arial.nn.ru was the website of Arial LLC, a Nizhny Novgorod company that traded in petroleum products: industrial, transformer, and motor oils, lubricants, and technical fluids[1]. Besides trading, the firm also ran freight transport and construction businesses — both lines had their own sections on the site[1]. The Nizhny Novgorod connection is visible right on the main page: delivery of products to customers in Nizhny Novgorod, Dzerzhinsk, Kstovo, and Bor was free[1], and among the offers was the supply of products from oil refineries in Nizhny Novgorod Region[1]. The first snapshot of the site in the web archive is dated March 12, 2003[2], and the last, April 8, 2008, when the address was already returning a hosting provider's placeholder page[3].
What the site looked like
The heading of the main page doubled as a complete description of the firm's business: "Arial LLC | Sale of petroleum products, industrial and transformer oils, lubricants, and fluids," as the main page stated[1]. Beneath it was the line "Sale of petroleum products wholesale, in small batches, and retail"[1].
The menu was divided into three blocks. "About the company" led to the pages "Arial LLC," "Site news," and "Contacts and details," as well as two separate maps with directions — to the office and to the warehouse[1]. The "Products and services" section consisted of four items: "Petroleum products and lubricants," "Emulsol EGT," "Freight transport," and "Construction activity"[1]. The third block, "Price list," offered a download of the range of petroleum products and lubricants in MS Excel format and an "Order products or a price list" form[1].
The ordering service on the website appeared late: on November 3, 2004, the news section reported that "the online ordering service has been put into regular operation," and questions about prices, availability, and delivery were to be sent through the order form; the same place offered a subscription to a mailing of the price list in Excel format[1]. A month earlier, on October 28, 2004, the company had announced a change of email to an address on mail.ru[1]. The earliest surviving snapshot, from March 2003, caught the site with the page "About the Company | Arial"[2].
Page News
The front page was occupied by the "Page News" feed — in effect a bulletin board of the procurement and sales department. The surviving entries cover the autumn and December of 2004[1].
On December 16, 2004, the firm announced a clearance sale of remaining stock "in connection with warehouse clearing," with specific prices: Lukoil-Super SAE 5W30 motor oil in a 4-liter canister — 290 rubles, Lukoil-TM 5-18 transmission oil in a 4-liter canister — 180 rubles, VM-4 vacuum oil in a 16-kg can — 1,550 rubles, a 175-kg barrel of 1-13 grease — 8,500 rubles, EGT emulsol — from 21,000 rubles per ton in bulk and from 22,000 rubles in barrels[1].
Counter-purchases took up just as much space. On November 25, 2004, Arial was looking for used oil "in any volume for its tankers" and was interested in regular deliveries[1]. On November 17 it sought granulated polyamide PASh-21 in bags, with the monthly requirement given as 20–40 tons[1]. On December 20 an ad appeared to buy a used tank trailer of 4–6 cubic meters for a ZIL or KamAZ truck, or else a flatbed trailer[1]. On November 3 the company reported regular runs of its tankers to Moscow and its readiness to haul transformer oil from there[1].
The list of suppliers posted in the same place shows the geography of procurement: Lukoil-Volganefteprodukt, Slavneft — Mendeleyev YaNPZ (Yaroslavl Oil Refinery), Rikos and RostovOrgSintez from Rostov, Azmol from Berdyansk, Lukoil — Volgograd, Ryazneftekhimprodukt, Rosneft — Neftprodukt Plant, the Moscow Oil and Lubricants Plant, and the Perm Plant of Lubricants and Coolants[1].
Place in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet
In the rubricator of the nn.ru catalog, the site's listing described Arial more broadly than its front page did: wholesale and retail trade in industrial oils and lubricants, passenger and freight transport, construction work, and turnkey renovation of apartments and offices. This is a typical mid-2000s corporate business-card site of a small trading firm: the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of those years consisted largely of such pages.
The site was not a prominent resource. In the surviving results of the 2004 voting for Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, neither the domain nor the firm's name appears[4]. It also does not turn up in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter — for more on how this data is structured, see the archival study of the rating.
Relocation and Shutdown
On December 17, 2004, an entry appeared in the feed: "Our site is moving to http://www.arialnn.ru"[1]. The announcement of the move remained on the home page in the February 2005 snapshot as well, which means the address in the nn.ru zone kept working even after the announcement[1]. Few snapshots have survived from all those years.
By April 8, 2008, the address returned a standard hosting-provider page: "The address you requested points to this server, but no resource with that name was found," with the advertising line "NN.RU — The Best Hosting for Businesses in Nizhny Novgorod" and a phone/fax number of (8312) 19-77-99, 19-97-84[3]. These contact details belong to the hosting company, not to Arial: the firm's site was no longer at that address. The last snapshot in the web archive is dated that same April 8, 2008[3]. The domain arial.nn.ru no longer exists.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2008 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day Vote, 2004 (archive)