One out of every five sweaters in the world is produced in Daliang, Dongguan. This Pearl River Delta town, with an annual garment output of over 900 million pieces and a total industry chain transaction value exceeding 72 billion yuan, hosted the 95th International Wool Textile Conference. The conference theme, 'Smart Weaving Future: Wool's Health and Digital Life,' precisely captures the core transformation facing the wool industry today—when natural fibers meet digital technology and health consumption integrates with green responsibility, traditional wool textiles become a growth engine driven by new tech, new consumption, and new collaboration.
Certainty Supply: China's Global Role in Textiles
The scale advantage of China's textile industry provides rare stability to the global wool supply chain. Public data shows China's annual fiber processing volume exceeds 60 million tons, and annual garment production surpasses 70 billion pieces, both accounting for more than half of the global total. With exports exceeding 300 billion USD for six consecutive years, the strong output of intermediate products like chemical fibers and fabrics directly supports the global chain from raw materials to finished garments.
More critically, this supply capability is not static capacity accumulation. R&D investment intensity among China's textile enterprises above designated size rose from 1% at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan to 1.3% in 2024. High-performance fiber capacity accounts for over one-third of the global total. An innovation platform system comprising two national-level manufacturing innovation centers, five key laboratories, and 105 enterprise technology centers is converting technological reserves into industrial momentum. For the wool industry, this means more solid technical foundations for upstream raw material modification, midstream weaving efficiency, and downstream garment value addition.
Intelligent Restructuring: From Production Units to Industrial Ecosystems
Another strong signal from the conference is that AI's penetration into the wool industry is moving from single-point applications to full-chain reshaping. The global AI market reached 757.58 billion USD in 2025 and is expected to exceed 900 billion USD by 2026. In China, the number of newly registered one-person companies in the first half of 2025 alone grew 47% year-on-year—this 'handcraft economy' means small design studios and independent brands can use AI tools to complete design-to-sample processes at minimal cost.
At the production level, case data is compelling. Jiangsu Yueda Textile's 'lighthouse factory' reduced labor per 10,000 spindles by about 70%, increased total labor productivity more than fourfold, lowered unit energy consumption by 15%, and cut processing costs by 26%. Semir's AI-assisted design system boosted overall design efficiency by 35% and pattern design efficiency by over 200%. Bosideng's 'AI Aesthetic Brain' reduced sample development costs by over 60%. These figures trace the wool industry's real transition from labor-intensive to knowledge- and data-intensive.
Experience-Driven: Consumption Segmentation and Value Reshaping
The global consumer market is undergoing ecological restructuring. Trends of consumer stratification, grading, and classification are increasingly evident, with health, emotional connection, and self-expression becoming core demands. Social media accelerates information generation and dissemination, making product discovery, comparison, and decision-making increasingly intelligent. For the wool industry, this means the traditional 'raw material-processing-wholesale' model must shift to a 'design-experience-brand' model.
Chinese brands are active in this transition. Anta and SHEIN entered the 2026 GYBrand World's Top 500 Brands, while Hengli, Weiqiao, Erdos, and Shenzhou International are deeply involved in global cooperation through cross-border M&A and capacity layout. Enterprises across the wool chain must rethink their value positioning—whether to continue low-margin OEM or extend to high-value segments like design, branding, and sustainable certification.