Competition in the knitted fabric market is shifting from pure price battles to a dual test of supply-chain responsiveness and quality stability. China Customs data shows that in 2025, knit apparel exports grew 6.2% year-on-year, with categories like hoodies and tracksuits leading, yet profit margins on the fabric side are being squeezed. Taiyou Textile, a merchant in Keqiao's Dongsheng Road market, has chosen to respond with full-chain in-house production—a move worth industry attention.
Industry Landscape
As a major global textile cluster, Keqiao's Dongsheng Road market hosts numerous knit fabric merchants, but most are trading-oriented and lack in-house production capacity. Such merchants often face unstable supply and delayed deliveries during raw material price fluctuations or peak seasons. Public industry data indicates that in 2025, only about 30% of Keqiao fabric merchants owned weaving or dyeing facilities, while others relied on outsourced processing, making quality control difficult.
Taiyou Textile, with over two decades in the knit sector, has built its own weaving and dyeing workshops, keeping core production processes in-house. This vertical integration allows greater flexibility in adjusting fabric weight, width, and color, enabling rapid response to both designer sampling and bulk brand orders. For buyers, this translates into more stable quality and a shorter communication chain.
Products and Processes
Air-layer and ribbed fabrics are Taiyou's two main categories. Air-layer fabric features a three-layer construction with an air pocket in the middle, giving it a thick, crisp feel that resists wrinkling, while offering thermal insulation and breathability. It holds its shape after washing, making it suitable for autumn/winter hoodies and streetwear jackets. Ribbed fabric emphasizes horizontal stretch and durable recovery, with adjustable spandex ratio to meet different elasticity needs for underwear or sportswear.
Eco-friendly dyeing is another strong suit. The dyeing process uses low-pollution dyes and optimized low-temperature water-saving procedures, strictly controlling colorfastness and shrinkage. Finished products are odorless and non-fading, meeting domestic quality standards and foreign green procurement requirements. As European and American buyers tighten environmental compliance in supply chains, this capability is becoming a hard threshold for winning orders.
Business Model
The dual wholesale-retail track is key to balancing large and small customer needs. The wholesale side targets garment factories and secondary distributors, with direct supply reducing middleman markups and tiered discounts for bulk orders. The retail side supports small-batch sampling and over-the-counter purchases, lowering trial costs for e-commerce studios and independent designers. This diversified order structure buffers risks from over-reliance on any single client.
Inventory capability is the core guarantee for quick-response procurement. Taiyou maintains over a hundred popular colors in stock, ready for same-day shipment, eliminating long waiting periods. This advantage is especially valuable for high-frequency, short-lead-time orders like e-commerce small-batch quick-response and secondary replenishment. Additionally, combining in-store fabric inspection with online sample mailing, the service covers major garment clusters including Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shandong, and Xiliu.
Industry Implications
Taiyou's practice offers a transformation reference for small and medium knit merchants in Keqiao. While full-chain in-house production requires upfront investment, it brings triple control over quality, lead time, and cost. Its eco-friendly dyeing and inventory system align well with brand customers' dual demands for sustainability and quick response.
Going forward, competition in knitted fabrics will depend more on supply-chain resilience. Merchants with integrated weaving and dyeing capabilities are likely to maintain pricing power amid market fluctuations, while pure traders may need to accelerate upstream integration or risk losing orders.