When export volumes rise but prices fall, how can the home textile and fabric industry sustain profits? At the 2026 China Home Textile Association Fabric Branch Annual Meeting held on August 12 in Keqiao, Shaoxing, a set of data and judgments offered possible answers: Keqiao boasts nearly 8,000 curtain fabric enterprises with an annual output value of nearly 70 billion yuan, yet the industry's profits remained under pressure in H1, with exports showing volume growth but price declines. This signals that relying solely on capacity and low prices is no longer viable; the industry stands at a turning point from scale expansion to value growth.
Event Background
The meeting, themed "Design Breakthrough, Tech Empowerment, Omni-channel Coexistence - New Quality Growth for Fabric Soft Furnishings," brought together industry associations, university experts, brand enterprises, and cross-border e-commerce platforms. Agendas covered original design, health functions, AI digitalization, and global channels. Liang Pengcheng, Vice President of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, emphasized that in the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, production and sales grew steadily, but weak demand and trade fluctuations persisted. New quality productive forces are not optional but a survival issue. Zhu Xiaohong, President of the China Home Textile Association, reviewed the achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan, noting stable industrial scale and improved standards, but real estate downturn and rising raw material costs are squeezing profits.
Keqiao, described as an "economic powerhouse on a piece of cloth," presents representative data: in 2025, the China Light Textile City's transaction volume exceeded 440 billion yuan, with cross-border online transactions reaching 800-900 million USD. These numbers underscore the urgent need for the curtain fabric industrial belt to transition toward high-end, digital, and fashionable development. The meeting's message was clear: industrial logic must shift from manufacturing mindset to brand mindset, and from single-product manufacturing to overall soft furnishing solutions.
Industrial Impact
Original design was repeatedly highlighted as a solution to price wars and product homogenization. Lin Shaowu, brand consultant at Tianyu New Materials, proposed that the core is returning to users' real home scenarios, focusing on 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate bedding, and work-from-home needs. Combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors, and building a product matrix of image, profit, and traffic models, design becomes a core asset for brand pricing power rather than a cost item.
AI technology is moving from labs to production lines, reducing hidden industry costs. Ji Feng, Associate Professor at Donghua University, demonstrated intelligent color matching based on dye databases to solve digital printing color differences, and CNN-based deep learning for non-destructive fabric composition identification, replacing traditional chemical testing. Zhao Lu, Global VP of Collov AI, proposed spatial AI as the key to efficiency gains, using world models for spatial analysis, material replacement, and one-click realistic rendering, saving hundreds of thousands in sampling and photography costs. He predicted that embodied intelligence will only scale in warehousing, sorting, and inspection within three years, and fabric physical data will become a long-term core asset.
Overseas channels are opening incremental space for SMEs. Zhang Xiaocun, partner at Modern Media's home textile division, shared data showing TikTok covers over 150 countries with 2 billion monthly active users, with Southeast Asia and Latin America leading global growth in home categories. Tactics like immersive short videos, local influencers, and live-streaming from Keqiao's industrial belt provide replicable cross-border operation plans. However, the volume-up-price-down export trend implies that low-price competition is unsustainable overseas; branding and localization are key.