The Simplicity Pattern Company is a manufacturer of sewing pattern guides, under the "Simplicity Pattern", "It's So Easy" and "New Look" brands. The company was founded in 1927 in New York City . During the Great Depression , Simplicity allowed home seamstresses to create fashionable clothing in a reliable manner. The patterns are manufactured in the US but are distributed and sold in Canada , England , and Australia , in some markets by Burda and in Mexico and South Africa by third-party distributors. The company licenses its name to the manufacture of non-textile materials such as sewing machines , doll house kits, and sewing supplies. Simplicity is now owned by Design Group Americas, Inc, a subsidiary of the British company IG Design Group plc.
8-587: James J. Shapiro (1909–1995) founded the Simplicity Pattern Company in 1927 and was its first president. The company was based on an idea of his father's, Joseph M. Shapiro (1888 Russia – 1968 California), a magazine ad salesman. The company at one point was considered part of the NYSE Nifty Fifty stocks. In 1998, the company was acquired by Conso International Corp. Conso subsequently changed its name to Simplicity Creative Group, Inc. Until 2007,
16-455: Is pinned on the fabric, and the sewer then cuts along the printed lines and stitches the cloth together to create the finished clothing. Each Simplicity pattern has step-by-step instructions for cutting, stitching, and assembling of clothes. Simplicity aims to emulate fashion designer clothing, and the company currently produces over 1,600 patterns. Nifty Fifty In the United States ,
24-584: The company had its main plant in Niles, Michigan . Simplicity Creative Group was acquired by Wilton Brands, Inc. in 2013, and sold in November 2017 to CSS Industries , who in turn were acquired in January 2020 by IG Design Group plc, via their American subsidiary Design Group Americas, Inc. Simplicity Patterns, like most home sewing patterns, consist of tissue paper printed with numerical guides and instructions. The paper
32-415: The constituents were solid earnings growth for which these stocks were assigned extraordinary high price–earnings ratios . Trading at fifty times earnings or higher was common, far above the long-term market average of about 15 to 20. The long bear market of the 1970s which began with the 1973–74 stock market crash and lasted until 1982 caused valuations of the nifty fifty to fall to low levels along with
40-613: The early 1980s are an example of what may occur following a period during which many investors ignore fundamental stock valuation metrics, to instead make decisions on popular sentiment. Roughly half of the Nifty Fifty have since recovered and are solid performers, although a few are now defunct or otherwise worthless. Investor Howard Marks reports that about half of the Nifty Fifty "compiled respectable returns for 25 years, even when measured from their pre-crash highs, suggesting that very high valuations can be fundamentally justified." On
48-579: The other hand, Professor Jeremy Siegel analyzed the Nifty Fifty era in his book Stocks for the Long Run , and determined companies that routinely sold for P/E ratios above 50 consistently performed worse than the broader market (as measured by the S&;P 500 ) in the next 25 years, with only a few exceptions. The stocks were often described as "one-decision", as they were viewed as extremely stable, even over long periods of time. The most common characteristic by
56-477: The rest of the market, with most of these stocks under-performing the broader market averages. A notable exception was Wal-Mart, the best performing stock on the list, with a 29.65% compounded annualized return over a 29-year period. However, Wal-Mart's initial public offering was in 1970 and only started trading on the NYSE on August 25, 1972, at the end of the bull market. Because of the under-performance of most of
64-467: The term Nifty Fifty was an informal designation for a group of roughly fifty large-cap stocks on the New York Stock Exchange in the 1960s and 1970s that were widely regarded as solid buy and hold growth stocks, or " Blue-chip " stocks. These fifty stocks are credited by historians with propelling the bull market of the early 1970s, while their subsequent crash and underperformance through
#132867