Haaretz: evil IKEA kills furniture stores

A few years ago, the IKEA assemble-it-yourself furniture chain opened a branch in Israel (in the industrial zone of Netanya). It had been kept out of the Israeli market for a long time due to concerns over a youthful flirtation with Nazism by company founder and owner  Ingvar Kamprad. Eventually these concerns were resolved to the satisfaction of everyone involved.
As anybody familiar with the furniture business in Israel could have told you, IKEA rapidly became wildly popular. To the extent that a second branch will be opened shortly, at Bilu Junction just South of Rechovot. (This way there will be IKEA stores North and South of Greater Tel Aviv: the former still within driving distance of Haifa and the latter close to Ashdod and Ashkelon, and within driving distance of Jerusalem, Modi'in, and Be'er-Shev`a.)
Existing Israeli furniture stores basically come in four kinds: (1) plastic stuff that working-class people often use as home furniture because that's all they can afford; (2) overpriced junk; (3) grossly overpriced imports (often sold from catalogues since no stock is kept on hand), and (4) custom carpentry that is essentially unaffordable for anybody outside the upper income decile. IKEA now offers a fifth alternative: a vast range of imported "assemble-it-yourself" furniture at various price points, ranging from "mediocre but dirt cheap" to "pretty darn good and priced to move".
Count on Haaretz to find the bad news in this: hundreds of two-bit furniture stores will basically be driven out of the market. Never mind that most of these stores are of the "overpriced junk" or "grossly overpriced imports" kind, and have essentially zero economic rationale in a "normal" market. Or that thanks to IKEA (and inevitable eventual competitors) large swathes of the population are now able to afford decent furniture for the first time in their lives. Don't let this get in the way of an "eeeevil big business" trope ;-)