While most Keqiao fabric merchants are still fighting over a few cents per meter, a quiet upgrade battle is underway in the Dongsheng Road specialty district. The dual-brand strategy of Qiting and Haoli Textile has completed a decade-long leap from school uniform fabrics to light luxury menswear, reflecting a structural adjustment across the entire China Textile City.
Background
Qiting, launched in 2013 and registered in 2014, started in the East Market with basic school uniform fabrics. At that time, the segment competed on quality control and volume, with thin margins but stable customer and supply chains. The turning point came in 2018 when profits for conventional fabrics shrank. The company made two key decisions: enter functional outdoor fabrics and create Haoli Textile to operate independently in high-end menswear fabrics.
This layout was also spatial. Qiting became one of the first tenants in the Dongsheng Road outdoor functional fabric Phase I, while Haoli opened a separate booth in Phase II. The district attracts numerous brand owners, e-commerce sellers, and independent designers who demand far more refined fabrics than traditional wholesale markets, resulting in better order conversion. The two booths each target a distinct market while sharing supply chain resources.
Industry Impact
Haoli's product strategy clearly targets a blue ocean overlooked by many Keqiao merchants: high-end menswear and light luxury fashion. The line uses all-natural fibers like wool, silk, and Lyocell, with colors derived from plant extraction rather than chemical dyes, and prices range from 100 to 600 RMB per meter. This price band precisely avoids the price wars of low-end fabrics, but requires solid craftsmanship and quality control.
Supporting this system is an integrated trade-and-manufacturing model. With 15,000 square meters of warehousing, the company runs parallel stock and custom-order tracks—stock items serve small urgent orders, custom orders take 3 to 10 days, and with sufficient inventory, the fastest dispatch can be achieved within one hour. This responsiveness is rare in the high-end fabric segment, meaning buyers can drastically shorten lead times and shift inventory risk upstream.
The introduction of digital tools further amplifies efficiency. Haoli has digitized core fabrics—waffle knit, health knit, double-face jersey, mesh, air layer, pique—enabling one-click matching of similar fabrics via the AI Bu mini-program. For designers and high-end brand purchasers, finding materials with swatches is a daily pain point; traditional manual swatch comparison is inefficient, and remote communication with overseas clients is time-consuming. Digital matching not only saves labor but also improves accuracy—almost essential for demanding clients.
Notably, the AI Bu experience center in Dongsheng Road is about to begin trial operations, featuring smart body measurement, 3D virtual fitting, fabric visualization, and garment simulation. This means fabric display will extend from physical samples to virtual interaction, redefining the procurement experience. Whether this will truly change decision habits for buyers accustomed to touching and feeling fabrics remains to be seen, but the trend is clear.
The synergy of the dual brands also shows in the supply chain. The outdoor fabric line has introduced Italian imported napping machines, expanding capacity and improving bargaining power and production speed; foreign trade targets European and American markets, with exports meeting EU standards for fluorine-free environmental protection. Long-term domestic partners include Qiaodun (8-10 years), Xiaobeibei, Yingqi, Macedonia, and Xiaozhubanna, and these resources flow bidirectionally between the brands, providing a ready channel for Haoli to access high-end menswear clients.
After two years of transformation, overall brand performance has improved significantly, and order growth this year remains strong. The lesson for Keqiao merchants is that differentiation is not a slogan but a systematic project involving product positioning, supply chain configuration, and digital tools. When the mass market sinks into homogenization, those who cultivate niche segments gain pricing power and customer loyalty.