year: Rochester, New York; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Nashua, New Hampshire; Columbus, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Spiegel also teamed up with Lillian Vernon, Lands' End, and other catalogers in 1994 to create a CD-ROM catalog. The company formed a partnership with MCI Communications Corporation that was aimed at increasing both companies' customer bases. MCI began offering a $35 Spiegel gift certificate to any customer who changed their long-distance telephone service to MCI. MCI also offered an additional $20 certificate to any customer who remained an MCI user for at least six months. Around this time, Spiegel considered entering the electronic shopping market through an online service such as America Online. This was realized in 1995 but at the expense of the year-old Catalog1 venture. By this time, Catalog1 had begun airing in three more test markets, raising its total presence to eight cities. Time Warner and Spiegel decided, however, there was a greater potential gain in launching a website for Catalog1 and capitalizing on the increasing popularity of the Internet. Accordingly, they scaled back their cable television operation and began working on a home page through Time Warner's popular Pathfinder site. Spiegel also initiated an entrance into the Canadian market in 1995 and planned to distribute its catalog there by the spring of 1996. Previous strong Eddie Bauer business in Canada aided the company's decision to move in on a larger scale, as did the company's good distribution agreements in Canada. Eddie Bauer was also performing well in Japan, where the company had built many retail stores throughout the previous few years. The year 1996 marked the most profitable year in Eddie Bauer's history, and Spiegel's revenues benefited. Eddie Bauer's merchandise was popular enough that the company encountered issues with out-of-stock merchandise occurrencesa direct result of high consumer demand. Eddie Bauer also made headlines in 1996 when it introduced "Balance Day" to its employees, which was an extra day off per year. The addition demonstrated the company's commitment to providing innovative benefits to its workers, and employees began referring to it as "call in well day." The company made an effort to find ways to offer its single workers benefits that were equal to those offered to its workers with families. Late 1990s Spiegel achieved $3.06billion in 1997 revenue, with approximately $1.8billion of that stemming from its Eddie Bauer operations. Regardless of Eddie Bauer's contribution to its parent company, however, the subsidiary