Keqiao Textile City's H1 Turnover Exceeds 230 Billion Yuan: Industrial Resilience Driven by Digitalization and Overseas Warehouses

In the first half of 2026, the turnover of Shaoxing Keqiao China Textile City reached 237.068 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.26%. The growth accelerated in Q2, with Q1 turnover at 109.927 billion yuan (up 8.54%), implying Q2 turnover exceeded 127.1 billion yuan. This performance, amid global textile demand divergence and geopolitical risks, underscores the market's resilience.

Digitalization: From Fabric Search to Full-Chain Ordering

The first growth engine is digitalization. The launch of 'AI Cloth' 3.0 enables full online fabric search and ordering. Buyers can now use image recognition to match fabrics from the market's extensive database, covering woven, knitted, printed, and yarn-dyed categories. This shift transforms the market from a physical stall hub into a data platform, offering small suppliers low-cost digital access and enabling large traders to optimize production schedules with order data.

Specialized Zones: Demand Signals from Outdoor and Plush Fabrics

The second engine is category focus. The market has expanded dedicated zones for outdoor functional fabrics and plush fabrics. Outdoor fabrics cater to the growing global hiking and camping gear market, while plush fabrics align with winter apparel and home soft furnishing demand. By clustering similar products, buyers benefit from one-stop comparison and sampling, reducing transaction costs. The surrounding Keqiao printing and dyeing capacity enables rapid sample development and quick reorders, shortening lead times by 2-3 days compared to other markets.

Overseas Warehouses: Export Growth Validates Channel Value

The most notable data is foreign trade. From January to May, market procurement trade exports hit $2.038 billion, surging 25.72% year-on-year, far exceeding the national textile and apparel export average. This is supported by overseas operation centers and public warehouses in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. These facilities allow direct dispatch from domestic warehouses to market-front warehouses, drastically reducing cross-border logistics cycles. For exporters, this model solves small-batch, multi-variety order fulfillment challenges and strengthens the market's competitive moat against e-commerce platforms.

Practical Recommendations

For Buyers - Use 'AI Cloth' 3.0 for fabric screening and price comparison; it can save over 30% of sampling time, especially for small-batch, multi-variety orders. - Monitor new arrivals in outdoor functional and plush fabric zones; these zones have centralized pricing, offering transparent negotiation space. - For export orders, request suppliers to ship via the textile city's overseas warehouses to shorten delivery times and reduce damage risks.

For Fabric Mills - Digitize your fabric inventory promptly; products not on 'AI Cloth' will be algorithmically deprioritized, directly losing exposure. - Reserve at least 20% of capacity for quick-response orders in outdoor and plush categories, where delivery sensitivity is high. - For foreign trade, leverage the public overseas warehouses to consolidate shipments and reduce per-unit logistics costs, especially for orders targeting Southeast Asia and the Middle East.