The Honghe knitwear cluster in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, generates annual trade exceeding RMB 20 billion and hosts tens of thousands of businesses. Yet what recently captured industry attention is not the scale but the launch of a 4,000-square-meter service center. Dubbed the Integrated Domestic-Foreign Trade Service Center, it attempts to answer a long-standing question for production-oriented clusters: how to serve both domestic and export markets with one infrastructure when domestic margins are thin and export channels are fragmented.
Background
Honghe's transformation is anchored in an airport economy. Jiaxing Nanhu Airport's international cargo routes are now operational, and the airport new city is accelerating development. For knitwear—a seasonal, delivery-sensitive product—air freight can significantly shorten cross-border lead times. Over the past two years, the local Maoshanpai platform has organized more than 200 companies to explore markets in over ten countries, attracting nearly 1,000 overseas buyers to Honghe. These numbers confirm real overseas demand, but scattered connections rarely convert into stable orders.
The new center aims to solve this pain point. Its trade section occupies 1,200 square meters and is divided into zones by target markets—Japan/Korea, Middle East, South America, Russia-Europe-Central Asia—allowing overseas buyers to select products by region. This market-driven layout transforms one-time trade fair interactions into a permanent, on-site sourcing venue, reducing search costs for small and medium overseas buyers.
Industry Impact
For buyers, the center's embedded services—third-party quality inspection, customs declaration, logistics, and tax/accounting—mean they no longer need to coordinate multiple vendors. More crucial are the AR digital empowerment tools and the product R&D center. These signal a shift: Honghe no longer encourages price competition but aims to raise bargaining power through design and services. Ren Xingzhou, a domestic trade expert from the Ministry of Commerce, notes that specialized markets are moving from "produce-what-you-sell" to "consumer demand steering upstream production." The center's sourcing zones physically embody this reverse logic.
For factories, the impact is more direct. The incubation section's tiered system—from policy guidance for individual workshops, to digital transformation support for small businesses, to global expansion for larger enterprises—means firms will receive differentiated resources. But the real challenge lies in branding: the IP guidance station and overseas risk warning mechanism reduce infringement risks but cannot replace a company's own brand investment. Industry insiders point out that knitwear is seasonal and style-driven, making flexible small-batch, quick-response capabilities more important than simply expanding capacity—which requires deep integration of digital design tools and production lines.
Practical Recommendations
For Buyers - Prioritize the center's sourcing zones to directly match suppliers in your target market region, shortening development cycles. - Request AR samples or digital design drafts from suppliers to conduct initial style screening before sampling, reducing communication costs. - Incorporate third-party inspection reports provided by the center into supplier evaluation to reduce the frequency of physical inspections.
For Factories - Do not treat the center merely as an order window; actively participate in its product R&D center projects to increase proprietary design share. - Use the incubation section's digital transformation support to first connect ERP and production execution systems before adopting AI design tools, avoiding blind investment. - Integrate the overseas IP risk warning mechanism into daily operations, conducting pre-check for each new export style to prevent infringement disputes.
The Honghe model shows that when an industrial cluster possesses airport logistics, digital tools, and a tiered service system, domestic-foreign integration becomes an operational business infrastructure rather than a slogan. For other knitwear or sweater clusters, the key is not replicating a service center but identifying their most scarce element—be it a port, design talent, or data platform. Whoever combines elements more efficiently will gain pricing power in the next competitive cycle.