While most merchants in Keqiao's China Textile City are still fighting price wars in conventional fabrics, one shop in the Dongsheng Road zone has adopted a combination of dual-brand strategy, plant dyeing, and digitalization to achieve unit prices of 100-600 RMB per meter and maintain order growth. This case reveals not just a single company's transformation, but a microcosm of Keqiao's fabric industry moving from manufacturing to a 'manufacturing + service + brand' upgrade.
Background
Haoli Textile's growth began with its sister brand Qiting's launch in 2013. Initially, Qiting entered the market with school uniform base fabrics, building customers and supply chain through quality control. In 2018, as industry profits came under pressure and competition in conventional fabrics intensified, the company made a key decision: to develop functional outdoor fabrics on one hand, and to create Haoli Textile to focus on premium business menswear on the other, forming a dual-brand independent operation. The timing is notable—2018 was a period of divergence in Keqiao's fabric industry, with overcapacity in low-end segments and consumption upgrading. Early movers often captured the next wave of dividends.
Today, Qiting has settled in the first phase of Dongsheng Road's outdoor functional fabric zone, while Haoli has an independent stall in phase two. The Dongsheng Road area attracts brand owners, e-commerce merchants, and designers, who demand finer fabric quality and offer higher order conversion efficiency. For a company, location is not just a physical choice but a selection of customer structure—high-end customer density determines pricing power.
Industrial Impact
Haoli's product strategy contrasts sharply with most Keqiao merchants: it uses natural fibers like wool, silk, and lyocell, and replaces chemical dyeing with plant extraction. This 'natural + eco-friendly' positioning directly elevates product value and avoids low-price competition. With unit prices of 100-600 RMB, it serves not high-volume garment factories but premium menswear brands and designers who are demanding in terms of pattern and texture. The implication for buyers is that the value anchor of fabrics is shifting from 'composition' to 'craft and environmental attributes', and differentiated processes like plant dyeing will become new sources of premium.
On the supply chain side, Haoli relies on its own integrated factory, sharing a 15,000-square-meter warehouse, and operates a dual model of stock and custom orders. Stock supports small-batch urgent orders, while custom lead times range from 3 to 10 days, with fastest dispatch in 1 hour. This responsiveness is a hidden reason why premium customers pay a premium—they buy not only fabric but also time certainty. For foreign trade companies, this model suggests that warehousing and logistics efficiency are themselves competitiveness as delivery time becomes a decisive factor in orders.
Digitalization is another key variable. Haoli participated in the AI Fabric mini-program's digital fabric library, digitizing core fabrics like waffle, health cloth, double-sided plain knit, mesh, air layer, and pique. When designers bring sample swatches to find similar fabrics, the system can match them instantly, replacing inefficient manual swatch comparison and color card checking. For remote overseas clients, digital search greatly reduces communication costs. This case illustrates that fabric digitalization is not optional but a necessary tool for serving high-end clients—when customers bring fragmented swatches, the system's matching accuracy directly determines transaction success.
The AI Fabric experience hall in Dongsheng Road is about to enter trial operation, featuring smart body measurement, 3D virtual try-on, fabric visual creation, and garment simulation, linking online and offline displays of physical fabrics and virtual samples. This means fabric display is upgrading from 'hanging swatches' to 'immersive experience', allowing designers and brand clients to conduct more intuitive material selection. If this experience hall model is promoted, it may reshape fabric procurement decision-making—virtual samples reduce communication errors and shorten sampling cycles.
Practical Advice
Haoli's dual-brand synergy also extends to channel sharing. Its outdoor fabric production line uses Italian imported napping equipment, expanding capacity and improving bargaining power; its export business complies with EU standards for fluorine-free eco-friendly products, with long-term partners like Qiaodun, Xiaobeibei, and Little Swan. These resources feed Haoli's premium menswear business, creating a synergy where outdoor drives premium. After two years of strategic transformation, performance has improved significantly, and order growth suggests sustained growth this year.