Columbus, Ohio: The Mirror City

There is a concept in market research called the representative city: a place whose demographics and consumption patterns track the national average closely enough that what sells there can be predicted to sell everywhere. Columbus, Ohio, has functioned as that city since at least the middle of the twentieth century.

The logic is demographic. Columbus is large enough to have meaningful sample sizes, diverse enough to reflect national heterogeneity in a rough sense, and Midwestern enough that it lacks the specific coastal distortions that make New York and Los Angeles poor tests of what the rest of the country wants. If a fast food item works in Columbus, it works. If a television pilot tests well in Columbus, the network takes it seriously. Products have been launched, modified, and killed based on how Columbus responded to them.

Wendy's opened here. White Castle refined here. Jeni's proved a premium ice cream brand could survive here, which was the proof of concept that allowed it to expand nationally. Abercrombie and Fitch was founded in New York but runs its global operations from Columbus. The Limited was founded here by Leslie Wexner, who later bought Victoria's Secret. The first Bob Evans restaurant is in Rio Grande, Ohio, ninety minutes south, but the chain's headquarters have been in Columbus.

What this means, cumulatively, is that Columbus has been shaping national consumer culture for seventy years without receiving much credit for it. The ordinary things, the things Americans eat and wear and buy, have often passed through Columbus first. The mirror city reflects the country back at itself. Sometimes the country doesn't notice where the reflection is coming from.