Annual transactions exceeding 20 billion yuan and tens of thousands of business entities—this is the scorecard of Jiaxing Honghe's sweater industry after five decades of development. But what truly deserves industry attention is not the existing scale, but the official launch of an "integrated domestic-foreign trade service center" during the recent 2026 Meihong He Sweater Season. It attempts to answer a puzzle troubling many textile clusters: when domestic trade growth peaks and foreign trade channels fragment, how can factories capture both markets within the same system?
From trading venue to service hub: evolving cluster transformation
The newly launched service center, located on the third floor of Zhongchuang Market and covering approximately 4,000 square meters, serves as the offline carrier of the local Maoshanpai cross-border e-commerce platform. Over the past two years, the platform has organized over 200 local enterprises to explore markets in more than ten countries and attracted nearly a thousand overseas buyers to Honghe. These figures indicate that Honghe's foreign trade exploration is no longer scattered attempts but organized and systematic actions.
The center's functional design reveals a clear upgrade path: the service section introduces third-party quality inspection, customs declaration, logistics, financial and tax support, and AR digital tools to help enterprises escape low-price competition; the trade section features a 1,200-square-meter product selection center divided by target markets such as Japan/Korea, Middle East, South America, and Russia-Europe-Central Asia, effectively moving overseas buyers' sourcing decisions to the production site. For buyers, this means the inefficient process of "visiting multiple markets for samples" may be replaced by "one trip to Honghe, covering target regions."
Airport economy and industrial belt: a two-way empowerment
Honghe's latest layout benefits from the smooth operation of international cargo routes at Jiaxing Nanhu Airport and the accelerated construction of the Airport New City. Airport proximity is significant for time-sensitive categories like textiles and apparel—every day reduced in logistics time for quick-response orders boosts capital turnover. Dong Xialiang, president of the Honghe Sweater Chamber of Commerce, emphasized that a new pattern of deep industry-city integration and two-way domestic-foreign opening has been established.
A deeper change lies in the reversal of industrial operational logic. Ren Xingzhou, a special expert in the domestic trade field of the Ministry of Commerce, pointed out that professional markets are shifting from "produce what—circulate what—consume what" to "consumer demand guiding upstream production reversely." For Honghe's tens of thousands of business entities, this means the pure OEM model is no longer secure; only those who can quickly capture overseas consumer trends and use digital tools to inform design can secure premiums. The center's incubation section is designed for this—graded cultivation of individual workshops, small and micro enterprises, and above-scale enterprises, progressively advancing digital transformation and global layout.
Regional brand: dual cultivation inside and out
Xu Jianhua, director of the Circulation Branch of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, proposed three directions at the event: deepening domestic-foreign trade integration, strengthening digital technology empowerment, and promoting the leap of professional markets into modern industrial empowerment platforms. This highlights the universal value of the Honghe model—it is not just a case of one town in Zhejiang but a frontline sample for Yangtze River Delta textile clusters responding to domestic demand structure upgrades and foreign trade uncertainties.
For buyers, the center's brand section and IP guidance station send a clear signal: Honghe hopes to bid farewell to the old path of "no brand, pure volume" and shift to dual-wheel drive of "selling products plus selling brands." Overseas buyers who still approach procurement with a price-suppression mindset may find it increasingly difficult to access high-quality capacity; conversely, those willing to co-develop and respect IP designs will gain more stable supply chain support. Judging from on-site matchmaking with buyers from Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shishi, Changshu, and other cities, acceptance of this new cooperation model is rising.