tfs.nn.ru was the site of "TFS-Nizhny Novgorod" (TFS-Нижний Новгород), a Nizhny Novgorod supplier of electrical equipment from European manufacturers. The home page carried the title "TFS / News" and served as a showcase of the firm's product range, services and announcements[1]. The firm's Nizhny Novgorod affiliation is evident from the name itself and from the contacts: local phone numbers 218-67-69, 218-99-33, 218-95-11 and 218-65-59, and the email addresses n.novgorod@tfs.ru and tfs@nn.ru[3]. The surviving snapshots of the home page span the period from May 2004 to March 2008[1][3].

What the company did

The product range the site featured on its home page was built around three European brands: "SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC" (France), "LEGRAND" (France) and "PHILIPS" (Holland)[1]. From Schneider Electric it offered Masterpact NT power circuit breakers rated at 800-1600 A and Masterpact NW rated at 800-4000 A and 4000-6300 A, as well as Compact NS devices rated at 630-1600 A and 1600-3200 A; from Legrand — cable channels, cable trays, service racks, mini-racks and access hatches, and the GALEA line of wiring devices with PRO21 mechanisms; from Philips — Tipo 3 floodlights for 250/400 W high-pressure lamps with IP 65 protection rating[1].

Besides sales, the site advertised a free service: testing of electrical devices on a special test bench — single-pole and two-pole switches and buttons, RCDs (residual current devices), differential circuit breakers, dimmers, universal relay mechanisms and infrared switches, and, as the home page noted, devices purchased elsewhere were also accepted[1]. Customers were invited to select and order equipment from the catalogue at the company's showroom[1].

The set of job openings posted on the home page in 2008 shows the business was not limited to resale: it was looking for an active-sales manager, a design engineer for electrical switchgear with knowledge of AutoCAD, an electrician-assembler for switchgear panels, and a warehouse keeper. It promised training, paid vacation and sick leave, meal compensation, formal employment under the Labour Code, a Monday-to-Friday 9:00-18:00 schedule, and pay as "base salary plus percentage"[3].

What the site looked like

The home page was a long news column with no illustrated menu in the text: a greeting to the visitor, a block about the free device-testing service, and a large piece titled "World premieres in Nizhny Novgorod." Price lists were not published on the home page — they were grouped on separate "Suppliers" and "Product lines" pages, referenced by an announcement at the top of the column[2]. Between 2004 and 2006 the greeting to visitors changed: "Dear customers!" gave way to "Dear ladies and gentlemen!," along with the aforementioned reference to the price lists[1][2].

The central piece on the home page was written in the tone of corporate advertising: as the home page stated, the company "holds premieres of electrical-engineering novelties for Nizhny Novgorod consumers" at the same time as these developments reach the world market[1]. Notably, this text — describing the Proxima project, the GALEA line and the Tipo 3 floodlights — matches word for word across all three surviving snapshots from 2004, 2006 and 2008[1][2][3]. Over four years the "world premieres" on the home page were never updated once: only the service inserts changed — the greeting to visitors and the job-openings announcement.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

tfs.nn.ru belonged to the mass layer of corporate representations that Nizhny Novgorod trading firms acquired in the early 2000s: a single showcase page, a few internal sections with price lists, and the phone numbers of the sales department (see Nizhny Novgorod Internet). The site does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating, and no traffic figures for it are recorded in our data; the overall picture from the counter is examined in the article Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. The site is not listed in the published voting results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004[4].

How it ended

The last available snapshot of the home page is dated 12 March 2008; in it the site is still alive — the job openings are fresh, and the contact phone numbers and addresses are in place[3]. Beyond that, the site's trail breaks off in the materials available to us: there are no later saved copies of the home page, and our sources say nothing about what became of the domain itself or of the company.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2008 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)