The Honghe knitwear industry in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, with an annual transaction value exceeding 20 billion yuan and tens of thousands of business entities, is attempting to crack foreign-trade involution through a new service complex. During the 2026 Qimei Honghe Knitwear Season, the Honghe Knitwear Integrated Domestic-Foreign Trade Service Center was officially launched, alongside two rounds of strategic cooperation signings for knitwear overseas expansion and international logistics. This move signals that the five-decade-old industrial cluster is shifting foreign trade from "point breakthroughs" to "full-chain operations."
Background
The service center, located on the third floor of Honghe Zhongchuang Market, covers approximately 4,000 square meters, with a 1,200-square-meter foreign trade product selection area divided by target markets such as Japan/Korea, Middle East, South America, and Russia-Europe-Central Asia. Over the past two years, the Maoshanpai cross-border e-commerce platform has organized more than 200 local enterprises to explore over a dozen countries, attracting nearly 1,000 overseas buyers to Honghe. These figures indicate that Honghe knitwear's foreign trade foundation is not starting from scratch but has reached a stage requiring systematic upgrading.
Notably, the smooth operation of Jiaxing Nanhu International Cargo Routes and the accelerated construction of the Airport New City have brought Honghe a location advantage near the airport. For buyers, this could mean substantial changes in logistics efficiency and cost structures—air direct delivery shortens delivery cycles, enabling small-order, quick-response manufacturing in exports. Previously reliant on sea freight, Honghe knitwear exports can now capture higher-value-added orders thanks to air corridors.
Industry Impact
The design of the center's four functional sections reveals Honghe's precise response to industry pain points. The service section includes a self-built R&D center, third-party quality inspection, customs, logistics, financial services, and AR digital tools, directly addressing the high-cost shortcomings of small and medium enterprises operating alone. The trade section's overseas-partitioned product selection aims to lower decision barriers for foreign buyers—rather than having enterprises exhibit individually, the market is "brought" to their doorstep. The brand section's intellectual property guidance station and overseas risk warning mechanism indicate that infringement disputes have become a major obstacle to knitwear exports.
From an industry perspective, this architecture's essence is upgrading professional markets from "trading venues" to "industrial service complexes." Ren Xingzhou, a domestic trade expert from the Ministry of Commerce, aptly noted that industrial operation logic is shifting from "produce-this, circulate-this, consume-this" to "consumption-end reverse guidance of upstream production." For Honghe knitwear enterprises, this means no longer scheduling production based solely on their own cycles but making flexible supply according to real-time demand in overseas niche markets. The incubation section's tiered cultivation of workshops, small businesses, and above-scale enterprises builds a foundation for this reverse logic.
Xu Jianhua, chair of the Circulation Branch of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, proposed three directions—deepening domestic-foreign trade integration, strengthening digital technology empowerment, and promoting professional markets' leap to enabling platforms—which actually outline a transformation path for national knitwear clusters. As a sample, Honghe's success or failure will influence other producing markets' follow-up strategies. For buyers, Honghe's repositioning from a "low-price wholesale market" to a "branded product selection center" means that supply chain stability, quality control capabilities, and design added value will all be reassessed.
Practical Advice
For Buyers - Prioritize the overseas product selection area to screen products matching local styles, sizes, and certifications for target markets, saving hidden costs of factory audits. - Pay attention to suppliers' digital capabilities—those using AI design and small-order quick response are better suited for multi-batch, small-volume replenishment. - Leverage the center's third-party quality inspection and customs/logistics services to front-load quality control and customs clearance, reducing uncertainty in cross-border transactions.
For Foreign Trade Enterprises - Connect with the intellectual property warning mechanism early to avoid infringement disputes and build independent brand protection awareness, steering clear of low-price homogeneity. - Adjust pricing and delivery strategies based on air logistics advantages, turning air transport into a bargaining chip for time-sensitive customers. - Participate in the tiered cultivation system, applying for policy guidance or digital transformation support according to your scale, gradually aligning with the globalization layout expected of above-scale enterprises.
Honghe knitwear's shift is not merely an expansion of space but a concrete exploration of the path of "consolidating domestic trade, expanding foreign trade." When professional markets begin to think like service providers, the next fifty years of industrial clusters may have a new footnote.