snm.r52.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod Union of Shops (Союз магазинов), a non-profit organization uniting retail trade businesses of Nizhny Novgorod[2]. The contacts at the bottom of the home page were: Russia, N. Novgorod, Ivana Romanova Street, building 2, telephone (8312) 280-680, and a mailbox in the nnov.ru zone[2]. The earliest news item on the preserved home page is dated 21 November 2002[1], and the last snapshot in the web archive is from 17 August 2010[4]. In the nn.ru directory, whose sample underlies our Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, the site was listed as "Union of Independent Shops."

The site in 2003: conferences, contests, appeals

The home page as preserved in May 2003 opened with a menu of sections — "About the Union," "News," "Conference Program," "Conferences," "Successful Purchase Contest," "Publications," and "Materials for the Media"; the union announced an updated version of the site on 19 March 2003, warning that some sections were not yet filled in[1]. The union's main undertaking was its conference program. On 2 April 2003, the conference "The Future of Trade — Russian and World Experience" was held in the Coat of Arms Hall of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair; the day before, the union had held a stand at the "World of Packaging and Trade" forum exhibition in the fair's first pavilion, where, as the home page reported, "only about 20 unsold tickets" remained[1]. The general sponsor was the company Velrus, with NBD-Bank as sponsor; on 20 March a contract was signed with the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation, Swisscontact, which supported the program[1]. An evening reception with a cognac tasting was held in the Pink Hall of the restaurant "Merkuriy" (Mercury), and the conference materials were published as a special issue of the newspaper "Obzor Tsen" ("Price Review"), the informational partner[1]. The union was preparing a second conference, "The Modern Shop — Secrets of Success," for 25 July 2003, jointly with the Department of Industry and Entrepreneurship of the Nizhny Novgorod city administration, timed to Trade Workers' Day, and announced within it the "Successful Purchase" tasting contest[1]. With the newspapers "Nizhegorodsky Rabochy" and "Obzor Tsen," the union ran the reader contests "My Shop Is One of a Kind in the Whole World" and "The Thing That Cannot Be"[1].

The news feed also recorded the association's offline life: a meeting at the bar "Kvarta" on 27 November 2002, a trip to Moscow on 5–6 December, and a round table on 17 December at the hotel "Tsentralny" on Sovetskaya Street, 12[1]. The union also acted as an industry lobbyist: in November 2002 it sent an appeal to State Duma deputies demanding changes to the law on the unified tax on imputed income[1], and on 27 May 2003 it issued a statement on market trade — after the city administration announced a draft order "On Conducting the Certification of Markets and Trading (Fair) Grounds of Nizhny Novgorod," it objected to media coverage that, in its assessment, did not correspond to "the real state of affairs"[1].

The site by 2004: education and media monitoring

By November 2004 the site's structure had grown: sections were added for "Educational Program," "Exhibition and Mass Projects," "Ratings and Contests," "Research and Databases," "Advocacy," "Information Partners," and "Exhibition and Tasting Participants"[2]. The educational line came to the fore: on 14 October 2004 the union, together with the Higher School of Management, announced a 72-hour professional development program to MBA standards called "Retail Management," with three sixteen-hour seminars scheduled for the first quarter of 2005[2]. On 3–4 December 2004, a two-day seminar, "Managing Assortment and Merchandise Flow," was held in Nizhny Novgorod, led by retail trade consultants Ruben and Kira Kanayan[2].

From 1 July 2004 the site opened a daily monitoring of Nizhny Novgorod media publications on trade; its stated purpose was "public coverage of the fate of the most important business projects," as well as tracking the authorities' attitude toward business[2]. The feed for late November 2004 included the region's sale of a 51% stake in the "Oksky" and "Zarechny" cold-storage plants at an auction on 27 December, October results for NMZhK (6,118 tons of mayonnaise, 13% more than a year earlier), and the "Myasnov" chain's expansion into the regions through franchising[2]. At the same time, timed to Trade Day, the photo project "Events of Trade in Nizhny Novgorod" was launched, documenting how trade and public catering changed in the second half of the 20th century[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site lived in the r52.ru zone, one of the three local zones, while the union's mail was set up in the nnov.ru zone; the telephone with the 8312 area code and the address on Ivana Romanova Street confirm its Nizhny Novgorod registration[2]. Among the notable sites of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, however, the resource was not listed: it does not appear in our preserved samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, no rating position was recorded for it, and the domain snm.r52.ru does not appear in the results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[3]. This reflected its genre: the site addressed not a mass readership but shop owners, suppliers, and officials.

How it closed

The web archive preserved eleven captures of the snm.r52.ru home page; readable text survives only for 2003 and 2004, and the last snapshot is dated 17 August 2010[4]. The archived copies of the home page contain no information about a move to another address; the domain snm.r52.ru is now unmaintained, and all that remains of the Union of Shops' presence on the internet are these snapshots.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — List of snm.r52.ru snapshots in the web archive (archive)