Honghe, a knitwear cluster in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, with annual transactions exceeding RMB 20 billion, is rewriting its growth playbook. The unveiling of an integrated domestic-foreign trade service center during the 2026 MaoMei Honghe Sweater Season marks a strategic shift for a traditional production hub with tens of thousands of businesses. As domestic demand growth slows and foreign orders become fragmented, Honghe's move offers a valuable case study for similar clusters seeking to leverage airport economy dividends and supply chain restructuring.
Background
With over five decades of history, Honghe's knitwear industry has long relied on wholesale markets and OEM processing, leaving domestic and foreign trade unbalanced. The new service center, located on the third floor of Zhongchuang Market, spans 4,000 square meters and integrates four functions: service, trade, brand, and incubation. Its core logic is to enable enterprises to complete the entire process—from design, quality control, and customs declaration to product selection and order taking—within one physical space. Notably, the trade section features a 1,200-square-meter showroom divided into zones for Japan/Korea, Middle East, South America, and Russia-Europe-Central Asia, signaling that Honghe no longer wants to be just a processing workshop but aims to become a supply hub that directly engages overseas buyers.
Simultaneously, strategic cooperation agreements for sweater exports and international logistics were signed. The smooth operation of Jiaxing Nanhu Airport's international cargo routes and the acceleration of the Airport New City project are transforming Honghe from an inland production base into an airport-adjacent industrial node. For knitwear—a category with strong seasonality and fast-response requirements—air freight enables higher-value urgent and small-batch orders. Over the past two years, local enterprises have organized over 200 firms through the "Maoshanpai" platform to explore more than ten countries, attracting nearly 1,000 overseas buyers to Honghe. The new center institutionalizes these export explorations, reducing the trial-and-error costs for small and medium enterprises to go global independently.
Industry Impact
From an industry perspective, Honghe's move aligns with the functional transformation of specialized markets. Ren Xingzhou, an expert in domestic trade, notes that the operational logic of specialized markets is shifting from "produce-what, circulate-what, consume-what" to "consumer demand guiding upstream production." This implies that the trade section of the Honghe service center should not just be a showroom but also a collection terminal for overseas consumer data. If enterprises can use feedback on style preferences, size distributions, and price sensitivity to inform design and R&D, they can escape the trap of homogenized low-price competition and truly transition from selling products to selling brands.
For buyers, the change enhances supply chain efficiency. Previously, sourcing from Honghe meant traveling among numerous workshop-style factories, with inconsistent quality and delivery. Now, the center introduces third-party quality inspection, customs, logistics, and financial services, along with AR digital product-selection tools, effectively integrating fragmented capacity into a standardized and reliable supply system. Overseas buyers can quickly match with suitable factories by target region, while local enterprises gain access to clients they could not reach before through collective branding. This "platform + industrial belt" model is reshaping transaction costs on both sides.
However, transformation is not instantaneous. The brand section's intellectual property guidance station and overseas risk warning mechanism indicate that management is aware of the pitfalls—trademark squatting, cultural differences, and compliance risks. The incubation section's tiered cultivation of individual workshops, small and micro enterprises, and larger companies acknowledges the vast digital divide within the industry. Over the next two years, whether Honghe can truly close the loop of "strengthening domestic trade, expanding foreign trade increment" depends on the solid implementation of these soft services, not just ceremonial signings and exhibition renovations.