price list (WORD'97) dated 04.12.2000" — the price list was distributed as a file rather than shown on the page[1].

2001: a mirror site and a different phone number

The snapshot from April 4, 2001 caught the page nearly empty: "We await your requests," a link "Download the full price list (xls) dated 26.12.2000," and a warning in large letters — "IF SOMETHING ON THIS PAGE IS NOT OPENING — VISIT THE MIRROR OF THIS SITE." The contact details read: "Nizhny Novgorod Tel/fax: (8312) 65-79-70"[2] — a number different from the one on the site a year later[3].

2002: a website instead of a price list

By March 2002 the site had stopped being a showcase with sections and turned into a single commercial offer. The header repeated the company details: "603155 Nizhny Novgorod, 63-A Bolshaya Pecherskaya St.; (8312) 32-79-37." Below it was a table of 123 numbered items, broken into sections "Work clothing," "Cold-weather protection gear," "Work footwear," "Mittens," "Gloves," and "Protective gear," with prices in rubles: work suit (diagonal fabric) — 112.7; KShchS wool suit — 552; kirza boots — 207; felt boots (valenki) — 149.5; OMON boots — 517.5; "Lepestok" respirator — 2.875; "Berushi" earplugs (pack of 3,000) — 524.4; PSh-10RV-2 hose gas mask — 8,694. The numbering got scrambled when it was carried onto the web: item 40 is followed by items 63–70, and numbers 41–44 come after item 99[3].

After the price list came two offers outside this range of goods. The firm was ready to supply ML-1110-1 enamel (murena color) made by OAO "ChKhPO" of Cherkessk — up to 5,500 kg from a warehouse in Nizhny Novgorod at 80 rubles per kilogram, in drums weighing 57.5 kg gross and 54 kg net. And petroleum products: BND-60/90 and 90/130 road bitumen and BNK-45/190 roofing bitumen — at 2,700 rubles per ton with VAT, BN-90/10 construction bitumen — 3,650, M-100 fuel oil — 2,300, with "prices given exclusive of rail tariffs"[3].

Its place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered our record from the Counter.nn.ru directory for 2000, section "Firms," where it was listed with the description "GAZ auto parts, car tires, workwear" (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating); auto parts, however, appear on none of the surviving snapshots. No traffic figures or votes for it were recorded in the counter's sample. In the published results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, the address does not appear[5] — by then the site had already gone more than a year without an update.

Pages like this are an inconspicuous layer of the early Nizhny Novgorod Internet: not media, not a community, but a way for a small wholesale outfit to keep its price list and phone number publicly available, without acquiring a domain or updating regularly.

How it closed

The web archive's last snapshot, from November 23, 2002, repeats the March one word for word[4]: over eight months nothing on the page changed — the same 123 items, the same enamel, the same bitumen grades. The web archive kept no later snapshots of the home page, and the domain no longer exists today. There was no announcement of closure on the site: it simply stopped being updated, and then disappeared.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2000 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (March) (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (November) (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)