helper.r52.ru was the site of Helper, a Nizhny Novgorod firm, and its Helper Sport showroom, which sold snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, jet skis and boats. The showroom was located in Nizhny Novgorod at Senskaya Square, 11B (postal code 603005), telephone (8312) 36-24-90, fax (8312) 78-08-58[2]. The company itself, as its home page stated, was founded in 1992, and from 1996 developed a "new line of business, involving vehicles, but for snow, water and air"[1]. Web-archive snapshots of the site cover the years 2001-2005[1][3].
The Helper Sport showroom
By 2001 the firm described itself as the official dealer of the Canadian company Bombardier Inc[1]. According to the description that year, the showroom's range included snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, jet skis and jet boats, water bikes and water skis, windsurfers and scuba gear, outboard motors, plastic and inflatable boats, and trailers for cars for hauling boats, jet skis, snowmobiles and yachts[1]. The list of brands was long: Bombardier, Zodiac, Arctic Cat, Mercury, Johnson, Evinrude, HO Sports, Mares, Pro Rainer, Garmin, Humminbird, Bayliner, Crowline, Princecraft, Fiskars, Honda, Kawasaki, Quicksilver and "Rybinskiye motory" (Rybinsk Motors)[1].
Besides sales, the page promised warranty and service work by the firm's own specialists[1]. The firm's plans were spelled out right on the home page: founding a club for fans of racing on water and snow (Sea-Doo and Ski-Doo), opening a diving center, and holding open amateur races for snowmobiles and jet skis — all of this, as the home page put it, was "aimed at Nizhny Novgorod residents living on the Volga and in central Russia"[1].
By 2004 the brand list had shifted noticeably toward boats and yachts: AZIMUT, MONTEREY, CROWNLINE, MAXUM, BAYLINER, STINGRAY, BENETAU, YAMAHA, BOMBARDIER, POLARIS, ARCTIC CAT, KAWASAKI, PEUGEOT, MERCURY, HONDA, TOHATSU, JOHNSON, EVINRUDE, ZODIAC, QUICKSILVER, LS-BOATS, MHEB, VORONEZH[2]. Windsurfers and trailers had disappeared from the description, but "diving equipment" had appeared[2].
What the site looked like
The early 2001 version was built as a small corporate site with an "About the company" section and the caption "© 2000 Helper. All rights reserved"; the bottom line credited the developer — "Web-design by Teamoty Brane Inc."[1].
By 2004 the home page had been redesigned and turned into a showroom storefront: on the left a block with the name "Helper Sport Showroom" ("Салон «ХЕЛПЕР СПОРТ»"), the postal address, phone, fax and the email address helpersport@kis.ru with the line "url: www.helpersport.ru", and in the center an announcement, "Winter season novelty. Bombardier Lynx Yeti snowmobile," with a "read more" link[2]. The developer credit also changed, to "Created by VARIANT SOFT"[2]. The listing of its own domain www.helpersport.ru means the address in the r52.ru zone was, by this time, no longer the firm's only point of entry[2].
A snapshot from March 2005 shows almost the same page unchanged: the same address, phone numbers and list of brands, with a "Special offer" block added, and the model name gone from the "Winter season novelty" announcement — only the "read more" link remained[3].
Its place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet
The third-level domain in the r52.ru zone placed the site in the Nizhny Novgorod segment of the network by definition, and the address on Senskaya Square along with the phone numbers under the 8312 area code confirm its tie to the city[2]. In our data the site is known from the nn.ru directory listing, with the brief description "Sale of snowmobiles and motorcycles"; it does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating, so we have no traffic data for it (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating).
The site does not appear in the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote for 2004[4]. This is typical for an industry business-card site: in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s, such pages served not the audience of contests and counters, but buyers looking for the showroom's address and its list of brands.
Closure
The last web-archive snapshot of the helper.r52.ru home page is dated March 10, 2005[3]. According to our check, the domain no longer responds. Judging by the line "url: www.helpersport.ru" on the 2004 and 2005 snapshots, the firm's online presence had already been moving to a separate second-level domain by that time, and the address in the r52.ru zone had stopped being the primary one[2][3]. The showroom's further fate cannot be traced in the materials available to us.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)