fink.r52.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod trading company OOO "Fink," a wholesale supplier of shaving and personal-hygiene products, as well as foodstuffs. According to the home page, the firm had existed since 1997 and operated in Nizhny Novgorod at 6 Nartova Street[1]. The site was a single-page business card in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone r52.ru. The surviving snapshots of the home page date to July and December 2001[1][2], and the last snapshot of the site in the web archive is dated 25 January 2002[3].

What the company "Fink" traded in

The only substantive text on the site was a brief commercial introduction of the firm. According to the home page, the company offered "the full range of shaving and personal-hygiene products" under the brands Schick, Gillette, Nivea, Johnson & Johnson, Florena, Colgate, Dental Cosmetik, as well as foodstuffs under the brands Bisca, Emig, RitterSport, and FINN CRISP[1]. A separate line listed the buyers with which the firm bolstered its reputation: the "Nizhegorodsky," "Sormovsky," and "Sovetsky" supermarkets, and the "Evropa," "Malinovaya Gryada," and "XXI vek" stores[1]. The company explained its standing by "stable ties with suppliers on the Russian market of quality goods" and promised delivery of orders "throughout the city and the region"[1].

Thus the site was addressed not to the private buyer but to retail chains and shops: the preserved text contains no prices, no descriptions of individual goods, and no order form. The page ended with the phrase "We will be glad to cooperate with you"[1].

What the site looked like

The entire site fit on a single page: a heading, 'OOO "Fink,"' a paragraph about the firm, a contacts block, and signatures in the footer. The preserved text contains neither menu section names nor a price list nor visitor counters — there was nowhere to go from the home page[1].

The contacts block consisted of three lines: the address "Nizhny Novgorod, Ul. Nartova, 6," the telephone and fax "(8312) 65-14-95," and the email address fink@sandy.ru[1]. The firm kept its mailbox not on its own domain but with a third-party provider. At the bottom stood the copyright notice '© 2001 OOO "FINK"' and two service signatures — "Coding by Info-online" and "Hosting by R 52"[1]; the second corresponds to the site's address in the r52.ru zone.

Between the July and December 2001 snapshots the page text did not change by a single word — the site was made once and never touched again[1][2]. The snapshots differ only in the address requested: in July the archive saved the page at the address with the www prefix, in December — without it[1][2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

"Fink" was a typical representative of the first wave of corporate presence on the web: a firm that had been operating since 1997 set up a business-card page with a local host and left it at that. In our census the site is listed under the nn.ru directory's rubric, where it was described as "the full range of shaving and personal-hygiene products, as well as foodstuffs." In the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, fink.r52.ru does not appear, and no votes for it are recorded in our data; on the methodology and limits of these samples see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

The site does not appear in the final voting table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day[4] — by that time the site's archived snapshots had already stopped two years earlier. For the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s, this is an ordinary fate for a wholesale firm's site: it existed as an electronic business card for a narrow circle of counterparties and did not compete for an audience or for places in the ratings.

How it closed

The site never announced a closing date: both surviving versions of the home page are identical and break off at the 2001 copyright notice[1][2]. The last snapshot of the site in the web archive is dated 25 January 2002[3]; no later traces of fink.r52.ru appear in our material. What remains of the site is a single page of text — a list of brands, a list of supermarket buyers, and a phone number with the 8312 area code.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, July 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, December 2001 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Snapshot of the home page, January 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)