TampaBay.com

By Mark Albright, St. Petersburg Times, Staff Writer

Tampa may have just slipped under the wire when Ikea opened a store in the bay area two months ago. Slumping sales from the global recession prompted the Swedish discount furniture giant to eliminate 5,000 of its 140,000 jobs and cut new store growth in half to about a dozen a year. Ilea founder Ingvar Kamprad said the company will be wiping out more jobs mainly in manufacturing and logistics because sales will be 7 percent, or $1.2 billion, below expectations for the fiscal year that ends next month. Ikea already froze all new investment in Russia, citing pervasive corruption to get local government permits, but the United States has been the center of its expansion with 38 of 246 stores. Kamprad argued Ikea was growing too fast, but in an interview with Dagens Industri, a Stockholm daily, he said the board decided “to hit the brakes.”