While Keqiao's fabric market is mired in homogenized price wars, a striking contrast emerges: within the same business system, the unit price gap between standard school uniform fabrics and premium menswear fabrics can reach tenfold. The dual-brand strategy of Qiting and Haoli Textile is a product of this disparity—one holds the mass market base, the other carves a premium niche with plant dyes and natural fibers, offering a differentiation model for the Dongsheng Road zone.
Dual-Brand Strategy: From School Uniforms to Light Luxury
The starting point was unremarkable. Qiting launched in 2013, registered in 2014, initially operating in the East Market with school uniform base fabrics, building customer and supply chain stability through quality control. The turning point came in 2018 when margins on conventional fabrics kept shrinking, prompting a two-pronged move: Qiting pivoted to functional outdoor fabrics, while a new brand, Haoli Textile, was created to target premium business menswear. This is not merely brand stacking but a deliberate re-segmentation of customers, products, and channels.
The Dongsheng Road area attracts brand owners, e-commerce sellers, and designers who demand finer fabrics and yield better order conversion. Haoli's general manager, Li Xiongzhen, notes that this customer base is ideal for high-end fabric business. The two storefronts occupy phases one and two, creating physical and operational separation, avoiding internal competition while sharing supply chain resources.
Plant Dyeing and Natural Fibers: Pricing Logic to Avoid Price Wars
Haoli's product strategy directly addresses the pain points of premium menswear: all fabrics use pure natural fibers like wool, silk, and lyocell, with colors derived from plant extracts rather than chemical dyes. This process sacrifices some production efficiency but gains environmental attributes and differentiation. Unit prices range from 100 to 600 RMB, precisely targeting high-end brands and designer orders, sidestepping low-end market price competition from the start.
For buyers, this means fabric is not just a material but a story of sustainability. However, high pricing demands matching quality and delivery. Haoli leverages its integrated factory and shared 15,000 sqm warehouse, supporting both stock and custom orders. Custom lead times are 3-10 days, with fastest shipping within one hour. This responsiveness is rare in high-unit-price segments and becomes an invisible competitive edge supporting the premium.
Digital Tools: Efficiency Leap from Manual Matching to Smart Search
The pain point in premium fabric business is serving fragmentary sample requests. Designers often bring swatches to find similar fabrics; traditional manual color card comparison is inefficient, and remote communication with overseas clients is time-consuming. Haoli digitized core fabrics such as waffle, health knit, double jersey, mesh, air layer, and pique into the AI Fabric mini-program, enabling one-click matching of similar fabrics. Li Xiongzhen says this saves labor and improves matching accuracy, meeting high-end clients' demands for hand-feel and texture.
Digitalization is not a gimmick but converting tacit knowledge into reusable assets. For small and medium merchants, it shifts customer service from 'master craftsman intuition' to systematic retrieval, reducing dependence on individual experience. The AI Fabric Experience Hall in Dongsheng Road is about to trial operation, featuring smart body measurement, 3D virtual try-on, and fabric visualization, expected to link online and offline channels for broader fabric display and search.
Supply Chain Synergy and Export Channels: Twin Engines for Dual-Brand Growth
The value of dual brands lies in sharing a mature industrial chain. The outdoor fabric line uses Italian-imported napping machines to produce fleece fabrics, expanding capacity and enhancing bargaining power. Export channels cover Europe and America, with fabrics meeting EU standards for fluorine-free environmental protection. Domestic clients include Qiaodun (8-10 years of cooperation), Xiaobeibei, Yingqi, and others, providing bidirectional traffic for Haoli's premium menswear business.
Two years into the strategic transformation, synergy is evident in performance. Li Xiongzhen reveals that last year's overall business improved notably, and this year's order growth remains optimistic. This path shows that in Keqiao's fabric market, high-end transformation is not limited to building a new brand; leveraging existing supply chains and customer resources, combined with precise positioning and digital tools, can open new spaces.