As I checked my losing lottery tickets tonight,I saw a live video of Chino Hills, California where the ticket was sold.... What's that I see in the distance? An IKEA of course. So,I look up demographics and confirm that they only outnumber our metro (on paper) by a mere 200I people, falling well short of the 2 million magic number I always heard about.
Other things I find funny:
-directions closed
-dane design closed
-Jude and Jody/Oklahoma plywood discount is open as ever
-IKEA is aggressively opening in New locations, including Memphis, and A second one in Dallas
-we have no problems attracting clone stores (west elm, arhaus,etc)
-the Ashley lazy boy crap is on the March, and couldn't be doing better

The real question is how much did mattress brothers pay our commerce people to sabotage
anybody else got any better explanation?