With annual transactions exceeding 20 billion yuan and tens of thousands of business entities, Honghe's sweater industry in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, has long been a powerhouse. Yet what deserves industry-wide attention is its attempt to rewrite growth logic through airport-adjacent economics: shifting from 'produce-what-you-can-sell' to 'consumer-demand-driven production,' and from low-price competition to brand globalization.
Event Background
The 2026 Cuimei Honghe Sweater Season recently opened under the theme 'Cuimei Honghe, Weaving the World.' At the ceremony, the Honghe Sweater Integrated Domestic and Foreign Trade Service Center was officially launched, accompanied by two signing rounds for overseas expansion and international logistics cooperation. Located on the third floor of Honghe Zhongchuang Market, the center spans approximately 4,000 square meters and serves as the offline carrier for the Maoshanpai cross-border e-commerce platform. Over the past two years, Maoshanpai has organized more than 200 local enterprises to explore markets in over a dozen countries, attracting nearly 1,000 overseas buyers to Honghe.
Notably, the smooth operation of international cargo routes at Jiaxing Nanhu Airport and the accelerated construction of the Airport New City are unleashing location advantages. For seasonal products like sweaters, logistics efficiency directly determines order placement. By combining airport proximity with industry, Honghe enables enterprises to respond more flexibly to small-batch, fast-reorder overseas demand, rather than relying solely on traditional bulk export via sea freight.
Industry Impact
The new service center comprises four sections: services, trade, branding, and incubation. The services section includes an in-house product R&D center, third-party quality inspection, and supporting customs, logistics, tax, and AR digital tools to help enterprises escape low-price competition. The trade section features a 1,200-square-meter selection center divided into zones for Japan/Korea, Middle East, South America, and Russia-Europe-Central Asia, facilitating precise sourcing for overseas visitors. The branding section establishes an IP guidance station and an overseas IP risk warning mechanism. The incubation section builds a tiered cultivation system for individual workshops, small enterprises, and above-scale companies.
The underlying intent is to remove barriers between domestic and foreign trade. For buyers, the region-based selection center reduces costs of multi-market comparison; for factories, one-stop support in inspection, customs, and logistics lowers entry barriers for smaller players. The real challenge, however, lies in transitioning from 'selling products' to 'selling brands'—requiring investment in design, R&D, and overseas channel building, not just price advantages.
Xu Jianhua, chair of the Circulation Branch of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, proposed three directions: deepening domestic-foreign trade integration by leveraging the airport hub to streamline customs, logistics, and overseas warehousing; strengthening digital empowerment through AI design and digital marketing; and upgrading specialized markets into modern industrial empowerment platforms. Ren Xingzhou, a domestic trade expert from the Ministry of Commerce, noted that specialized markets have evolved from single trading venues into full-chain service complexes, and should learn from the essence of Yiwu's experience while adapting to local conditions.
These suggestions directly address current pain points: severe homogenization, weak bargaining power, and reliance on intermediaries for overseas channels. Honghe's exploration essentially builds a model of an 'industrial service complex'—by centralizing R&D, quality inspection, logistics, and branding services, it reduces the risk of individual enterprise transformation. For other textile clusters nationwide, the reference value lies not in copying the model but in leveraging unique local resources (like airport proximity) to restructure service chains.