The Ministry of Communications delayed a third expansion plan of the phone service in March 1913, despite having 120,000 potential telephone-subscribers waiting for phone installations. NEC sales fell sixty percent between 1912 and 1915. During the interim, Iwadare started importing appliances, including electric fans, kitchen appliances, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners. Electric fans had never been seen in Japan before. The imports were intended to prop up company sales. In 1916, the government resumed the delayed telephone-expansion plan, adding 75,000 subscribers and 326,000 kilometers of new toll lines. Thanks to this third expansion plan, NEC expanded at a time when much of the rest of Japanese industry contracted.