Can a piece of umbrella fabric support an entire industry? Qiyang's answer: an annual capacity of 1 billion meters, capturing 60% of the domestic market. Now that outdoor sports have been written into the national consumption stimulus plan, this small Hunan town is trying to convert its 'umbrella fabric king' scale into terminal leverage in jackets and tents.
Scale Base and Transformation Pressure
Qiyang's textile rise follows a clear path. By 2025, the area had gathered 159 textile enterprises, including 41 above-scale firms and 25 specialized & innovative or high-tech companies, with total industrial output of 8.094 billion yuan, nearly 18% of the city's industry. From 2023 to 2025, the industry's total output grew at an average annual rate of about 11.5%. Baishui Textile Town became Hunan's only textile-specific industrial town, and the functional fabric cluster was recognized as a national SME characteristic industrial cluster.
Behind these numbers lie real equipment and capacity. The city has about 6,300 air-jet and water-jet looms, with an annual umbrella fabric capacity of about 1 billion meters, and 300 million meters each for bag and tent fabrics. Dongjun Textile operates 4,800 high-speed water-jet looms around the clock, extending from simple grey fabric processing to 16 processes including spinning, weaving, printing, dyeing, and finishing, and has built five DMF & toluene recovery towers to achieve near-zero exhaust emissions.
However, scale does not equal security. Qiyang's industry shows a 'strong middle, weak ends' pattern: upstream nylon and other raw materials plus pre-weaving support are insufficient, constraining supply chain stability and cost control; downstream high-value terminal products like jackets and tents are scarce, leaving profits to brand owners and channels. Gaps in auxiliary materials, public testing, industrial design, and other producer services further hinder the cluster's shift from quantity to quality.
Outdoor Economy: From Policy Window to Industrial Landing
The national '15th Five-Year Plan for Expanding Domestic Demand and Promoting Consumption' lists outdoor economy and sports consumption as key cultivation directions, opening a policy window for functional fabrics and scenario-based products. For Qiyang, this is both an opportunity and a challenge—the opportunity is that its technical accumulation in umbrella, bag, and tent fabrics can smoothly migrate to outdoor apparel fabrics; the challenge is how to leap from the midstream weaving to terminal brands, avoiding being reduced to a 'fabric workshop' in the value chain.
At the 2026 Qiyang Outdoor Textile Promotion Event in Shanghai, Yan Yan, vice president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, provided directional guidance for county-level transformation: consolidate the chain and extend to outdoor clothing and equipment; innovate through green printing and intelligent weaving; and promote deep integration of textile manufacturing with event economy and outdoor tourism. The essence of this logic is to require Qiyang to shift from 'selling fabric' to 'selling scenarios' and 'selling brands.'
In fact, Qiyang already has the micro-foundation for this transformation. Dongjun Textile produces 1 billion meters of umbrella fabric annually, holding 60% of the domestic market; Kaicheng Footwear makes 11 million pairs of NIKE sports shoes; Yian Sports holds a 33% global share of high-end helmets; Shuofang Sports produces 10 million balls per year. The echelon of leading enterprises with SME support provides manufacturing flexibility and rapid response for piloting terminal products.
Location Dividend and Factor Cost Advantages
Qiyang's location advantages are translating into real industrial receptivity. The area has integrated into the half-hour living circle of Yongzhou city, the one-hour economic circle of Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, and the three-hour circle of the Pearl River Delta, and is about to enter a '1.5-hour economic circle,' becoming the 'backyard garden' of the Greater Bay Area. Comprehensive factor costs are more than 10% lower than major coastal textile areas. The first county-level customs service station and the first enterprise service center in Yongzhou have been established, with policies like 'move-in with luggage' standard workshops and flexible industrial land transfer lowering entry barriers.
These conditions give Qiyang natural competitiveness in undertaking coastal industrial transfer, but it must also be wary of the 'curse of low cost'—if it relies solely on factor price advantages, it risks falling into a race to the bottom with Southeast Asia. Qiyang's response is the '1347' action framework: anchoring the overall goal of 'building a nationally influential outdoor sports textile and garment characteristic industrial cluster,' deepening the segmented industrial chain, and leveraging technical accumulation in water-free printing, functional finishing, and composite processing to consolidate the 'quantity' base and open up 'quality' space.