How thin can the profit margin on a school uniform fabric be? While most merchants in Keqiao's East Market still bargain over a few cents per meter, Qiting and Haoli Textiles have used a dual-brand strategy to push fabric prices to the 100-600 yuan range while maintaining double-digit growth expectations. This case reflects the deep logic of merchants in China's Textile City shifting from scale-driven to value-driven operations.
Background
Qiting's start was humble: launched in 2013, registered in 2014, initially selling basic school uniform fabrics in East Market. But five years of quality control laid the groundwork for transformation. In 2018, as profits on conventional fabrics shrank, the company made two key decisions: enter functional outdoor fabrics, and establish Haoli Textiles to target high-end menswear, forming a dual-brand independent operation.
This shift was not accidental. Dongsheng Road area gathered many brand owners, e-commerce merchants, and designers who demand finer fabrics and offer higher order conversion rates. Haoli's general manager Li Xiongzhen said this is an ideal platform for high-end fabric business. But high-end positioning also means higher technical barriers and longer customer cultivation periods, not easily replicated by every merchant.
Industry Impact
Haoli's core competitiveness lies in a dual drive of "natural plus digital." On the product side, it uses natural fibers like wool, silk, and lyocell, replacing chemical dyeing with plant extraction, giving it a green and environmentally friendly label. On the supply chain side, it leverages 15,000 square meters of warehousing, offering both stock and custom orders, with customization cycles of 3-10 days and fastest stock delivery within one hour, greatly improving responsiveness.
Digitalization addresses a key pain point in high-end fabric trading: sample matching. Designers and brand buyers often carry small fabric swatches to find similar materials. Traditional manual comparison is inefficient. Through the AI Fabric mini-program, Haoli digitized core fabrics like waffle, health, double knit, mesh, air layer, and pique, enabling one-click matching of identical or similar fabrics, saving labor and improving remote service for overseas clients.
Notably, the AI Fabric experience hall in Dongsheng Road is about to start trial operation, featuring smart body measurement, 3D virtual fitting, fabric visual creation, and garment simulation. This means fabric display will extend from physical samples to virtual space, revolutionizing offline fabric sourcing for designers and brand customers. For buyers, this means lower sampling costs and faster decision cycles; for factories, it's an opportunity to shift from "selling fabric" to "selling services."
Practical Recommendations
For Buyers - Prioritize suppliers with digital fabric libraries to significantly shorten sample comparison time, especially for remote purchases. - Pay attention to eco-friendly processes like plant dyeing, which not only align with green consumption trends but also mitigate future environmental compliance risks. - Use the AI Fabric experience hall's 3D fitting features for virtual garment previews before sampling, reducing physical sampling iterations.
For Factories - Build own brands or high-end product lines to avoid price wars in the low-end market; consider a dual-brand independent operation model. - Invest in digital tools (e.g., fabric archiving, AI matching) to enhance service responsiveness, which is key to winning high-end customers. - Explore natural fibers and plant dyeing processes; despite higher costs, they create technical barriers and support high unit prices.
The synergy of dual brands has been validated: last year's overall performance improved significantly, and this year's order growth remains strong. This case shows that in traditional industrial clusters like Keqiao, differentiation is not a slogan but requires systematic restructuring of supply chain, digitalization, and customer resources. For merchants still struggling in the price quagmire, this may be a transformation sample worth studying.