kukuruza.r52.ru was the site of Golfstream NN LLC, a Nizhny Novgorod company that produced corn puffs, breakfast cereals, and equipment for making them. The firm's address given on the home page was Nizhny Novgorod, Ryabtseva Street, building 35, phones (8312) 708-018 and (8312) 707-815[2]. An earlier version of the site listed different Nizhny Novgorod numbers: tel./fax (8312) 43-15-74 and 43-18-16[1]. The site ran in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone r52.ru, where, according to the home page, its hosting was also located[1]. Web-archive captures of the home page span the period from December 4, 2001 to March 28, 2007[5].

First version: company history instead of a storefront

A capture from February 2003 shows a page devoted entirely to the story of the company; the heading read: "Golfstream NN LLC — Corn puffs and equipment for their production"[1]. According to this text, the firm, as the home page stated, "has existed since early 1996" and was founded as a wholesale trading company promoting corn puffs made by the St. Petersburg manufacturer "Vitek" on the Nizhny Novgorod market. At the end of 1997 an agreement was signed with Vitek for the supply of production equipment, and by the summer of 1998 the company's own production had reached its planned capacity; according to its own account, the company weathered the 1998 default while remaining profitable[1].

From late 1999 the site announced the project "Sweet Corn in Powdered Sugar," and by mid-2000 the product range comprised five types of corn puffs at different price points; the home page stated that the consulting firm "KUB" and independent consultants took part in the project work[1]. Partners named included firms from Kirov, Saratov, Cheboksary, Ulyanovsk, Yoshkar-Ola, Ivanovo, Kostroma, and Saransk, while among Nizhny Novgorod buyers the page listed "Sladkaya Zhizn," "Alliance," "Dempo," the "Medved" trading house, "Invite NN," and the "Boris" trading company[1]. The company called itself "the only producer of corn puffs of this scale in Nizhny Novgorod" and mentioned its own retail network[1].

The second line of business was the manufacture of extruders — equipment for producing the puffs — and spare parts for them; the third, from 2001, was breakfast cereals: filled pillows, crunchy cream-filled bars, and crispbreads[1]. At the bottom of the page were the mark "© 2001 Golfstream LLC," the note "Coding by R52.RU," and three email addresses, including kukuruza@r52.ru[1].

Second version: menu, poll, and counter

By November 2004 the site had been redesigned and was now called "Golfstream-NN Company. Food Production." A nine-item menu appeared: "About the Company," "News," "Events," "Products," "Equipment," "Cooperation," "Contacts," "Guestbook," "Vacancies"[2]. A poll ran in the side column, "What do you prefer for breakfast?": in 2004 it had four answer options — corn puffs, cookies, "I prefer not to have breakfast," "Other"[2], and by March 2007 the list had grown to seven, with crispbreads, filled pillows, and corn flakes added[3].

The "About the Company" text in the new version became shorter and drier, and the founding date changed: instead of early 1996, it now gave 1997[2]. The main line of business was named as the production of extruded food products, with the additional manufacture of specialized equipment to order. It was claimed that the firm's regular clients numbered more than 300 enterprises and that its products were sold in 15 regions of Russia[2]. The page mentioned a quality system introduced in 2000 and preparation, begun in 2003, for certification to ISO 9000-2000 standards, while the company's slogan was declared to be "We give joy!"[2]. The developer's credit at the bottom of the page read "IT-Studio SoftTime"[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was a corporate page for a manufacturing firm, not a public project, and it played no notable role in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet. It does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter on which the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is based, and no votes for it are recorded in our data. In the surviving results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, neither the address kukuruza.r52.ru nor the name "Golfstream" appears[4]. In the census of defunct Nizhny Novgorod sites it is valuable for something else: it is a rare surviving example of a late-1990s to early-2000s industrial site, one that lays out the strategy of a small manufacturer in detail instead of a product catalog.

How it closed

The decline is visible in the captures themselves. The update date shown in the November 2004 capture was August 30, 2004[2]; in the March 2007 capture the same field showed August 9, 2006[3]. The visit counter in both captures showed the same number — 14,568[2][3]. By 2004 the firm's email address had already moved to its own domain, golfstream-nn.ru[2], while the page itself continued to be accessible at its address in the r52.ru zone.

The last web-archive capture of kukuruza.r52.ru is dated March 28, 2007; the archive holds only 23 captures of this address in total[5]. At the time of the census the domain does not respond.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — List of kukuruza.r52.ru captures in the web archive (archive)