Selling the world of women’s wearables

When Ralph Erardy became publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, known as “the bible” of the fashion industry, he admittedly didn’t know much about the world of wearables. Fortunately, his wife, Claudia, worked in the garment industry and helped him learn his way around.

“I was able to bounce things off of her in the beginning and say, ‘Hey, what is a missy fit?’” he recalls.

Now, 12 years later, “I know quite a bit about fashion,” Erardy reports. He travels regularly to fashion shows in London, Milan and Paris and becomes extremely popular during New York Fashion Week, when friends phone him looking for tickets to the runway shows in Bryant Park. His daughter Emily, a UD sophomore majoring in fashion and apparel studies, is the lucky one who gets those tickets. She sits next to Dad and points out the celebrities to him.

But, it wasn’t his knowledge of fashion —or his ability to learn—that got Erardy the job rubbing elbows with fashionistas. It was his track record leading advertising sales and business development at major consumer and business-to-business magazines such as Manhattan Inc., Wine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado, among others.

“Learning new categories is the fun part of the job, but the publishing stays the same. It’s the friendly art of persuasion,” he says.

Erardy manages a sales staff of 17 for a publication with a combined print and online circulation of 46,000 readers. Women’s Wear Daily also has 80 people on the editorial side, who report to the editor-in-chief. The only daily newspaper in the fashion industry, it is read by fashion editors at consumer publications like Vogue and Glamour and by the top managers in the fashion retail business. “Macy’s may have 300 stores, but there’s only one guy running it, and he’s the one who reads Women’s Wear Daily,” Erardy explains.

Since 2002, when he became group publisher at Women’s Wear Daily (known as WWD), Erardy has helped grow the publication by 62 percent, a rare feat in a consolidating marketplace. He attributes this success to a strategy of expanding the WWD franchise to include several hybrid publications.

“The name of the game is to keep reinventing yourself and keep up with things,” he says. “That’s what fashion is about.”

Women’s Wear Daily now has sister publications including WWD Collections, published twice a year following the fashion shows in spring and fall; WWD Fast, offering a monthly look at the global fashion scene; WWD Scoop, a quarterly glimpse into the cultural and leisure pursuits of the world’s most fashionable people; and WWD Accessories, a twice-a-year look at the newest and most popular styles in the accessories market. Other publications giving additional insider expertise to the worlds of beauty and fashion include WWD Beauty Biz, WWD Salon and WWD Beauty Report. Erardy oversees sales and business developments for all of them, as well as the online publication at WWD.com.

What he’s most excited about lately, however, is his role on the Fashion and Apparel Studies Advisory Board at the University of Delaware. “After doing this for about 30 years, I’m looking forward to seeing how I can help other people in this industry grow, and maybe get there a little quicker because of some of the people I know,” he says.

The advisory board was established in fall 2006, with 20 members from across the fashion and apparel industry. Since attending his first board meeting and roundtable discussion with students and faculty, Erardy has been doing his part to build awareness of UD’s fashion and merchandising curriculum among some of the “legends of the industry” in New York City. He hopes his efforts will help put the UD program on the map, alongside FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and Parson’s in New York and Otis in Los Angeles, “which are strictly design schools versus a college experience like UD,” he says.

Having completed her freshman year on the dean’s list, daughter Emily spent the summer as an intern at Condé Nast Publications, working on the same floor as her father. She plans to work at the UD fashion magazine, UDress, this fall.

“She loves the University, and my son is thinking of going there as well,” Erardy says. “That’s what got me interested, but now that I’m involved I’m really looking forward to working with the University and seeing how we can bring more attention to the program.”

—Sharon Huss Roat, AS ’87

Ralph and Claudia Erardy live in Tenafly, N.J.