Business & Industry
A single 1963 storefront that grew into two separately traded public retail companies without leaving town, a startup accelerator TIME ranked the highest in Ohio on its first-ever national list, and a decades-old reputation -- with real, checkable reasoning behind it, not folklore -- for testing new products on Columbus shoppers before anyone else sees them.
Bath & Body Works, Inc.
Bath & Body Works traces to 1963, when 26-year-old Les Wexner borrowed money from his aunt and a bank to open The Limited at Columbus's Kingsdale Shopping Center. The company moved to its Morse Road headquarters in Columbus in 1977 and has operated from there since, through its growth into L Brands and its 2021 split into two separately traded public companies, Bath & Body Works and Victoria's Secret. In 2023, Bath & Body Works consolidated its production supply chain to the Columbus area, relocating roughly ten suppliers and adding about 5,000 jobs.
Columbus College of Art & Design
Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) was founded January 6, 1879, starting with three students and one teacher, making it one of the oldest private art and design colleges in the country; it has held accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design since 1976. Its fashion design program is one of the factors Bloomberg cited when it ranked Columbus the third-most-fashionable city in the U.S. in 2012, alongside the concentration of national apparel-retail headquarters the city already carries.
Rev1 Ventures
Rev1 Ventures, the Columbus-based venture-development firm that combines startup-studio, accelerator, and investor functions, was named to TIME magazine's inaugural "America's Best Incubators & Accelerators" list in August 2026 -- and was the highest-ranked Ohio-based organization on that national list, a ranking built on alumni evaluations, organizational track record, and recommendations from startup investors and entrepreneurs.
"Test City, USA"
Columbus has carried the nickname "Test City, USA" for decades among marketers, and the reasoning behind it is specific rather than folklore: researchers point to a population that mirrors national demographics, an economy not dominated by any single employer, a full range of retail and media outlets for realistic test campaigns, and advertising costs well below markets like New York or Chicago. Columbus is particularly cited for fast-food and packaged-food test launches, since food preferences generalize across regions more reliably than other product categories; R.J. Reynolds, for one, used Columbus to test dissolvable nicotine mints.