While Keqiao's fabric market still wrestles with price wars on conventional products, a dual-brand example in the Dongsheng Road district has pushed unit prices to 600 yuan using plant dyeing and digital tools. This price point is far beyond the reach of mass-market fabrics and highlights a viable path for local merchants to upgrade to high-end segments.
Background
The story starts modestly. Qiting brand began in 2013 at Keqiao's East Market, focusing on school uniform base fabrics, building a stable customer base through solid quality control. In 2018, as competition intensified and margins on conventional fabrics shrank, the brand made a key decision: develop functional outdoor fabrics while creating Haoli Textiles to target high-end business menswear, forming a dual-brand independent operation. This transformation aligned with consumption upgrades and the outdoor economy boom.
In terms of industrial belt layout, Qiting was among the first batch of merchants in Phase I of the Dongsheng Road outdoor functional fabric zone, while Haoli established an independent store in Phase II. The area attracts numerous brand owners, e-commerce sellers, and designers who demand finer fabrics and offer better order conversion. This location choice was not accidental but aimed at leveraging the agglomeration of high-end clients—for buyers, it means more precise supply-demand matching and lower communication costs.
Industry Impact
Haoli's product strategy is highly targeted: all fabrics use natural fibers such as wool, silk, and lyocell, with colors derived from plant extraction instead of chemical dyes. This process is not only eco-friendly but also creates a differentiation barrier—plant dyeing involves technical challenges in color fastness and batch consistency that ordinary factories find hard to replicate. Fabric prices range from 100 to 600 yuan, precisely avoiding low-end price wars and targeting menswear brands and designer orders that value quality and sustainability.
Supply chain capability is another ace. Leveraging an integrated factory, Haoli shares a 15,000 sqm warehouse and adopts a dual model of stock and custom orders: stock items handle small urgent orders, while custom orders take 3-10 days, with the fastest shipping in one hour. This responsiveness is uncommon in the high-end fabric sector, meaning buyers can significantly reduce inventory pressure and designers can adjust sampling schedules more flexibly.
Digitalization further amplifies efficiency. Haoli participates in the AI Fabric mini-program, digitizing core fabrics like waffle knit, health knit, double jersey, mesh, air layer, and pique. In the past, designers bringing swatches to find similar fabrics faced inefficient manual matching; now the system offers one-click matching for identical or similar fabrics, making remote communication with overseas clients smoother. For high-end clients, precise matching of hand feel and quality is essential, and digital tools address this pain point.
Notably, the AI Fabric Experience Hall in Dongsheng Road is about to trial operation, equipped with smart body measurement, 3D virtual fitting, fabric visual creation, and garment simulation. This means fabric display will extend from physical samples to virtual space, potentially attracting more designers and brand clients from outside. For the entire Keqiao industrial belt, this signals not just an upgrade for individual merchants but a change in transaction models.
The synergy of dual brands is evident. The outdoor fabric production line introduces Italian imported napping equipment, expanding capacity and enhancing bargaining power; foreign trade targets European and American markets, with exports meeting EU standards for fluorine-free environmental protection; domestic partnerships include Joeone for 8-10 years, plus clients like Xiaobeibei, Yingqi, Macedonia, and Xiaozhubanna. These channels feed each other, opening avenues for Haoli's high-end menswear business. After two years of strategic transformation, overall performance has improved significantly, and current order growth suggests sustained potential this year.
Practical Advice
For Buyers - Verify color fastness and batch consistency of plant-dyed fabrics; request test reports to avoid shade variation in bulk orders - Use digital fabric libraries to quickly find alternatives and shorten development cycles, but confirm physical hand feel matches virtual display - Balance stock and custom orders: use stock for small trial orders and custom for stable styles to manage inventory and lead times
For Foreign Trade Companies - Benchmark against EU fluorine-free environmental standards; adopt plant dyeing and other sustainable processes to meet growing eco-requirements from Western buyers - Learn from dual-brand synergy: use mass products for volume and high-end products for brand building, sharing supply chains to reduce marginal costs - Invest in digital fabric archiving and virtual display tools to reduce remote communication costs and improve service for international clients
Keqiao's fabric market has never lacked capacity; it lacks the ability to convert capacity into high added value. The Qiting and Haoli case proves that even starting from school uniform fabrics, one can secure a foothold in the high-end market by choosing the right track and using the right tools. For merchants still struggling in price wars, this is a transformation sample worth studying.