When curtain and fabric production value approaches 70 billion yuan while exports suffer from volume growth with price decline, the growth logic of the home textile industry is being rewritten. On August 12, the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Home Textile Association's Fabric Branch was held in Keqiao, Shaoxing, themed 'Design Breakthrough, Technology Empowerment, Global Symbiosis - New Quality Growth of Fabric Soft Furnishings'. The meeting signaled that the traditional scale expansion model has hit a ceiling, and value growth has become a survival issue during the '15th Five-Year Plan' period.
Event Background
Keqiao, known as an 'economic powerhouse carried on a piece of cloth', provides a footnote to this transformation. In 2025, China Light Textile City's transaction volume exceeded 440 billion yuan, with nearly 8,000 curtain and fabric enterprises, annual production value approaching 70 billion yuan, and cross-border online transaction volume reaching 800-900 million US dollars. These figures reflect a complete textile industry chain and massive production capacity, but also imply hidden worries of homogeneous competition and price wars.
Industry production, sales, and exports in the first half of the year maintained stable growth, but pressure from weak demand and trade fluctuations remained. Zhu Xiaohong, president of the China Home Textile Association, reviewed the achievements of the '14th Five-Year Plan' and pointed out that the fabric industry was impacted by the real estate downturn and rising raw material costs, with corporate profits under pressure and exports showing a trend of volume growth with price decline. This means the old path of low-price volume growth is no longer sustainable, and enterprises must find new profit fulcrums.
Industry Impact
Original design has become the first key to breaking the homogenization dilemma. Lin Shaowu, brand consultant for Tianyu New Materials, proposed returning to users' real home scenarios, focusing on new demands such as 300 million people with sleep disorders, separate bedding, and home office. He suggested combining temperature control and antibacterial functions with healing colors and layered textures, building a product matrix of image products, profit products, and traffic products. This is not just a product adjustment but a strategic shift from single-item sales to whole-house soft furnishing lifestyle output, helping to establish brand pricing power and avoid price wars.
AI and digital technologies are moving from laboratories to production lines. Ji Feng, associate professor at Donghua University, showcased AI intelligent color matching based on a massive dye database, solving digital printing color difference issues, and CNN deep learning for non-destructive rapid fiber identification, replacing traditional chemical testing. These technologies mean significant cost reductions in sampling and testing, crucial for improving R&D efficiency of small and medium enterprises. Zhao Lu, global VP of Collov AI, pointed out that spatial AI is key to improving fabric industry efficiency. Through world models, spatial analysis, material replacement, and one-click realistic scene generation can eliminate high costs of offline sample sending and real shooting, with commercial soft furnishing as the priority landing track.
Globalization is no longer exclusive to leading enterprises. Zhang Xiaocun from Modern Media shared TikTok platform data covering over 150 countries with 2 billion monthly active users, with Southeast Asia and Latin America leading global growth in home categories. Tactics such as immersive short videos, local influencers, and Keqiao industrial belt traceability live streaming provide replicable cross-border operation plans for small and medium factories and brands. This means small and medium home textile enterprises can leverage traffic dividends and platform tools to enter overseas blue ocean markets with lower barriers.
Practical Suggestions
For Buyers - Prioritize suppliers with original design capabilities and a complete product matrix, choosing those offering whole-house soft furnishing solutions rather than single items to reduce multi-supplier coordination costs. - Verify suppliers' AI digital capabilities, such as intelligent color matching and rapid sampling services, to significantly shorten new product development cycles and improve market responsiveness. - Assess suppliers' cross-border supply capabilities, including overseas warehouse layout and localized material support, to meet rapid replenishment needs of cross-border e-commerce.
For Foreign Trade Enterprises - Utilize Keqiao industrial belt traceability live streaming and local influencer resources to build authentic brand stories and enhance trust among overseas consumers. - Establish a three-tier product matrix: basic items for traffic, functional items for conversion, and co-branded items for brand premium, catering to different market consumption levels. - Invest in digital accumulation of fabric physical data, which is the foundation for future AI applications and intelligent customization, and a core barrier for differentiated competition.
The transformation of the home textile fabric industry is not achieved overnight, but the Keqiao annual meeting has provided a clear roadmap: design as the soul, technology as the wing, AI as the tool, and going global as the path. For enterprises in this field, the key lies in translating these strategic consensuses into specific actions in daily operations, finding incremental space amid existing volume competition.