With an annual transaction value exceeding 20 billion yuan and tens of thousands of business entities, the Honghe knitwear industry in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, has long been a leading player in the sweater cluster. But volume does not equal quality, and the long-standing reliance on low-price, high-volume sales is under dual pressure from domestic competition and international market changes. The recent launch of the Honghe Integrated Domestic and Foreign Trade Service Center is seen locally as a key move to break the impasse. Behind this action lies the deep logic of transforming an industrial cluster from 'selling products' to 'selling services and brands'.
Background
Honghe's transformation is not sudden. Public data shows that the area has gathered tens of thousands of knitwear business entities, with annual market transaction value exceeding 20 billion yuan, and products exported to multiple countries and regions. With the smooth operation of Jiaxing Nanhu International Cargo Routes and the accelerated construction of the Airport New City, Honghe has gained a rare airport-adjacent advantage, providing a physical channel for the industry to integrate into the dual circulation. Leveraging this advantage, the Honghe Integrated Domestic and Foreign Trade Service Center was launched on the third floor of Zhongchuang Market, covering about 4,000 square meters, with four functional sections: services, trade, branding, and incubation.
The center serves as the offline carrier of the 'Maoshanpai' cross-border e-commerce platform. In the past two years, 'Maoshanpai' has organized over 200 local enterprises to explore markets in more than ten countries, attracting nearly a thousand overseas buyers to visit Honghe. These figures indicate that Honghe's foreign trade exploration has shifted from sporadic exhibitions to systematic operations. On the day of the launch, the center also signed strategic cooperation agreements for sweater overseas expansion and international logistics channels, providing concrete support for subsequent business implementation.
Industrial Impact
For buyers, the trade section of the center features a 1,200-square-meter foreign trade product selection hall, divided into exhibition areas for target markets such as Japan/Korea, Middle East, South America, Russia-Europe-Central Asia. This allows overseas customers to select products precisely by market, significantly reducing comparison and communication costs. For local enterprises, the service section introduces third-party quality inspection institutions, along with customs declaration, logistics, tax services, and AR digital empowerment tools. Essentially, it centralizes previously fragmented intermediary services, helping companies escape low-price competition and focus on enhancing product added value.
The deeper significance lies in the shift of operational logic. Ren Xingzhou, a domestic trade expert from the Ministry of Commerce, pointed out at the event that professional markets are upgrading from single trading venues to full-chain industrial service complexes, with the industry's operational logic shifting from 'produce-what, circulate-what, consume-what' to 'consumption-side reverse guidance for upstream production'. The branding section of the Honghe center, which establishes an intellectual property and brand guidance station and builds an overseas IP risk warning mechanism, is a response to this trend. When companies shift from selling products to selling brands, price wars naturally lose their breeding ground.
However, transformation will not happen overnight. Honghe's knitwear industry has long been dominated by small workshops, with weak digital foundations and uneven brand awareness. The incubation section's tiered cultivation system—providing policy guidance for individual workshops, digital transformation support for small and micro enterprises, and guiding above-scale enterprises to globalize—shows a clear path forward. But to truly benefit tens of thousands of business entities, practical issues such as insufficient small-batch quick-response capabilities and high overseas channel maintenance costs must be addressed.