In Keqiao China Textile City, the Dongsheng Road outdoor fabric zone is becoming a window into merchants' transformation. Here, Haoli Textile has carved a steep upgrade curve from school uniform fabrics to high-end menswear fabrics in just two years, underpinned by dual-brand synergy, natural material positioning, and digital tools. The significance of this path lies not in individual success but in revealing a viable logic for traditional fabric merchants to counter involution: offset price competition with supply chain depth, and serve niche demands with digital precision.
Background
Haoli Textile's origin is modest. Its related brand Qiting started operations in 2013, was officially registered in 2014, and initially set up a storefront in Keqiao East Market, focusing on basic school uniform fabrics. This category has thin margins and fierce competition but offers stable orders, accumulating solid quality control experience and supplier networks. In 2018, as industry competition intensified and conventional fabric profits came under pressure, Qiting began a strategic transformation: on one hand, developing functional outdoor fabrics; on the other, establishing Haoli Textile to target high-end business menswear, forming a dual-brand independent operation.
This transformation was not a leap into the void. Qiting became one of the first tenants in Phase I of the Dongsheng Road outdoor functional fabric zone. As the high-end fabric business matured, Haoli Textile opened an independent booth in Phase II. The two brands share industrial chain resources but serve different customer groups: Qiting addresses outdoor functional fabric needs, while Haoli targets high-end menswear and light luxury. This staggered layout avoids internal resource waste and amplifies the scale benefits of the supply chain.
Industry Impact
Haoli Textile's product strategy is highly targeted. It exclusively uses natural fibers such as wool, silk, and Lyocell, abandons chemical dyeing, and relies on plant extraction for coloring, with fabric unit prices locked in the 100-600 RMB range. This price point precisely avoids price involution in low-end fabrics, directly connecting with high-end menswear brands and designer orders. For buyers, this means finding not cheap substitutes but supply sources with environmental narratives and quality differentiation—at a time when consumers pursue sustainability, plant dyeing itself is a premium support.
On the supply chain front, Haoli shares a 15,000-square-meter warehouse and adopts a dual model of stock and customization. Stock inventory can quickly handle small-batch urgent orders; custom order cycles are 3-10 days, with fastest shipping within 1 hour thanks to complete inventory. This speed is backed by an integrated factory, reflecting the essence of high-end fabric business: not just selling cloth, but selling responsiveness and flexible service. For factories, this model validates the feasibility of fast-response supply chains in premium categories, offering a reference for peers.
Digitalization is another card for Haoli. Core fabrics such as waffle, health knit, double-face plain knit, mesh, air layer, and pique have been digitally archived, enabling one-click matching of similar fabrics via the AI Cloth mini-program. For high-end clients, designers and buyers often bring sample swatches for sourcing; manual searching is inefficient, while digital retrieval greatly improves matching accuracy, especially for remote foreign trade clients. The AI Cloth experience hall in Dongsheng Road is about to trial-operate, featuring smart body measurement, 3D virtual fitting, fabric visual creation, and garment simulation, linking online and offline displays of physical fabrics and virtual samples. This signals the evolution of fabric display from physical swatch cards to digital twins.
Practical Advice
For Buyers - Prioritize suppliers with plant dyeing and natural fiber certifications; such products have higher premium space and align with end brands' sustainability narratives. - Leverage digital sourcing tools (e.g., AI Cloth mini-program) to quickly match sample fabrics, significantly shortening development cycles, but verify the accuracy and update frequency of digital data.
For Factories - Borrow the dual-brand synergy model: use basic categories to sustain the supply chain and high-end categories to expand profits, avoiding risks from single-category fluctuations. - Invest in digital archiving and AI matching capabilities; these are not just efficiency tools but thresholds for serving high-end clients—future fabric sourcing will increasingly rely on data rather than manual work.
The Haoli Textile case shows that the upgrade path for Keqiao merchants is not limited to scale expansion. Through precise positioning, supply chain deepening, and digital enablement, small and medium merchants can build moats in niche markets. When the industry is mired in price wars, such differentiation experiments may be the key to breaking the deadlock.