When rising export volumes meet falling prices and raw material costs squeeze profits, the home textile fabric industry stands at a critical crossroads. The 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch annual meeting, held on August 12 in Keqiao, Shaoxing, sent a clear signal: the era of pure capacity and low-price volume is over, and the industry is shifting from 'scale expansion' to 'value growth'. This meeting was not just a gathering but a collective recalibration of direction.
The Data Behind the Industry's Temperature Gap
The data disclosed at the meeting is telling. In 2025, the China Light Textile City's transaction volume exceeded 440 billion yuan, with nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises and an annual output value of nearly 70 billion yuan. Cross-border online transactions reached 800-900 million USD. These figures illustrate that Keqiao, as an 'economic powerhouse built on a piece of cloth', has formed a complete textile industry chain. However, another set of data deserves attention: while production, sales, and exports grew steadily in the first half of the year, demand remained weak, and trade fluctuations persisted. Exports showed a trend of rising volume but falling prices. This means orders have not disappeared, but profit margins have been significantly compressed, leaving many companies in the awkward position of 'having orders but not making money'.
This temperature gap is not unique to Keqiao; it reflects the common dilemma of the entire home textile fabric industry. The real estate downturn has dampened domestic demand, rising raw material costs have increased expenses, and traditional growth models have peaked. Zhu Xiaohong, president of the China Home Textile Association, acknowledged during her review of the '14th Five-Year Plan' achievements that the fabric industry faced profit pressure in the first half of the year. It is clear that the competitive focus for the next three years will no longer be production capacity but whether companies can deliver higher added value in products and services at comparable prices.
Four Breakthrough Directions: Design, Technology, AI, and Going Global
To address the involution dilemma, the meeting outlined four specific breakthrough directions. First is original design. Lin Shaowu, brand consultant at Tianyu New Materials, proposed that companies should return to users' real home scenarios, addressing new demands such as the 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate bedding for couples, and home office needs. By combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors, and building a product matrix of image products, profit products, and traffic products, design becomes not just an aesthetic issue but a direct lever for brand pricing power and long-term assets.
Second is technology empowerment. Ji Feng, associate professor at Donghua University, shared textile digital and functional technologies, including AI-based intelligent color matching to solve digital printing color differences, CNN deep learning for non-destructive fabric composition identification, and functional fabric processes such as phase-change temperature control and nano-modification. If these technologies are implemented, they will significantly reduce inspection and sampling costs, especially for small and medium-sized factories, enabling them to enter high-end markets with lower barriers. Third is AI application. Zhao Lu, Global VP of Collov AI, proposed that spatial AI is key to improving efficiency in the fabric industry. By using world models for spatial analysis, material replacement, and one-click realistic scene generation, companies can save hundreds of thousands of yuan in offline sampling and actual shooting costs. He predicts that embodied intelligence will only be scalable in warehousing, sorting, and inspection processes within the next three years, but companies that adopt spatial AI first will reshape the competitive landscape.
Fourth is export growth. Zhang Xiaocun, home textile business partner at Modeng Media, cited TikTok data showing the platform covers over 150 countries with 2 billion monthly active users, and home furnishing categories in Southeast Asia and Latin America are growing fastest globally. He suggested that companies use immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt traceability live streams, combined with a three-tier product matrix of basic, functional, and co-branded products, to quickly open overseas markets. This provides a replicable path for SMEs, making going global no longer exclusive to leading enterprises.
Keqiao as a Model and the New Industry Narrative
Keqiao was not just the venue for this annual meeting but also a living transformation sample. Sun Weigang, deputy secretary of the Party Working Committee of China Light Textile City, emphasized that Keqiao is strengthening industrial connections through professional exhibitions, stimulating industrial momentum through innovation and transformation, and expanding market space through open cooperation. The shift from 'scale advantages' to 'quality and brand advantages' demonstrates that industrial cluster upgrading is not achieved by a single company but through the synergy of the entire ecosystem—including exhibitions, e-commerce platforms, design institutions, and university laboratories.
The six goals proposed by Zhu Xiaohong include improving global diversified supply chains, deeply tapping domestic soft furnishing renewal demand, activating new quality productive forces through AI and industry-academia-research integration, building independent brands of Chinese home textile aesthetics, implementing full-chain carbon footprint standards, and establishing healthy sleep laboratories. These directions align perfectly with Keqiao's ongoing efforts. It is foreseeable that competition in the home textile fabric industry will revolve around 'design + technology + brand' in the coming years, and Keqiao's industrial belt advantage will make it an important observation window for this transformation.