The Honghe knitwear industry cluster in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, with an annual market transaction value exceeding RMB 20 billion, has taken a key step in integrating domestic and foreign trade by launching a 4,000-square-meter integrated service center. Two strategic agreements for overseas expansion and international logistics cooperation were signed simultaneously. This move leverages Honghe's proximity to the Jiaxing Nanhu Airport international cargo routes and the accelerating airport new city development, aiming to convert locational advantages into tangible global trade channels.
The Underlying Logic of Industrial Transformation
After over five decades of development, Honghe has gathered tens of thousands of business entities. However, traditional professional markets commonly face bottlenecks such as low-price homogenized competition, limited export channels, and insufficient brand premium. The newly launched service center directly targets these pain points: its service section introduces third-party quality inspection and AR digital empowerment tools to help enterprises escape the low-price trap; its trade section features a 1,200-square-meter product selection area divided by overseas markets including Japan/Korea, Middle East, South America, and Russia-Europe-Central Asia, providing precise sourcing scenarios for foreign buyers. This shift from 'selling products' to 'selling brands' essentially reconstructs the industrial value chain.
Notably, the center also establishes an incubation section with a tiered cultivation system for individual workshops, small/micro enterprises, and above-scale enterprises. This indicates that local authorities are no longer satisfied with natural enterprise growth but aim to promote overall industrial upgrading through policy guidance and digital transformation. Ren Xingzhou, a domestic trade expert from the Ministry of Commerce, pointed out that professional markets have evolved from single trading venues to full-chain industrial service complexes, with operational logic shifting from 'produce-what-you-can-sell' to 'consumption guides upstream production.' The center's four sections are a tangible response to this logical change.
The Chemical Reaction Between Airport Economy and Market Clusters
The most unique variable in Honghe's transformation is its 'airport-adjacent location.' The smooth operation of Jiaxing Nanhu Airport's international cargo routes and the continuous improvement of the airport new city provide a physical foundation for rapid export of knitwear products that are seasonally sensitive and fashion-forward. Previously, the cross-border e-commerce platform 'Maoshanpai' organized over 200 local enterprises to explore markets in more than ten countries within two years, attracting nearly a thousand overseas buyers to Honghe. The service center now serves as a fixed base for these scattered overseas activities, enabling synergy in customs clearance, logistics, and overseas warehousing.
For buyers, this change directly reduces the trust cost of cross-border procurement. Previously, overseas customers had to visit factories one by one; now they can quickly compare products in the 1,200-square-meter selection center organized by target market. For local factories, the center's own R&D center and intellectual property guidance station provide a springboard from OEM to design-manufacturing and even brand operations. Xu Jianhua, director of the Circulation Branch of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, suggested 'leveraging the airport hub advantage to connect the entire chain,' which highlights the core competitiveness of the Honghe model compared to inland industrial clusters.
Demonstration Effect on Textile Market Clusters
The launch of the Honghe service center is not an isolated event. During the event, buyers from Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Jinan, Wuhan, Shishi, Chongqing, Yancheng, Shijiazhuang, Xiliu, Yiwu, Jimo, Changshu, Qinghe, Zhuzhou and other places conducted trade matching with Honghe enterprises. This cross-regional linkage reflects a new competitive-cooperative relationship among professional markets—not just competing for orders, but jointly exploring the upgrade from 'large and comprehensive' trading hubs to 'specialized and refined' industrial empowerment platforms. Ren Xingzhou encouraged Honghe to learn from the core of Yiwu's development experience but emphasized the need to base on its own knitwear industry reality, essentially pointing out the common path for market transformation: respect grassroots innovation and adapt to local conditions.
For the numerous textile and apparel professional markets across the country, the value of the Honghe sample lies in its decomposable combination: airport logistics as hard support, digital services as soft connection, brand incubation as long-term goal, and tiered cultivation to ensure enterprises of all sizes can find an upgrade entry. Whether this system can truly solve old problems like fragmented export channels and overseas compliance risks remains to be tested over time, but its direction is clear—professional markets must shift from a 'landlord economy' to a 'service economy,' otherwise they will be marginalized by cross-border e-commerce and flexible supply chain trends.