start.r52.ru was the website of a Kulebaki-based maker of children's tricycles called "Malysh" ("Little One"). It was run by OOO "Zavod Start" ("Start Plant"), which described itself as the successor to the bicycle production of the Kulebaki Metallurgical Plant[1]; by 2013 the same site represented OOO "Kulebaki Trading House"[2]. The enterprise belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Nizhny Novgorod Region[1], the sales department answered on the Kulebaki area code (83176)[2], and the site itself lived in the Nizhny Novgorod third-level zone r52.ru. The first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 9 April 2002, the last — 6 May 2021[4].

What the site looked like

The home page was built as simply as possible: the heading "ZAVOD START" and one long "About the company" text — no news, no illustrated catalog in the text layer of the snapshot, no visitor counters in the surviving content[1]. At the bottom stood the line "Copyright © \"Zavod START\"" and the developer's credit: "Design & coding by Vlaskov Andrey, 2003" — it survived unchanged into the 2013 snapshot too, meaning the page held the same design for ten years[1][2].

The text was written not encyclopedically but as advertising copy, addressing the buyer directly. As the home page put it, "the simple, reliable and inexpensive 'Malysh' bicycles deservedly enjoy great popularity," and they could be found "in every corner of the former Soviet Union, as well as in India, Angola, Mozambique and other countries beyond it"[1]. In 2007 the site offered eleven bicycle modifications, in 2013 — already only six, but in three color options: pink, green and blue[1][2].

What the enterprise offered

Besides bicycles, the page also listed children's sleds — "children's sleds are very popular in winter," it later added that they came "in several color options"[1][2]. The 2007 version also mentioned "an inexpensive hand-held garden cultivator for tilling soil and weeding" — by 2013 this paragraph had disappeared from the text[1][2]. Quality was vouched for by links to a GOST certificate of conformity, the company's own patents for the "Malysh" bicycle and the sleds, as well as certificates and diplomas from international exhibitions of children's goods and toys[1].

By 2013 the site had turned from a business card into a sales tool: "Mail order" and "Where to buy" sections appeared, along with an order email address, start@r52.ru, and sales-department phone numbers (83176) 5-11-25, 5-70-32, 79-008[2]. A separate block listed partners — more than two dozen lines from Arkhangelsk and Saint Petersburg to Chita and Blagoveshchensk. The Nizhny Novgorod portion of the list included OOO "Rostok" with the phone number (831) 222-68-21, along with several sole proprietors with the city numbers 276-17-38 and 292-09-96 and a trader from the town of Bor[2]. This list is a rare case of a small plant's corporate page preserving for history an entire retail network complete with phone numbers and names.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site belonged to a layer typical of its time within the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: a corporate page on a free or cheap third-level domain in the r52.ru zone, made once and barely changed afterward. It ended up in the nn.ru directory under the manufacturers category, with a description copied verbatim from the home page — about the six bicycle modifications that "can be found on playgrounds, in parks, at kindergartens"[2].

The site was not notable for its traffic. It does not appear in the surviving Counter.nn.ru samples we have, and no record of its ranking position survives; more on how this sample is built can be found in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. In the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, the domain start.r52.ru does not appear in a single line[3]. That was its role: not a participant in internet life, but a reference page for the plant, visited for a phone number and a list of stores.

How it closed

The last snapshot with substantive text dates to 15 October 2013 — by then the sign on the page had already changed from "Zavod Start" to "Kulebaki Trading House," though the copyright line at the bottom remained unchanged[2]. The last snapshot of the address in the web archive is dated 6 May 2021[4]. At the time this survey was compiled, the domain start.r52.ru does not respond; all that remains of the site are two archived snapshots of the home page.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — List of start.r52.ru snapshots in the web archive (archive)